A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole (small HC, 462 pages, 1980, $3)
"The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel featuring Ignatius Reilly and his marvelous madcap adventures in New Orleans."
"At the center of it all is one Ignatius J. Reilly, an obese genius from New Orleans, a flatulent frustrated scholar deeply learned in Medieval philosophy and American junk food, a brainy mammoth misfit imprisoned in a trashy world... Minding his own business on Canal Street one day, Reilly gets hauled off by a cop for no worse offense than looking suspicious. The experience is so traumatic that Reilly and his long-suffering mother repair to the Night of Joy bar, drink themselves to the fringe of oblivion, and promptly plow their old Plymouth into a building..."
Actually, I don't know why Reilly was so upset. HE was NOT the person arrested by the cop. The one to be arrested was the man who tried to help him...
This book has a sad history. Toole's mother contacted a Loyola professor wanting him to read the LONG novel her son wrote before his suicide. How could the professor say no. He could only hope the novel was so awful he would only have to read the first few pages. Instead, he loved it. And so did the Pulitzer Prize people.
Look for this book in the fiction section, avail 4/13.
