Some memorial quotes:
About Ignatius Reilly's predicament, Barbara Tepa Lupack writes:
And the journey – a retreat from his mother’s lunacy – that Ignatius J. Reilly takes in A Confederacy of Dunces propels him into the arms of the equally loony girlfriend he had earlier tried to avoid. He merely trades one brand of absurdity for another.
[…] in a world as devoid of meaning […] madness is both a legitimate response and an effective challenge to the superficial sanity of the social order and historical process. Only a person out of step with society has an appropriate vantage point from which to view its failings; only a person who fails to obey the institutions that mandate certain behaviors can appreciate their rigitity and the consequences of nonconformity.
When Ignatius’s mother suggests he take a little rest in the psychiatric hospital, he replies, “They would try to make me into a moron who liked television and new cars and frozen food. Psychiatry is worse than communism. I refuse to be brainwashed. I won’t be a robot!”
Then there's the conversation Ignatius’s mother is having over at officer Manusco’s. (p.202-205)
“I gotta do something. I gotta call the authorities to come take that boy away … Maybe they put him in a detention home or something.”
Could this be part of Toole’s genius, that he has effectively zoomed in on how fascism operates in our society, through mommy-daddy-me?
On p.203, Irene (Ignatius’s mother) says, “Ignatius woulda been locked up safe in jail.”
His own mother is his enemy? The villian? She openly betrays him. She seems to be his worst critic. Is this how our Twelve Step brainwashed society operates?
On p.204: “It was all Ignatius’s fault. He’s my own flesh and blood, but he sure looks funny when he goes out. Angelo shoulda locked him up,” says Irene.
And finally, on p.205, she says to the cop, “I should have let you lock him away, Angelo. Mr. Robichaux, you don’t know Ignatius. He makes trouble every place he goes.”
The cop asks for Ignatius’ identification and then asks him about the contents of his bag. Ignatius won’t tolerate this treatment:
“Is it the part of the police department to harass me when this city is a flagrant vice capital of the civilized world?” Ignatius bellowed over the crowd in front of the store. “This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft. If you have a moment, I shall endeavor to discuss the crime problems with you, but don’t make the mistake of bothering me.”
“Any connection between American art and American nature is purely coincidental, but this is only because the nation as a whole has no contact with reality. That is only one of the reasons why I have always been forced to exist on the fringes of its society, consigned to the Limbo reserved for those who do know reality when they see it.”
This next segment reminds me of this “excursion” out west to the Seattle area, a “whirlpool of despair” and apathy and smugness.
“The only excursion in my life outside of New Orleans took me through the vortex to the whirlpool of despair: Baton Rouge. In some future installment, a flashback, I shall perhaps recount that pilgimage, through the swamps, a journey into the desert from which I returned broken physically, mentally, and spiritually.”
Another great passage is when he had turned the speakers of a radio off at the pants factory.
“So I turned the music on again, smiling broadly and waving amiably in an attempt to acknowledge my poor judgement and to win the workers’ confidence. Their huge white eyes were already labeling me a “Mister Charlie.” I would have to struggle to show them my almost psychotic dedication to helping them.”
Another couple excerpts from Toole’s Comic Masterpeice:
“I sense I have always felt something of a kinship with the colored race because its position is the same as mine: we both exist outside the inner realm of American society. Of course, my exile is voluntary. However, it is apparent that many of the Negroes wish to become active members of the American middle class. I can not imagine why. I must admit that this desire on their part leads me to question their value judgments. However, if they wish to join the bourgeoisie, it is really none of my business. They may seal their own doom. Personally, I would agitate quite adamantly against the bemused person who was attempting to help me upward, that is. The agitation would take the form of many protest marches complete with the traditional banners and posters, but these would say, “End the Middle Class,” “The Middle Class Must Go.” I am not above tossing a small Molotov cocktail or two, either. In addition, I would studiously avoid sitting near the middle class in lunch counters and on public transportation, maintaining the intrinsic honesty and grandeur of my being. If a middle-class white were suicidal enough to sit next to me ……”
“I do admire the terror which Negroes are able to inspire in the hearts of some members of the white proletariat and only wish (This is a rather personal confession.) that I possessed the ability to similarly terrorize. The Negro terrorizes simply by being himself; I, however, must browbeat a bit in order to achieve the same end. Perhaps I should have been a Negro. I suspect that I would have been a rather large and terrifying one, continually pressing my ample thigh against the withered thighs of old white ladies in public conveyances a great deal and eliciting more than one shriek of panic. Then, too, if I were a Negro, I would not be pressured by my mother to find a good job, for no good jobs would be available. My mother herself, a worn old Negress, would be too broken by years of underpaid labor as a domestic to go out bowling at night. She and I could live most pleasantly in some moldy shack in the slums in a state of ambitionless peace, realizing contentedly that we were unwanted, that striving, was meaningless.”
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