Great fiction is fun! This is a beautiful work of art that was published eleven years after John Kennedy Toole, the author, tragically commited suicide.
The book tells the story of the creative, scholastic, eccentric yet delusional Ignatius J. Reilly, a slothful character who is a kind of modern reinvention of Don Quixote or perhaps Thomas Aquinas. His disdain for modernity takes on the shape of a delusional catharsis. For instance, he is an avid movie fan, who attends simply to critique and bemoan the depravity of man. Ignatius is a multi-faceted character who belongs in the middle ages, or in the next world to come. He humorously invokes the Goddess Fortuna as circumstances befall him, spinning him in a spiral downward.
Myrna Minx is as fascinated by Ignatius as he is by her (although one wonders what either sees in the other). She is a Jewish beatnik from New York. Her religious, social, and political ideas couldn't be more different from his, which perhaps explains their chemistry that is predicated upon multiple layers of misunderstanding.
Toole takes the reader through a hodgepodge mixture of humor, satire, and gritty human experience to tell a very engaging and funny story. Confederacy reflects the structure of Ignatius' favorite book The Consolation of Philosophy, the book Boethius (6th century or so)wrote while in prison for a year. The irony couldn't be more rich, as Ignatius lives with his mother at age 30!
After reading the book, I find myself concluding with my Mom (She recommended the book) that Gus Levy is perhaps the most real character in the book, the one most like the author. He has both knowledge and compassion. Nearly everyone else in the story is missing those traits.
This is an amazing book, and it won a Pulitzer prize (Post humously). I highly recommend it.
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