This is a book famous for many for the back-story of its writing and publication. It was finally published in 1980, eleven years after the suicide of its author, thanks (fittingly) to the concerted and protracted efforts of his mother, who discovered the manuscript. It deserves its fame on its own merits as well, of course, being original and bizarre and memorable and 60's zeitgeisty.
It is the picaresque story of massively overweight social misfit, Ignatius J. Reilly's efforts to combat the spirit of the modern age (freakily, he prefers that of early medieval philosopher Boethius, though is actually motivated as much by the need to impress a beatnik former fellow student) attempting to hold down a job he needs to help pay off his mother's debts incurred as the result of damage she caused while drunk-driving after a brief spree prompted by her rescuing her son from wrongful, or at least misguided, arrest by an inept police officer. (Phew!) The "spree", for the record, took place in a louche French Quarter bar, run by a "Nazi" proprietess running a porn ring, while employing a dim-but-ever-hopeful stripper and a sub-minimum wage black youth who needs the job to avoid arrest for "vagrancy". All these characters, and many more (the owners and employees of a decrepit trouser factory, the owner of a hot-dog business, the flamboyant inhabitants of the New Orleans gay demi-monde, Ignatius' Mother, her friends and suitor...), are wonderfully woven together in the story of Ignatius' eccentric, generally disastrous and extraordinary progress through the novel, preoccupied by his battle against modernity, exploitation and the vicissitudes of his "valve".
This is an absolute one-off, and will allow you to see New Orleans as never before. It is about New Orleans, about the modern age, about the injustices of the 1960's US South, but really this is a novel-for-novel's sake, a great and bizarre story which gets under your skin.
Recommendation: an experience everyone should have!
It is the picaresque story of massively overweight social misfit, Ignatius J. Reilly's efforts to combat the spirit of the modern age (freakily, he prefers that of early medieval philosopher Boethius, though is actually motivated as much by the need to impress a beatnik former fellow student) attempting to hold down a job he needs to help pay off his mother's debts incurred as the result of damage she caused while drunk-driving after a brief spree prompted by her rescuing her son from wrongful, or at least misguided, arrest by an inept police officer. (Phew!) The "spree", for the record, took place in a louche French Quarter bar, run by a "Nazi" proprietess running a porn ring, while employing a dim-but-ever-hopeful stripper and a sub-minimum wage black youth who needs the job to avoid arrest for "vagrancy". All these characters, and many more (the owners and employees of a decrepit trouser factory, the owner of a hot-dog business, the flamboyant inhabitants of the New Orleans gay demi-monde, Ignatius' Mother, her friends and suitor...), are wonderfully woven together in the story of Ignatius' eccentric, generally disastrous and extraordinary progress through the novel, preoccupied by his battle against modernity, exploitation and the vicissitudes of his "valve".
This is an absolute one-off, and will allow you to see New Orleans as never before. It is about New Orleans, about the modern age, about the injustices of the 1960's US South, but really this is a novel-for-novel's sake, a great and bizarre story which gets under your skin.
Recommendation: an experience everyone should have!
Picaresque New Orleans, seen from a hot dog cart
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