Oh, and Another Thing

A Confederacy of Dunces

I LIKE THAT IN THE SUMMER, I get out of my routine and am often unsure of the day, let alone the date. It allows me to do (and not do) things I might not otherwise, like reread a favorite book. This summer, I reread A Confederacy of Dunces for the third time.

Ignatius J. Riley and I go back to the first time I read this masterpiece. I became acquainted with him long before I had ever been to New Orleans. I appreciated the book’s blend of ironic and poignant humor, Toole’s intricate connection of Ignatius’s obsession with the Roman goddess Fortuna, and the overall narrative. As an avid reader and lover of unique and odd characters, I fell in love with the outrageous personalities and added this book to my list of great reads.

Several years later, I would pick up the book again, only this time as a brand new transplant to the New Orleans area. When I started the book the second time, I thought I better understood the significance of New Orleans as the setting, having made it my home for a few months. I was wrong; I was still only an outsider looking in. To have any genuine acuity for the life of Ignatius, I would have to be “born and bred here,” as they say; it was too late for me, for I was neither. I was way late to this party, local or not.

Twenty-five years have passed. I have lived in the New Orleans area more than anywhere else; it is where I raised my children, two of whom were born and bred here. The great thief of time has robbed me, and the word “change” doesn’t even begin to cover it. I decided now was a good time to revisit John Kennedy Toole’s masterpiece. I hear the cynics loud and clear, “You are still not born and bred here and will never fully ‘get it.’” They are correct. But I get it more than I did thirty years ago when I read it for the first time. Sure, I know a bit more about New Orleans after 25 years. I have walked the streets Ignatius walked, had a Lucky Dog, drank a Dixie beer, know where Rampart Street is (mostly), and received more than one text asking, “Where yat?!” but those aren’t the things that resonated with me as I reread A Confederacy of Dunces this summer.

As it does, living has taught me about people and relationships, so when I returned to the book for a third time, those things stood out to me like never before. After thirty years, Ignatius and Irene Reilly are not as tragic as the younger me thought, though every bit as preposterous. Theirs is a complex mother and son story, while simultaneously a simple one: they love each other but dislike each other, and neither has nor cares to have any understanding of the other. In reading the book the first two times, I missed the essence of their dynamic and turbulent relationship. I was more entertained by their amusing idiosyncrasies: his uncooperative pyloric valve and blatant hypocrisy, and her penchant for alcohol and constant badgering of the man-child she created. Don’t misunderstand; their eccentricities make this story masterful, but at its core, it is a tale of extreme dysfunction only found between parent and child. Thus, my third reading of A Confederacy of Dunces has shown me that perspective is everything. Though not a “born and bred” New Orleanian, I can confidently say that I am in communion with this iconic, eccentric misfit and his beloved New Orleans, not as a native but as a mother. Now I get it.