The story of this book's publication makes it immediately interesting regardless of its content: it was written by John Kennedy Toole in the early 60s, who failed to find a publisher and ended up killing himself. His mother then shopped around the manuscript until finally it was published in 1980, winning the Pulitzer Prize posthumously in 1981. I doubt there are many other books with such a history...
But as all of us here are products of the liberal elite postmodernist University system such things as the author's biography, intents, and interesting histories are beside the point! Is it any good?
Well it's certainly very original. The main character, Ignatius Reilly, is an amazing creation. Spouting all sorts of high-brow scorn, he also is a bit of an idiot when it comes to doing...uh, anything. He wildly swings from furious to hurt and pathetic, and is a master manipulator who only engineers spectacular failures. He is hilarious (on finding out his on-and-off girl has a new Kenyan man: '"Oh, my God!" Ignatius slobbered. "The minx has been raped by a Mau-Mau."') and has a certain admirable grandeur but is also a total dick to everyone.
For just one example, he gets a low-grade job filing papers in a clothing factory office, which he 'does' by chucking away all the papers. He then decorates the office with all kinds of elaborate signs and artwork, and organizes a worker's revolt that evaporates into nothingness just as it starts to get going when it turns out Ignatius has no idea of what he's actually trying to achieve with it.
As he blasts his way through various quarters of New Orleans we get a great depiction of the strange nooks and crannies of that city as well as a host of interesting minor characters. But the book is dominated by Ignatius and his unpredictable interactions with anyone he comes across. Although it's hard to imagine actually having to deal with someone as totally impossible as Ignatius, his conflicts with the world often strike close to reality. His university-educated disdain for simple work, crappy films, and regular people could come from any number of us highbrow types in a moment of weakness. Nobody envies the guy who sells hot dogs do they? And why should I have to do some lame job, I'm so well-educated!
Ignatius stands in for the frustrations of all of us university graduates brimming with mostly useless knowledge and with not much productive to do with it. While most of us will probably manage to 'grow up' and enter the normal, real world, Ignatius is what happens when a kid fails to understand that everyone is 'special' and 'unique' and has to do boring and inane things to be a member of society. But, just as in real life, such sociopathic personalities can still get along fine in their own little bubbles, since they don't care about what they are doing to other people.
So although the disasters of Ignatius's character act as a caution against his type of selfishness and sense of entitlement, the book also seems oddly sympathetic towards him. By portraying him as a big child who has been failed by society, his 'success' in spite of his anti-social tendencies is a happy ending of sorts that also suggests a very depressing view of society's ability to handle outliers. Ignatius just takes advantage every time normal people act nicely towards him, and ends up in the box seat despite nobody actually liking him. Society sucks like that.
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