Set in New Orleans in the 1960s, John Kennedy Toole’s comic novel follows the fortunes of 30-year-old Ignatius J Reilly, a slovenly, flatulent scholar of medievalism who still lives with his mother, Irene. Reilly is unemployed and spends most of his days holed up in his bedroom, either contemplating (rarely writing) his literary opus or masturbating, using the memory of a long-dead pet collie to get him in the mood.
Toole, who killed himself in 1969 aged 31, wrote A Confederacy of Dunces while doing national service in Puerto Rico in the early 1960s. The book was turned down by successive editors including Robert Gottlieb who, in a letter to the author, wrote that it was “a brilliant exercise in invention … [but] it isn’t really about anything”. After Toole’s death his mother, Thelma, found the manuscript and resolved to get it published. It eventually came out in 1980, became a bestseller, and won Toole a Pulitzer prize.
