Geometry and Theology with Ignatius Reilly

 When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him -Jonathan Swift

With this epigraph, thus begins the novel A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. This particular confederacy is not formed in the antebellum American south, but rather in 1960's New Orleans and is in aforementioned confederacy against a one Ignatius Reilly. Though his name may spark images of fire and fury, Ignatius is about as far from fiery or impassioned as one can get. In essence, this slothful and selfish man and the wide range of characters that get sucked into his veritable whirlpool of influence stand to reflect the shortcomings of a very troubled man and his struggle to find security in his life.

Though published in 1980, the actual manuscript for the novel was written over a decade before then, before Toole committed suicide in 1969. This is an interesting detail to note, as reading a character like Ignatius Reilly as a Generation Z teenager produces an uncanny likening to the modern 'genre' of internet men succinctly titled Neckbeards. Anyone who's spent more than 5 minutes on Reddit or any digital social platform for that matter will undoubtedly come across mentions of these kinds people, very often men, that spend almost all of their time in the bedroom online, have a strong aversion to uh, basic hygiene, and eat a diet of foods excluding those that haven't gone through at least a few chemical treatment processes already. From the limited, modern perspective, Neckbeards seem to be a cultural phenomenon born entirely from a digital society that began to normalize isolation from others altogether, but as Toole shows in this 50+ year old book, this kind of social alienation existed far earlier than 'e' being added to 'mail.'

So who is Ignatius Reilly? Well, for starters, he is in the 5th year of haphazardly scribbling down the manuscript to what he claims to be a, "lengthy indictment against our society" (6), averaging about 6 paragraphs a month. The dossier is a loose collection of fits and spurts of creative power left in the form of children's notebooks piled on the bedroom floor in his widowed mother's house. He has no official job when the story begins, so naturally his mother financially supports his preference for pastries ordered by the plural dozen and puts up with his unceasing whining in his over-educated vocabulary that's dense and meaningless enough to give a silicon valley trust-fund baby pitching the latest and greatest tech start-up scam to potential investors a run for their money. His real hobby, however, is yelling arrogant criticism at TV- and movie screens that he absolutely can't live without. 

Yes, that's right--Ignatius also pulled a did-it-before-it-was-cool-on-the-internet maneuver on spending his time throwing needless and half-baked criticism at mind-rotting entertainment. 

In his own eyes, Ignatius is an almost Christ-like figure, fighting for the traditionalist Catholic views that he believes our society so desperately needs. There are brief interludes where the reader gets to see what Ignatius's contributions to his dossier actually are, straight from the horse's mouth. His writings all reflect his vaguely defined master's degree relating to Medieval European society, with his orthodox philosophy being hidden beneath the murky waters of his writing style, such as,

From the austerity and tranquility of her medieval world, the penetrating gaze of this legendary Sybil of a holy nun would exorcise the horrors which materialize before our eyes in the name of television. If we could only juxtapose one eyeball of this sanctified woman and a television tube, both being roughly of the same shape and design, what a phantasmagoria of exploding electrodes would occur. (40)

 In his loosely threatening illustration of his distaste for television, we see a strong example of his over-aggressive distaste for the world at large. A large part of Ignatius's character beyond this outward projection of arrogance is his extremely weak constitution, often complaining of anxiety-induced hives and his oft-bemoaned, overly sensitive pyloric valve (simply My valve! for short). The more one looks into him as a person, the more one realizes his extreme insecurity and his soul callused with bitter loneliness. Rather than face his deep-seated flaws, he retreats into this numb fantasy where he genuinely treats himself as superior to everyone and everything around him, even in private setting away from the potential disapproval of others. A fitting description is when his mother confesses that she may have to mortgage the house to pay for damages during a drunken car crash, and Ignatius replies, "“The whole sense of security which I have been trying to develop would crumble." (44) Ignatius Reilly is someone who has spent his life alone, so much so that he chooses to avoid his grounded sense of reality altogether and become a walking fantasy instead. He feels security in his sense of being the subject of a confederacy of dunces.

Bibliography

Toole, John K. A Confederacy of Dunces. Baton Rouge and London, Louisiana State University Press, 1980.