American Art

 Though it's only just a coincidence that both novels happen to almost overlap in American history, there are a quite a few different stylistic and thematic parallels between A Confederacy of Dunces and the novel Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. Namely, the way in which both of the curiously named protagonists live completely detached from the world around them, especially when it comes to the specific political climate that came with living in mid-20th century America. For Morrison's reluctant hero Milkman Dead, he is a Black man from Michigan who has lived his whole life in a hollow imitation of the White ideal of luxury, leaving him utterly ignorant to the struggle that people of color face in America. For Ignatius, the world is a lost cause that he has boldly and courageously decided to withdraw from entirely of his own accord with the intent of utilizing his perversely Christ-like conviction to single handedly mold it into his own utopia. 

Common between the two novels is the often blink-and-you'll-miss-it references to major historical events and figures, such as the Birmingham church bombing or people like Malcolm X in Morrison's novel. In Ignatius's world, his disconnect from the politics of the time may be expressed by the way his neurotic fixations often usurp these events, like when he tells his story about taking a Greyhound bus to Baton Rouge for a job interview in his veritable epic tale of car sickness, stolen overcoats, and scammed taxi drivers that he repeats absolutely ad nauseum to anyone around him, saying, "I was getting afraid that some rural rednecks might toss bombs at the bus. They love to attack vehicles, which are a symbol of progress, I guess." (10) This is a reference to the Freedom Riders, a group of people, both Black and White, that chose to take buses into the deep South with the intent of purposely and nonviolently breaking Jim Crow laws, often meaning they were met with violence in the form of bombed buses and brutal arrests that propelled discussions of segregation to the forefront of American discussion. Another, lighter reference that still follows the Greyhound bus fixation is when Angelo Mancuso, the police officer that targets Ignatius for arrest in the first chapter that sets off an ensuing confused series of arrests which plunge Mancuso headfirst into some seriously hot water with the New Orleans police commissioner, is assigned to go undercover in increasingly ridiculous, possibly randomly selected outfits (i.e. ballet tights and yellow sweater, a farmer, etc.) meant to humiliate him. Mancuso is assigned to spend 8 hours a day in a cold and damp Greyhound station men's room stall with the assigned task of arresting gay men seeking anonymous sex, but which Ignatius chooses to understand instead as Mancuso choosing to be there because he has a sick obsession with watching the supposedly demonic buses that Ignatius resents so deeply pull into the station.

The clearest illustration on Ignatius's deranged political awareness is when he spends weeks, possibly months planning and executing a forceful unionization of his workplace with the sole intent of one-upping his Neo-Freudian hippie ex-girlfriend, Myrna Minkoff who currently resides in New York City. Ignatius works as an office clerk for the rundown and decaying Levy Pant company with a CEO that inherited the company from his father but treats the company exactly the way the audience thinks of Ignatius: a spoiled brat that is currently riding first class with a one-way ticket to failure with no sign of changing course any time soon. Ignatius specifically wants to unionize the line workers that are more akin to wage slaves, aimlessly tacking bits of fabric together in a rotting factory. He mainly wants to do film a bold and dramatic protest and upheaval of the single office manager, both as a way to taunt his ex-girlfriend but also to get back at the anxious and wimpy manager, Gomez Gonzalez, who he sees as a threat merely by existing as a (rather limp) extension of corporate authoritarianism. The factory workers are entirely comprised of men and women of color, mainly because they can be paid pennies an hour with the threat of being reported for vagrancy if they choose to quit and become unemployed being the only thing keeping them at the Levy Pant company. He outlines all of this is the drafts for his new journal, writing under various generic pen names suffixed by 'Your Working Boy.' In the particular article he writes before executing the sloppy and farcical unionization attempt to come, he outlines the commonalities and contrasts in the ways in which both he and people of color are disconnected from society at large, saying: 

This failure to make contact with reality is, however, characteristic of almost all of America’s “art.”...this is only because the nation as a whole has no contact with reality. That is only one of the reasons why I have always been forced to exist on the fringes of its society, consigned to the Limbo reserved for those who do know reality when they see it. (103)

He then goes on to say as well,  

In a sense I have always felt something of a kinship with the colored race because its position is the same as mine: we both exist outside the inner realm of American society. Of course, my exile is voluntary. However, it is apparent that many of the Negroes wish to become active members of the American middle class. I can not imagine why. (105)

Ignatius is fully aware of the fact that marginalized groups face forms of systemic racism, going so far as to compare his perception of the rather subdued and depressing factory floor to the wild and chaotic scenes of factory workers in the German sci-fi classic Metropolis. He remains cognizant of these issues, but he just doesn't care. He will denounce the overworking and underpaying of the factory workers, but in the next paragraph will casually hypothesize that the furnaces must not be that much of a nuisance in the humid New Orleans summers because, as he says, "...I suspect that the workers once again enjoy the climate of their forebears, the tropic heat somewhat magnified by those great coal-burning steam-producing contrivances." (104) He's baffled that anyone could like jazz music, describing the negative reaction to him turning off the radio upon walking into the factory for the first time as "Pavlovian" rather than genuine annoyance. The very next sentence after comparing the factory to Metropolis's allegory for industrial classism he describes how picking cotton under antebellum slavery was only a stage in African Americans' "evolution" and how now capital-t They have moved on to tailoring it, treating them the way a scientist studying the evolution of an animal species would. 

It is made clear by the repeated examples of political ignorance, whether voluntary or involuntary, that Ignatius Reilly treats the political events around him as ones that he can selfishly use as pawns to project a certain character onto other's perceptions of himself. His interpersonal perceptions are ones he often seems to disregard or, when challenged, seems taken aback that someone would think that any of his actions were in any way not 100% justified and purposeful, which they are clearly often not. In the midst of his performative unionization attempt, he loses control of the crowd as they start genuinely directing themselves and choosing which of his often ridiculous commands to obey and which to ignore (whether or not to fulfill his wishes for two "statuesque" women to wave his dirty bed sheet with the word FORWARD printed on it was a tough battle, though.) As the crowd starts leading themselves, he immediately switches tone and starts denouncing the group, once again forcing them into the box of being Other than himself. 

This all ties back to Ignatius's character as a deeply insecure and anxious person that chooses to treat himself as a superior on his own terms. Hence why he describes himself as having been 'forced' to join the fringes of society, as he thinks himself as one of the scarce few that can see the true reality and that everyone else is wrong, not him. He rabidly denounces any attempt to re-integrate into normal society, defining it rather vaguely as something that is deeply unwise and foolish to do. The audience, however, understands that a one Mr. Ignatius Reilly is a man who carries a tremendous amount of pain with him, a pain that is so deep and vast that he has simply embraced it as his own, choosing to hold it in order to reciprocate the way he feels held by it. 

Bibliography

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