
New Orleans: Statue of fictional character Ignatius J. Reiley from the novel “A Confederacy of Dunces”, beneath the clock where the first scene of the novel finds him. Formerly the entrance of D. H. Holmes Department store, now a Hotel on Canal Street. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The only sour note–and here I degenerate into slang to more properly set the mood for the creature whom I am about to discuss–was Gloria, the stenographer, a young and brazen tart. Her mind was reeling with misconceptions and abysmal value judgments. After she had made one or two bold and unsolicited comments about my person and bearing, I drew Mr. Gonzalez aside to tell him that Gloria was planning to quit without notice at the end of the day. Mr. Gonzalez, therupon, grew quite manic and fired Gloria immediately….Actually, it was the awful sound of Gloria’s stake-like heels that led me to do what I did. Another day of that clatter would have sealed my valve for good. Then, too, there was all of that mascara and lipstick and other vulgarities which I would rather not catalogue.
Ignatius’ other career consists of pushing a hot dog cart around New Orleans. He eats many of the hot dogs, of course.
Another character, Mancuso, is a detective who will lose his job unless he can find someone to arrest. For a while, his assignments consist of wearing disguises while staking out mens’ rooms. I note this because police departments (and law enforcement personnel in general) frequently appear as characters or subjects in literature. In fact, the “police procedural” is a separate genre. Had this book been written closer to today, Toole may have arranged for Mancuso to encounter a certain (now retired) Republican senator from Idaho in one of the rest rooms. At the beginning of the novel, Mancuso nearly arrests Ignatius, who says:
Is it the part of the police department to harass me when this city is a flagrant vice capital of the civilized world?….[F]amous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, Antichrists, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft.
Not exactly what the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce would like you to read before your visit. Then again, it cannot be said that things have changed a great deal when the U.S. Justice Department concludes that “[w]hile other departments generally have problems in specific areas, like the use of excessive force, ‘New Orleans has every issue that has existed in our practice to date, and a few that we hadn’t encountered,’ said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/us/18orleans.html?pagewanted=all.
In this case, life and literature seem to be the same, after all.