My Pyloric Valve ...
Years ago, when I first read it, on page after page, Toole sat me up in bed, laughing out loud. But, as Walker Percy wrote, it's a mistake to refer to A Confederacy of Dunces as merely a comic novel. Set in New Orleans, it's a great sprawling farce of a novel that reminds me of Mark Twain at his best. In fact, it is a kind of inversion of Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. You remember that chaos ensues, when the Connecticut Yankee is injured, transported back in time, and tries to bring all the blessings of late 19th century industrial America to the denizens of late medieval England. Well, in many ways, the reverse happens in A Confederacy of Dunces. Ignatius J. Reilly is a late medieval man born into 20th century New Orleans ... and chaos ensues.
I love the epigraph from Jonathan Swift's Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting, from which Toole's novel gets its title:
When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.Undoubtedly, Ignatius J. Reilly believed himself to be such an unappreciated genius.
I love the novel's opening paragraph:
A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs. In the shadow under the green visor of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly's supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D. H. Holmes department store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress. Several of the outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be properly considered offenses against taste and decency. Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.Repulsive as he is, I identified with Ignatius J. Reilly. If his bedroom is littered with the Big Chief tablets in which he scribbles his medieval insights, my house is littered with boxes of xeroxes and research notes on projects I have yet to complete and my computer is full of odd paragraphs yet to be joined in the great American work of history.
Like Ignatius J. Reilly, there is much about the world into which I was born and in which I have aged that I find utterly repellant. For me, it is often embodied in nuoveau riche centers of power who call themselves" conservative" and, yet, recklessly and ruthlessly loose their destruction and disruption on received traditions and the ordinary lives of other people at home and abroad.
Which brings me back to John Holbo's choice of a title for his new literary blog. Early in his novel, Toole tells us that, lying in bed, Ignatius J. Reilly often bloated when he contemplated the disastrous course of events that began with the Reformation."Doris Day and Greyhound Scenicruisers, created an even more rapid expansion of his central region." Recently, his pyloric valve snapped shut"indiscriminately" and filled his stomach with"trapped gas, gas which had character and being and resented its confinement. He wondered whether his pyloric valve might be trying, Cassandralike, to tell him something." Late in the novel, Reilly fears that his body had deteriorated so that some tissue had grown over his pyloric valve, perhaps"sealing it forever."
Well, I hope not; and I hope that The Valve will bring relief to the mind for a long time to come, as Ignatius Reilly's pyloric valve brought relief to his body. And, by the way, don't forget to read John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces.