I read it once, when it was first published. Didn’t get it, never so much as snickered. Different tastes, or maybe you have to be steeped in New Orleans.
I tried the audiobook. After the fiftieth “Oh my God!” I had to give it up.
I’m not much of a novel reader - pretty much just re-read Confederacy every 4 or 5 years. It could be a great movie, but there’s about an 80-90% chance they would screw it up.
Ping
Read it. Hated it. It was bluer than a blueberry, appealing to the basest attributes of human nature.
Sounds like the story of the author and his mother is more interesting than the book. At least for a subject for a movie.
Read it. Didn’t love or hate it. I found it to be a bit of a grind to get through. I’ve never really thought of what a movie adaptation would be like. I’m amazed it’s not been done. Seems like a natural.
People who aren’t from here don’t get New Orleans. They certainly don’t get this book. We’re OK with that.
Having lived in New Orleans from 1942 to 1952 and still in La, I bought and read the book in 1995. I will have to look for the book and reread... it is around here somewhere. LSU made the book into a play which I saw and vaguely remember as a comedy due to the characters involved in Riley’s life. Geaux Tigers...
Took me a few tries to get the joke, but when I finally did, I ploughed through it and enjoyed it. You do spend a lot of time with a completely vile human being, but maybe we’ve all got a little bit of Ignatius Reilly in us.
Avery Schreiber could have played him.
I’ve never read the book, but I have always felt sorry for the author - John Kennedy Toole. He was plagued with homosexuality and then killed himself. Even if the book is not my cup of tea he certainly had some talent... and it was squandered.
Ron Swanson, if there is a God above, put Ron Swanson in the movie role.
I truly believe this is the role he was born for.
I’m curious having never read the book. While reading the article I’m replacing the name Ignatius with Ignoramus. I wonder if there is meant to be some implicit psychological connection? I’ll check the book out on Amazon and if it’s free or near free, I’ll download it. I can’t imagine John Belushi playing the part or Harold Ramis doing the movie. There is nothing “English” about them. If this book is a modern classic so is Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake and it too has a character, a minor one named Swelter, who is a pompous fat cook. Similarities come to mind.
A hilarious book, although yes, maybe you have to have experienced the wacky, wonderful world of NOLA to fully appreciate it.
I listened to the audiobook a few years ago and thought it was hilarious!
Completely puzzling why people like this book.
For years I have challenged Dunce lovers to come up with a single masterful paragraph, sentence, turn of phrase, sublime witticism, humorous insight, but no one has yet pointed one out.
That is because there are none in this very tedious, boring book.
I’ve read it several times over the years. It tickles my funny bone in an odd, unique way, though some P.G. Wodehouse and Jack Vance stories come pretty close.
Toole so brilliantly captured a sense of time and place—New Orleans in the early ‘60s—that when I finished the book, I wished that Toole had written a sequel, with Ignatius and Myrna in New York in the mid ‘60s. It would be a natural follow-up.
Toole so brilliantly captured a sense of time and place—New Orleans in the early ‘60s—that when I finished the book, I wished that Toole had written a sequel, with Ignatius and Myrna in New York in the mid ‘60s. It would be a natural follow-up.