Confronted by a suspicious and eager policeman, Ignatius J. Reilly —the central character of A Confederacy of Dunces — rattles off the list of New Orleans denizens more worthy of attention: “It is odd that in a city famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, Antichrists, alcoholics, fetishists, onanists, frauds, jades, and litterbugs, the police would make it a point to harass the likes of me.” Readers of the classic novel — written by John Kennedy Toole in the 1960s and published posthumously in 1980 — know that the story of Dunces is driven by the epic, extravagant, terrifying brashness of Ignatius himself, somehow more sordid and distorted in his own way than any of the other outsiders in the Big Easy.
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