Why now is a perfect time to put Ignatius Reilly on the screen

“Must you distract me at every level. I am working on something with wonderful movie possibilities. Highly commercial.” – Ignatius Reilly

Only John Kennedy Toole knew if he was making a mouthpiece of his main character in A Confederacy of Dunces. But nearly a half-century after Toole penned his magnum opus, little has changed in American concerns while much has changed in public awareness of them.

If Toole, who took his life in 1969, could witness the present-day sociopolitical upheaval, he would be self-effacing not to suggest that there is relevant movie material brimming from his book.

It is not as if no one has tried to transfer Toole’s gem to the silver screen. Ideas to cast John Belushi, John Candy and Chris Farley in the lead role of Ignatius Reilly variously floated before the untimely deaths of each comedian. Other attempts have gained more traction, only to be unplugged for other reasons.

To date, the best adaptations we have seen are a live reading of a script in 2003 and a short-order stage run starring Nick Offerman in 2015.

Somebody can, and should, do more now. This story is worthy of more eyeballs at once, whether it be through a full-length theatrical film or — to avoid abridging Toole’s brilliant tome — a limited television series.

Either way, the Ignatius Reilly saga and its surrounding subplots deserve a new level of life. And given the current climate, America could benefit from watching it in action.

‘…two directions at once’
Ignatius, with his complicated and comprehensive cornucopia of views, is all but Uncle Sam’s out-of-shape civilian cousin. In the first paragraph of his story, he exudes a stark ambivalence that parallels the paradoxical look of the country circa 2016-17.

Introducing his protagonist, Toole centers on the hulking New Orleanian’s green cap, which points its earflaps “like turn signals indicating two directions at once.”

In ways no predecessor has done, the latest election cycle offers the same indication. The subsequent inception of a new administration and reactions thereto confirm that the two-way tug is not letting up.

Look no further than the way USA Today columnist Susan Page articulated the temperature in a Jan. 22 write-up: “Elections are by definition divisive, of course, and Trump takes control of the White House at a time politics have become increasingly polarized. But historians struggle to cite a precedent for a new president who is both beneficiary and target of such powerful and rising grass-roots movements.”

To that point, there has been a rise in antiestablishment sentiment on each wing of the political spectrum. There are differing interpretations over which way the country has been going and is about to go, let alone which of those ways is the good way.

Even the two major parties are addressing internal ideological tugs of war. In short, America has emerged as large, loud and conflicted.

That is Ignatius Reilly. He inadvertently personifies the present-day United States in all of its most passionate forms nearly 50 years before the fact. Passage after passage offers a mixed (or maybe not so mixed) batch of evidence that, were he a 2016 voter, the Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump movement could have swayed him with equal facility.

When we meet him, Ignatius has never been outside of his native Louisiana. He has only left New Orleans once. This makes him a prototypical resident of a Middle American city.

Once we understand this, the apparent volatility of his values makes more sense. Not to mention, his correspondences with former college acquaintance and borderline love interest Myrna Minkoff, now a tireless activist in New York City, rings the familiar “coastal elite” chimes.

Although, those clangs do not always reverberate in the form of outright political disagreement. In Ignatius’ case, it is more of an outrage over her ill-informed perception that he cannot solve the same problems through the same means in a different location.

Mishmash of morals
When he and his mother, Irene, are in an auto accident that inflicts structural damage on a residential building, Ignatius leans toward letting the motorist accept personal responsibility. This despite the fact that the motorist is literally his closest family member and has given him more than he may appreciate. Yet in the same sequence, he hate-watches a television program and takes an implicit swipe at corporate overextension via a disdainful mention of Clearasil.

When he is briefly employed by a crumbling pants company, he does not hold back on his desire to deliver “innovations” to the office. He demonstrates concern for Miss Trixie, who has been kept at work deep into her retirement age. And he ultimately moves to make the company, in the author’s words, “more militant and authoritarian.”

Ignatius epitomizes his snob-slob juxtaposition while standing before his soon-to-be second brief employer, a hot dog vendor. He laments society’s supposed self-inflicted mind-waste via “Turkey in the Straw” while showing no regard for his own physical health by gorging on the vendor’s products.

For every time Ignatius unfavorably employs the word “abortion” as a metaphor, he spends another instant accusing his townsfolk of “fascism.” Before he meets Myrna in person again, he pans her as a “liberal doxy” and mentions concern for “rural voters” in his final political move of the novel. Yet he also evokes the phrase “social injustice” on a repeated basis.

Moreover, in between his bubble-bursting humiliation at the hands of willfully uninterested posh party-goers and his reunion with Myrna, he takes a similar ribbing from his mother. In defense of her new significant other — Claude Robichaux, whom Ignatius has slammed as a “debauched McCarthyite” — she denounces her son’s “politics and all your graduating smart.”

Cynicism and disillusionment plainly run in the Reilly bloodline. Irene has been in the same arrangement with Ignatius for two decades, and any shakeup is welcome refreshment. She even informs Ignatius that, at least in the eyes of a few others, he is some of what he claims to despise.

It is only upon his subsequent, unexpected and climactic reunion with Myrna that any semblance of direction surfaces. Finding her at the doorstep of the otherwise unoccupied Reilly home, Ignatius “could see that she was beside herself with joy over finding a legitimate cause, a bona fide case history, a new movement.”

From another angle, she is genuinely striving to change her country for the better. With Ignatius, she has found the pivotal starting point. As an appreciative apology, he says, “To think that I fought your wisdom for years.”

Face-to-face equals favorability
All it takes for bridge resurrection is Myrna moving her feet back to Middle America and delivering her message directly, rather than relying on impersonal long-distance communication. Kind of like how a stump speech in one’s locality can strike more of a chord than a mere flood of fundraising notices from afar.

Familiarity alleviating fear and loathing streams through Dunces’s secondary storylines as well. The aforementioned Claude Robichaux, patriotic to a fault, meets Burma Jones — an African-American seeking dignified employment (he has his own two cents on the “minimal wage”) — at the same time we do, namely when both are under arrest.

The mutual mistrust for authorities among two polar demographics bridges us to the sympathetic story of Patrolman Mancuso. Toole gradually humanizes the arresting officer of both aforementioned men as a beleaguered subordinate who draws hushed stares around the neighborhood when he enters the Reilly home en route to befriending Irene.

Jones sees Mancuso in a different light when the former saves the pedestrian Ignatius from a bus immediately before the latter arrests Jones’ boss, Lana Lee. The incident, which draws full-scale media and public attention to a hospitalized Ignatius, is the culmination of a frustrated Jones’ efforts to destroy his unreasonably capitalizing employer’s enterprise from within.

There are similar faults to be found in the owner and second-generation namesake of Levy Pants. Gus Levy is often absent from the factory by choice, intent on indulging in his late father’s fortune while neglecting the business as much as he ignores his daughters.

When Gus hears Igantius’ backstory from a neighbor in the wake of the well-documented incident, Toole underlines the former’s purposeful bubble status through the sentence, “Levy’s Lodge had always been a barrier against knowing people like this.”

And yet, when that barrier breaks, it is beyond restoration for Gus. One of the closest specimens New Orleans gets to its own out-of-touch, lucky-sperm elitists cannot unlearn what he sees for himself. As those revelations pierce his eyes and sink in, he passively forgives Ignatius’ uprising and a damaging letter the hulking activist had penned under his name.

Gus concludes his portion of the narrative by implicitly seeking to start his life anew, separation from his wife and everything. The decision all comes from a curiosity that bucked his efforts to stay oblivious to others’ affairs.

While this outcome revelation may spoil the novel for those yet to read it, picking up Toole’s signature story can and will do more to connect the natural past-present dots than this column alone. A lively, unprecedented, screen-based presentation of the story would accomplish even more.

Somebody, make that happen. Make America think again.