A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, Sep 25, 2026

First edition cover (1980), illustration by Ed Lindlof published by Louisiana State University Press

Several of the readers found this novel indigestible. It is not that they have not met with comedic or eccentric characters in other novels, but an Ignatius Reilly who walks around illustrating so many psychosomatic disorders is a unique novelistic find. Dyslexia, which one of the readers claimed was his major shortcoming, was probably not among his scourges, because it was not with words or numbers that he had problems. The verdict of Gemini, the AI program, is that “Ignatius J. Reilly is not formally diagnosed with a single, real-world medical affliction. Instead, he is a dramatic composite of various physical, psychological, and behavioural traits that rarely – if ever – occur together in a single individual in the manner Toole presents.” 

Ignatius Reilly’s stubborn persistence in his quirky behaviour and his conviction that “I’m not the problem, the world is the problem,” leads to a series of mishaps with other people, many of whom have heir own behavioural problems. The unrelenting march to doom in the novel is supposedly lightened by ‘humour’ but it is not of the kind where you laugh with the character in a jokey situation, but at the pitiable character. Who is this blunderbuss of an idiot who adopts the pose of a philosopher in the mould of the 6th-century philosopher Boethius who had the concept of a Wheel of Fortune? And eats a vendor of hot-dogs out of his entire cart’s supply?

It was all too much. Even the cockatoo undressing an exotic dancer in a saloon in Bourbon Street, New Orleans, did not lend much fun. 

The Cockatoo Act

Out of a sense of duty several readers did plough through the academic essays of Ignatius Reilly and survive his buffoonish behaviour on display in the novel throughout. As one reader put it, the novel has no plot, but offers a series of disjointed incidents in the life of a ridiculous man.

But it all ends well:

Myrna Minkoff driving off with Ignatius Reilly just as the ambulance arrives to take him to the asylum

Author Bio

John Kennedy Toole

Priya gave a brief on the author John Kennedy Toole. The name Kennedy is from his mother's family – they were French. And Toole is the name from the father's family, who were of Irish origin, and and had come to New Orleans. His nickname was Ken. He is best known for this novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, published posthumously in 1980, more than a decade after his tragic suicide at the age of 31.

He was born in 1937 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Toole demonstrated literary talent from a young age. His first novel was written at the age of 16, called The Neon Bible. In that novel the end is very different; it's a violent end with no relation to the story.

Toole's suicide at the age of 31 happened because the book was rejected by Simon and Schuster. He was unhappy about it, and had a big argument with his mother. He left home, he drove in his car, and went to a particular place and ended his life. Exactly a year before he did that, he had taken a friend there and shown him the place, saying, “this is where I will die, I'll be buried here.”

If you read about him as a young boy and a young man, there is no hint that this person will end his own life. Because he was full of life and a brilliant student.

He received his higher education from Tulane University and Columbia University, eventually teaching English while pursuing a PhD during his military service. During his military service, he began writing A Confederacy of Dunces, which tells the story of the eccentric, lazy Ignatius Riley.

Toole was born to a middle class family in New Orleans. From a young age, his mother Thelma taught him an appreciation of culture. She was thoroughly involved in his affairs for most of his life. And at times, they had a difficult relationship.

Many people attribute his suicide to his mother being very controlling and bossy. He had a good relationship with his father, but not with his mother. Yet it was finally his mother who brought him all this fame by hawking his novel around to publishers until it was placed.

As a child, Toole had a great affection for his black nursemaid, Willa Matthews, who cared for him when his parents were both working. An excellent student, Toole curtailed his stage work when he entered high school. He concentrated on his academic work. Toole wrote for the school newspaper, Silver and Blue, worked on the yearbook, The Tarpon, and won several essay contests. Toole spoke at gatherings of civic organisations.

His father had given him an old Oldsmobile car when he was 13, and he used it to deliver newspapers at that age, despite the legal age of driving age being 18. In high school, he was like any other young boy, dating his girl friends. Nowhere do you get a hint that this boy was under any kind of depression.

His mother was absolutely convinced that he was without flaw, and in him she entertained great hopes. It was an extreme form of maternalism, where all your pride and all your hopes are focused in one person. He had to grow up with that burden. She was very ostentatious, shrill and loud-voiced, a bossy braggart of a woman.

He had an academic scholarship during his undergraduate years at Tulane University in New Orleans. He did very well. Then he was drafted into the army. He had a short stint of military service, during which he was inducted to teach English to the Spanish recruits. After receiving a promotion, he got a private office and began writing A Confederacy of Dunces there.

That was 1968. And then he went around with the manuscript to publishers. It was rejected.

It was rejected also by Robert Gottlieb, the legendary American literary editor and publisher who started his career at Simon & Schuster in 1955. He went on to nurture authors like Joseph Heller, Toni Morrison, John le Carré, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, and biographer Robert Caro. He was looking at the manuscript of Heller’s Catch-22 at the time he rejected A Confederacy of Dunces. 

Toole couldn't accept the rejection. He ended his life and died by suicide by running a garden hose from the exhaust pipe in through the window of his car on March 26, 1969. His car and person were clean and the police officers who found him reported that his face showed no sign of distress. An envelope discovered in the car was marked ‘To my parents.’ The suicide note inside the envelope was destroyed by his mother, who later gave varying accounts of its details. She said it expressed his feeling for her. Later she said that the letter was bizarre and preposterous, violent, ill-fated, full of nothing but insane ravings. He was buried at the Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans.

A Confederacy of Dunces has been described as a grand comic feud and is considered one of the seminal works of 20th century Southern literature. It has received praise for its accurate use of various New Orleans dialects, including the YAT dialect. The title of the book is from a quote by Jonathan Swift's essay, Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

It was his mother, Thelma Toole, who refused to let her son's genius be forgotten. For years, she shopped carbon copies of the manuscript to various publishers, getting rejected every time. In 1976, she marched into the office of the prominent author, Walker Percy (who later wrote a foreword) at Loyola University and demanded he read it. Once he started reading it, he found it so brilliant that it just sucked him in. Percy helped get the book published by the Louisiana State University Press in 1980.

It became a massive literary sensation, and in 1981, Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Thomo told about the comparisons of Ignatius Reilly with Billy Bunter. When Thomo was thinking about this character, Ignatius Reilly, the image of Billy Bunter came to his mind.

You may know Billy Bunter from our school days when we read Billy Bunter comic stories. Billy Bunter is a famous fictional English schoolboy known as the “Fat Owl of the Remove.” He first appeared in a boys' weekly magazine called The Magnet in 1908 which ran until 1940. In appearance he was very overweight, wore glasses, and tight checkered trousers. He was lazy, greedy, selfish, and often got into trouble. Later Billy Bunter starred in novels, comic strips, and a 1950s BBC TV show.

Billy Bunter, the fat boy

Billy Bunter and Ignatius Reilly are surprisingly close as comic characters, according to ChatGPT, even though they belong to very different literary worlds. Both are larger-than-life parasites who create chaos, while remaining convinced that the problem is everyone else's. Billy Bunter was created by Charles Hamilton, and Ignatius Reilly by John Kennedy Toole.

Billy Bunter stories take place in Greyfriars School. A Confederacy of Dunces takes place in New Orleans.

One is a schoolboy, the other is an adult. In physical presence, both are extremely fat, obsessed with food.

And Ignatius is very large, poorly groomed, and physically eccentric. The central obsession for Bunter is food and money. And central obsession for Reilly is food, comfort, and his elaborate ideas about society.

Bunter constantly borrows money, begs for food, and avoids paying. Ignatius, lives with his mother and repeatedly exploits other people. Honesty, habitual lying and bluffing, that's Bunter. Self-serving, manipulative, and frequently dishonest, that is Ignatius.

Bunter thinks he's cleverer and more important than he really is. Reilly believes himself to be a profound intellectual and cultural critic.

Obsessed with work, Bunter does everything possible to avoid studying. And Ignatius avoids conventional work and regards ordinary employment as beneath him.

Billy Bunter creates comic trouble and financial inconvenience, and Ignatius creates much more serious social disruption and misery.

The comic method in Bunter is slapstick repetition and schoolboy mischief. Ignatius' satire, irony, grotesque behaviour, and intellectual absurdity is characteristic of A Confederacy of Dunces. Both characters are masters of self-deception. Bunter can be caught red-handed and almost immediately invent a story explaining why he is actually the victim. He has an extraordinary ability to turn his own selfishness into an apparent virtue.

Ignatius does much the same thing, but on an intellectual level. He constructs an elaborate philosophy to justify his laziness, hostility to modern society, and refusal to accept responsibility. In his mind, he's not a failure who refuses to work; he's an intellectual refusing to participate in a corrupt civilisation.

Both characters operate on the principle, “I’m not the problem, the world is the problem.”

Ignatius is a much darker creation, according to ChatGPT.

Geetha was the first one to read. Sadly, she confessed she had not completed the novel.

It brings a certain society to light and also probably certain off-beat personalities. Very seldom do we meet such people in real life. Is there a single medical affliction that Ignatius Reilly suffers from in the novel A Confederacy of Dunces? Or is he a composite of many medical afflictions that seldom are manifest in one person?

Joe asked Gemini AI app this question and here is what it returned:

Ignatius J. Reilly is not formally diagnosed with a single, real-world medical affliction. Instead, he is a dramatic composite of various physical, psychological, and behavioural traits that rarely—if ever— occur together in a single individual in the manner Toole presents.

While Ignatius frequently attributes his erratic behaviour, physical outbursts, and dramatic bodily complaints to a single, hyper-specific organ—his famous pyloric valve—this serves primarily as a satirical device rather than a clinically recognised medical condition.

The "Pyloric Valve" as a Satirical Construct

Ignatius constantly claims that his “pyloric valve” opens and closes unpredictably in response to the atrocities of the modern world, trapping gas and causing severe internal pressure. In actual human anatomy, the pyloric sphincter controls the passage of food from the stomach into the duodenum. While conditions like pyloric stenosis (a severe blockage) or functional dyspepsia exist, Ignatius’s self-diagnosed, volatile valve—which opens or shuts based on his moral disgust, television shows, or aesthetic offense—is entirely a figment of his theatrical hypochondria.

A Composite of Psychological and Physical Manifestations

Rather than representing one distinct disorder, Ignatius exhibits a constellation of symptoms and behaviours that span multiple clinical and physical profiles:

Severe Somatisation and Hypochondria: He translates emotional distress, anxiety, and social conflicts into extreme physical symptoms, constantly fearing immediate bodily collapse.

Agoraphobia and Social Withdrawal: He displays a intense reluctance to leave his neighbourhood or home, expressing profound fear and disgust toward the outside world and modern society.

Neurodivergent / Autism Spectrum Traits: His extreme adherence to rigid routines, intense fixation on specific historical periods (Boethius and the Middle Ages), sensory oversensitivity (loud noises, bright lights, crowds), lack of intuitive social cues, and highly formal, pedantic speech – all mirror traits associated with the autism spectrum.

Personality Disorders: He demonstrates strong narcissistic and paranoia-driven traits—harbouring a belief in his own intellectual and moral superiority while simultaneously convinced that society, his mother, and various acquaintances are conspiring against him.

Obesity-Related Complications: His severe obesity, extreme physical lethargy, and gastrointestinal distress reflect real physical ailments, though exaggerated for comic effect.

By weaving these disparate physical complaints, psychological fixations, and personality quirks into one character, Toole creates a uniquely eccentric figure who functions as a walking manifestation of medieval humorism—specifically an excess of “black bile” or classic melancholia—rather than a case study of any single modern medical condition.

Geetha read from chapter three in which Ignatius and Mrs Reilly have a conversation about Mancuso, the cop who is victimised by his boss.

Several appreciated the realistic reading by Geetha. Joe said ‘¥ou sound like the sympathetic mother.’

Saras 

Shoba and she chose successive sections in chapter 4. This is when Ignatius goes to work at Levy Pants, and he's been asked to do the filing. He cannot bend down and open the file cabinet. So the administrator, Mr. Gonzalez, gives him a wheeled stool. Ignatius is propelled on this low-wheeled stool for rapid access to files at Levy Pants company, but falls flat and can’t get up. The other three people in the office are trying to hoist him.

This is so funny. Miss Trixie is also one kind of a character. It is definitely a comedy show at Levy Pants.

Likening his buttocks to the bottom of an eggplant is a good humorous simile, said Joe. ‘Eggplant on a thumbtack.’

Toole is good at writing such scenes – he just finds the right words to express these comic situations, said Shoba who read the continuation.

Shoba

Ignatius from his supine position instructs Gonzalez and Miss Trixie how to get him upright – meanwhile the owner Gus Levy walks in. This was a good passage to choose, said Zakia. Mr. Levy wanted to run out of his office, he did not want to spend time there. One likes the way he threw all the files into the dustbin.

He did not do any filing ultimately, said Pamela. Yes, he keeps throwing out the files, said Saras. And later he organised a protest like a union leader. He should have come to Kerala, mused Zakia.

Joe

Also from chapter 4, this is a conversation between the owner of this Levy Pants and his wife. It is a study of a nagging housewife who is disappointed in her husband 

KumKum

In chapter 6 Ignatius foments rebellion among the workers at Levy Pants and organises a strike at the factory.

On a dirty bed sheet they wrote out the slogan of the uprising: Crusade for Moorish Dignity.

Thomo

This is from chapter 7 where Ignatius gets hired to vend hot-dogs after he tastes them at an old man’s cooking range. He becomes a hot dog vendor and winds up polishing off all the hot dogs himself. They are quite a long and you have to cut out some stuff in the middle. John Toole, the author, apparently as a young boy, did have a go at this gig, working as a hot dog vendor.

The French Quarter backdrop of Toole's novel. Source-Bookpackers

Was Ignatius all that dysfunctional that he ate it up himself? The following comes from Gemini. The character of Ignatius Riley may have been modelled on a professor of English, called Bob Byrne. John Kennedy Toole met Bob Byrne while teaching as an assistant professor of English at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now UL Lafayette) in 1959. Byrne served as one of the primary real-life inspirations for Ignatius. Byrne famously wore a green ear-flapped deerstalker hat—a signature part of Ignatius's wardrobe that Toole frequently teased him about. Byrne was a scholar of medieval literature who loved discussing the 6th-century philosopher Boethius and his concept of the Wheel of Fortune, both of which became central obsessions for Ignatius in the novel. Friends and colleagues noted that Byrne possessed a slovenly, eccentric appearance, played the lute, loved to argue, and had a penchant for eating hot dogs. So there, Toole borrowed a lot from his fellow academic’s quirks.

However, Toole also infused the character with elements of his own life (such as his real-life experiences pushing a street food cart and working briefly in a garment factory) along with a healthy dose of exaggeration for comedic purposes. 

Thomo narrated that they had a guy in their office, called Napoleon or something like that. This guy could just eat and eat and eat. He was a slightly fat, but not corpulent. If he went to a wedding, he would just continue eating – there was no stopping him –  how did he do it? But there are people like that.

Now Ignatius goes around town, and returns with an almost empty cart. He’s eaten the whole lot, and not sold even one!

Pamela

This was from Chapter 8, where Patrolman Mancuso loses his copy of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy when he tries to arrest George.

Pamela took off on her commentary from Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy. Why was that contemplative book given to the policeman, and why is the book mentioned so many times in the novel?

Pamela delved into that book a bit. Boethius was a 6th century Roman senator, historian and philosopher of the early Middle Ages, known for this book which he wrote while in prison, awaiting execution.

It is a masterpiece, addressing fate, free will, evil and human happiness through a dialogue with Lady Philosophy. It became one of the most widely read books of the Middle Ages. Lady Philosophy tells him in answer to his queries to recognise his own identity. She tells him that life works like a Wheel of Fortune; it constantly spins, taking away wealth, fame and power.

Philosophy informs us that these worldly goods are unstable and cannot grant true happiness.  Lady Philosophy argues that true happiness comes from God who is the ultimate good and source of good and the ultimate good and source of all wisdom. This reminds one of a saying of Jesus from the gospel of Matthew Ch 6: 19-21 ”Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”

Boethius asks why evil people thrive and then considers Chance, Providence and Free Will. Lady Philosophy keeps answering him and her answers seem to bring calm to his soul. Pamela concluded that the theme of this book is being connected to the theme of The Consolation of Philosophy.

The ending of the whole story comes about when Ignatius’ reconnects with Myrna Minkoff, Ignatius Reilly’s intellectual foil, former classmate, and ideological nemesis-turned-saviour. She was a radical Beatnik counterculture activist from New York City, who met Ignatius during their graduate studies in New Orleans. Throughout most of the novel, she is physically absent—having returned to New York—but remains a constant presence through an ongoing, furious exchange of letters. Minkoff is the one who actually understands his thinking and extracts him out of the whole situation that he is mired in. In the novel’s final chapters, when Ignatius faces imminent institutionalisation by his mother, Myrna drives down to New Orleans in her Renault and rescues him, driving him away to safety and providing the story's resolution.

His mother was not mature enough and objective to understand why Ignatius thinks in this odd manner. Pamela had a feeling he had dyslexia and the only person who could understand him was Minkoff. But as Gemini has pointed out earlier in this reading, Ignatius is a capricious composite of so many aberrations foisted on him by the author, that there is no medical diagnosis known that fits all his behavioural eccentricities.

Hence Joe sensing this was an author’s imagination gone berserk questioned the dyslexia-only hypothesis

Priya added he is dysfunctional, socially dysfunctional. And he is impossible in interpersonal relationships. That is the area of dyslexia, said Pamela. Priya noted he could not do even a simple job and the way he lived was extremely messy, starting with his messy personal hygiene.

But he wrote well, didn’t he, asked Pamela? When he wrote, he wrote well, Priya agreed. He wrote beautifully. But Joe said the person who wrote well in those snatches was the manifestation of Toole’s own essay writing – it is not easily ascribable to the character Ignatius. 

Priya said it is an anarchist kind of a writing. He's like what they call an anti-hero. He's planning all the mischief with relish.

When these dyslexic children are tested for IQ, they are always rated as super IQ, said Pamela. But dyslexia, recall, is primarily characterised by difficulties with accurate and fluent word recognition, spelling, and phonological processing (the ability to match letters to their corresponding sounds). Ignatius has many afflictions but processing words is not among them. Regarding him as dyslexic is not only mistaken if you judge from the novel regarding his odd behaviour, but it may be a wholly false lead in assessing Ignatius.

No doubt today he would be definitely asked to go and see a therapist, as Priya said, but not for dyslexia, which is a learning disability concentrated in the areas of reading, writing and numeracy.

Zakia criticised his mindless eating of hot-dogs that didn't even look at or smell appetising. Priya commented on his needlessly confrontational attitude. He would fight, and argue about anything. The latter bogey of his did not permit him to get along with people, Pamela said.

Socially he was far from fitting in at home, at work, or among his associates and strangers. 

Pamela insisted that only Myrna Minkoff understood him in this entire novel. She's probably as weird, Priya added. She was trying to tell the world that everybody must have sex because that is the answer to all problems. That was the consolation of her philosophy. Myrna felt that if that particular pleasure principle in him was satisfied, he would behave better.

That was Myrna’s answer for everything; it was her therapeutic method to cure him but he was against it.

Zakia

Her passage was a continuation of chapter 7, which Thomo read, about the hot-dog vendor,  how Ignatius has to dress before he takes that cart out. He did not want to wear the assigned cap. 

Zakia said Ignatius is stubborn about what he will do and what he will not do. Paradise Vendors are desperate and they actually employ him. One doesn't know what damage he's going to accomplish on his rounds by the time he comes back. So the owner gives him the cart – even the cart he's particular about which one he will trundle. Zakia said you can just laugh through some of this book, but it was quite frustrating to read it also.

It was quite difficult to continue on with it, one had to use a lot of determination to get through it. Priya noted people’s devotion to the reading group ensures they really finished the book; in the normal course you would drop such a book part way through. None of our readers would have got through this book without that external compulsion

Individual portions are quite funny, said Saras. There's no plot, there's nothing you are heading toward; this book is narrated as a series of disjointed incidents in a man's life. He's quite ridiculous in his ways.

But at the end, again, he doesn't get caught, said Priya. That’s the part Devika is reading. He gets away in the end.

Zakia was happy to see Devika was last in order of reading this time; it is a lot that usually falls to Zakia alphabetically. Devika's is usually at the top of the reading list; at any rate she is the first always to post her selection. This was a novel  and it turned out Devika chose a passage toward the end. However, poetry is next, so she will be second in line after you-know-who.

The professor of English, who was Toole’s friend, Bob Byrne, used to dress up like this with a deerskin cap and fancy dress clothes like Ignatius in this novel, according to Priya.

This cop Mancuso was also wearing some costume, seated, disguising himself.

Priya

She read the nightclub scene from the French Quarter of New Orleans which is very famous among tourists. By coincidence friends of Priya were visiting America and chose to visit New Orleans and went to the French Quarter. Priya told them she was reading a novel which describes the scene in that quarter of NO which is full of cafes. Below are some details from Wikipedia.

The French Quarter, also known as the Vieux Carré, is the historic heart of New Orleans and one of the most culturally distinct neighbourhoods in North America. Established by the French in 1718, it is famous for its Spanish-colonial architecture, vibrant music scene, French culinary heritage, and round-the-clock nightlife.

St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square is also part of the French Quarter

The French Quarter is bounded by the Mississippi River, Canal Street, Rampart Street, and Esplanade Avenue. Its defining visual style is a mix of Spanish, French, and Creole architecture: multi-storey brick buildings with wrought-iron or cast-iron balconies, hidden courtyard gardens, and pastel-painted facades.

Jackson Square: The central public square facing the Mississippi River, anchored by the iconic St. Louis Cathedral and flanked by historic government buildings. It serves as an open-air art market and gathering space for brass bands, street performers, and fortune tellers.

Royal Street: Parallel to Bourbon Street, Royal Street offers a quieter, more refined day-to-day experience characterised by antique shops, fine art galleries, luxury jewellery boutiques, and historic Creole restaurants.

Culinary Heritage: The district is home to iconic dining institutions offering Creole and Cajun classics, alongside landmark cafes like Café Du Monde on Decatur Street, famous for warm beignets dusted with powdered sugar and chicory café-au-lait.

Nightlife in the French Quarter is world-renowned for its diversity, energy, and open-container laws, which allow patrons to carry drinks outdoors in plastic ‘go-cups.’

Bourbon Street forms the epicentre of the quarter's rowdiest evening activity. Neon signs line the pedestrianised street, illuminating karaoke joints, dance clubs, piano bars, and historic watering holes. The street is famous for potent specialty cocktails served in souvenir cups, such as the Hurricane at Pat O'Brien's or the Hand Grenade from Tropical Isle. Joe remembered walking along the French quarter, full of these clubs. They hucksters outside the door trying to get you in and each is vying with others, shouting out the great sights you will see inside. One of them accosted Joe yelling “You'll never see such big bums and boobs. Come on in.”

A view of Bourbon Street

Revellers gather on elevated iron balconies above the street to watch the crowds below and toss beads to passersby.

Traditional Jazz & Live Music is preserved beyond the revelry of Bourbon Street. Preservation Hall, located on St. Peter Street, is an intimate venue which hosts traditional New Orleans jazz performances in an unpretentious, historical setting. Numerous historic hotels and lounges feature live jazz quartets, blues performers, and brass bands into the late hours.

Preservation Hall

A typical jazz club

Priya read about how Lana Lee, owner of the nightclub, who wanted hers to be different from the others. She comes up with the idea of an animal show and getting a cockatoo who will undress the performer Darlene on-stage.

Lana Lee is the ruthless, manipulative owner and manager of the Night of Joy bar. She serves as one of the novel's primary antagonists. She is coarse, and aggressively greedy. Lana runs her establishment with an iron fist. She underpays her employees and brutally exploits her janitor, Burk Jones, threatening to turn him over to the police as a vagrant if he steps out of line.

Beyond selling watered-down drinks, Lana runs a covert pornography ring, selling illegal photographic materials to high school students through a local newsstand run by an elderly man named George. Her illegal side business becomes the core focus of Officer Mancuso's undercover investigation. When Ignatius Reilly accidentally comes into possession of one of her pornographic photos (using the back of it to draft a manifesto for his political movement), it sets off the climax that leads to Lana's arrest and the dismantling of her ring.

Darlene is an optimistic, well-meaning, but endearingly dim-witted B-girl and exotic dancer working at the Night of Joy. Unlike the cynical characters around her, Darlene is warm-hearted, cheerful, and desperate to break out of her low-paying job. She dreams of becoming a famous exotic dancer by creating a unique, sophisticated stage act, The Cockatoo Act. Her big artistic breakthrough is this performance involving a trained, live cockatoo named Harmonic (which she buys from a local pet shop). The bird is meant to strip off her clothes during her dance routine, though the act routinely goes off the rails during rehearsals.

Darlene takes pity on Jones and tries to help him stand up to Lana. She manages to convince Lana to let her debut her cockatoo act at the bar, which unwittingly draws the entire cast of characters—including Officer Mancuso and Ignatius's mother, Mrs. Reilly—to the Night of Joy for the disastrous, climactic showdown where Lana's crime ring is finally exposed.

Joe said the jazz clubs are wonderful places to be entertained with original numbers from the NO jazz scene. The drummers especially are wild and electric. It's not very expensive considering such good food is thrown in. New York jazz clubs are quite expensive, by contrast.

NO is famous for fish and oysters.

Mancuso's aunt says that as a child, she worked prying oysters open for her mother. Mancuso's aunt goes to the bowling alley with Ignatius's mother. She match-makes for Ignatius's mother.

Devika

She read the part where Ignatius seeks to escape New Orleans as Myrna arrives from New York and he decides to flee thither where Fortuna beckons. Devika read 10 or 15 pages of the novel a day, but started well in advance, and finished in July. When she reached the part where Ignatius was finally running away, she gasped in relief, “Thank God he's getting away from this place.”

It's good riddance as he realises that his mother is going to send him to a charity hospital, a kind of asylum. He wants to get out of the house and he's trying to figure out how to do it when Myrna Minkoff turns up, just in time.

When Myrna and Ignatius are driving away, he sees the ambulance coming also to pick him up. Devika confessed she had to skip portions of the novel to get through it.

But our reading passages got the essence of the story very well. Thank you to all the readers for selecting the featured passages.

The next session of Poetry was decided as 23rd of October. There are three readers’ birthdays coming up in October, soon after Joe and KumKum return from the USA. There will be a party in Devika’s house and everyone will bring a dish. Devika will get the biryani ready. And of course there will be enough vegetarian dishes.

The Readings

Geetha Ch 3 Ignatius and Mrs Reilly have a conversation about Mancuso, the cop victimised by his boss

Ignatius staggered up the brick path to the house, climbed the steps painfully, and rang the bell. One stalk of the dead banana tree had expired and collapsed stiffly onto the hood of the Plymouth.

"Ignatius, baby," Mrs. Reilly cried when she opened the door. "What's wrong? You look like you dying."

"My valve closed on the streetcar."

"Lord, come in quick out the cold."

Ignatius shuffled miserably back to the kitchen and fell into a chair.

"The personnel manager at that insurance company treated me very insultingly."

"You didn't get the job?"

"Of course I didn't get the job."

"What happened?"

"I would rather not discuss it."

"Did you go to the other places?"

"Obviously not. Do I appear to be in a condition that would attract prospective employers? I had the good judgment to come home as soon as possible."

"Don't feel blue, precious."

«Blue'? I am afraid that I never feel blue."

"Now don't be nasty. You'll get a nice job. You only been on the streets a few days," his mother said and looked at him. "Ignatius, was you wearing that cap when you spoke to the insurance man?"

"Of course I was. That office was improperly heated. I don't know how the employees of that company manage to stay alive exposing themselves to that chill day after day. And then there are those florescent tubes baking their brains out and blinding them. I did not like the office at all. I tried to explain the inadequacies of the place to the personnel manager, but he seemed rather uninterested. He was ultimately very hostile." Ignatius let out a monstrous belch. "However, I told you that it would be like this. I am an anachronism. People realize this and resent it."

"Lord, babe, you gotta look up."

"Look up?" Ignatius repeated savagely. "Who has been sowing that unnatural garbage into your mind?"

"Mr. Mancuso."

"Oh, my God! I should have known. Is he an example of looking up'?"

"You oughta hear the whole story of that poor man's life. You oughta hear what this sergeant at the precinct's trying.."

"Stop!" Ignatius covered one ear and beat a fist on the table. "I will not listen to another word about that man. Throughout the centuries it has been the Mancusos of the world who have caused wars and spread diseases. Suddenly the spirit of that evil man is haunting this house. He has become your Svengali!"

"Ignatius, get a holt of yourself."

"I refuse to look up.' Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery."

"I ain't miserable."

"You are."

"No, I ain't."

"Yes, you are."

"Ignatius, I ain't miserable. If I was, I'd tell you."

"If I had demolished private property while intoxicated and had thereby thrown my child to the wolves, I would be beating my breast and wailing. I would kneel in penance until my knees bled. By the way, what penance has the priest given you for your sin?"

"Three Hail Mary's and a Our Father."

"Is that all?" Ignatius screamed. "Did you tell him what you did, that you halted a critical work of great brilliance?"

"I went to confession, Ignatius. I told Father everything. He says, 'It don't sound like your fault, honey. It sounds to me like you just took a little skid on a wet street.' So I told him about you. I says 'My boy says I'm the one stopping him from writing in his copybooks. He's been writing on this story for almost five years.' And Father says, 'Yeah?

Well, don't sound too important to me. You tell him to get out the house and go to work.""

"No wonder I cannot support the Church," Ignatius bellowed. "You should have been lashed right there in the confessional." (640 words)

Saras Ch 4 Ignatius is propelled on a low-wheeled stool for rapid access to files at Levy Pants company, but falls flat and can’t get up

"In addition, my valve has been misbehaving and has prevented me from bending over to reach the lower drawers."

"I have just the thing for that," Mr. Gonzalez said and went into the little office storeroom to get, Ignatius imagined, some type of medicine. But he returned with one of the smallest metal stools that Ignatius had ever seen. "Here. The person who used to work on the files used to wheel back and forth on this along the lower drawers. Try it."

"I don't believe that my particular body structure is easily adaptable to that type of device," Ignatius observed, a gimlet eye fixed upon the rusting stool. Ignatius had always had a poor sense of balance, and ever since his obese childhood, he had suffered a tendency to fall, trip, and stumble. Until he was five years old and had finally managed to walk in an almost normal manner, he had been a mass of bruises and hickeys. "However, for the sake of Levy Pants, I shall try."

Ignatius squatted lower and lower until his great buttocks touched the stool, his knees reaching almost to his shoulders. When he was at last nestled upon his perch, he looked like an eggplant balanced atop a thumb tack.

"This will never do. I feel quite uncomfortable."

"Give it a try," Mr. Gonzalez said brightly.

Propelling himself with his feet, Ignatius traveled anxiously along the side of the files until one of the miniature wheels lodged in a crack. The stool tipped slightly and then turned over, dumping Ignatius heavily to the floor.

"Oh, my God!" he bellowed. "I think I've broken my back."

"Here," Mr. Gonzalez cried in his terrorized tenor. "T'll help you up."

"No! You must never move a person with a broken back unless you have a stretcher. I won't be paralyzed through your incompetence."

"Please try to get up, Mr. Reilly." Mr. Gonzalez looked at the mound at his feet. His heart sank. "TIl help you. I don't think you're badly injured."

"Let me alone," Ignatius screamed. "You fool. I refuse to spend the remainder of my life in a wheel chair."

Mr. Gonzalez felt his feet turn cold and numb.

The thud of Ignatius' fall had attracted Miss Trixie from the ladies' room; she came

around the files and tripped on the mountain of supine flesh.

"Oh, dear," she said feebly. "Is Gloria dying, Gomez?"

"No," Mr. Gonzalez said sharply.

"Well, I'm certainly glad of that," Miss Trixie said, stepping onto one of Ignatius' outstretched hands. (421 words)

Shoba Ch 4 (following on Saras’ passage) Ignatius from his supine position instructs Gonzalez and Miss Trixie how to get him upright – meanwhile the owner Gus Levy walks in.

"Good grief!" Ignatius thundered and sprang into a sitting position. "The bones in my hand are crushed. I'II never be able to use it again."

"Miss Trixie is very light," the office manager told Ignatius. "I don't think she could have

hurt you much."

"Has she ever stepped on you, you idiot? How would you know?"

Ignatius sat at the feet of his co-workers and studied his hand.

"I suspect that I won't be able to use this hand again today. I had better go home immediately and bathe it."

"But the filing has to be done. Look how behind you are already."

"Are you talking about filing at a time like this? I am prepared to contact my attorneys and have them sue you for making me get on that obscene stool."

"We'll help you up, Gloria." Miss Trixie assumed what was apparently a hoisting position. She spread her sneakers far apart, toes pointing outward, and squatted like a Balinese dancer.

"Get up," Mr. Gonzalez snapped at her. "You're going to fall over."

"No," she answered through tight, withered lips. "I'm going to help Gloria. Get down on that side, Gomez. We'll just grab Gloria by the elbows."

Ignatius watched passively while Mr. Gonzalez squatted on his other side.

"You are distributing your weight incorrectly," he told them didactically. "If you are going to attempt to raise me, that position offers you no leverage. I suspect that the three of us will be injured. I suggest that you try a standing position. In that way you can easily bend over and hoist me."

"Don't be nervous, Gloria," Miss Trixie said, rocking back and forth on her haunches.

Then she fell forward onto Ignatius, throwing him on his back once again. The edge of her celluloid visor hit him in the throat.

"Oof," gurgled from somewhere in the depths of Ignatius' throat. "Braah."

"Gloria!" Miss Trixie wheezed. She looked into the full face directly beneath hers.

"Gomez, call a doctor."

"Miss Trixie, get off Mr. Reilly," the office manager hissed from where he squatted beside his two underlings.

"Braah."

"What are you people doing down there on the floor?" a man asked from the door. Mr.

Gonzalez' chipper face hardened into a mask of horror, and he squeaked, "Good morning, Mr. Levy. We're so glad to see you."

"I just came in to see if I have any personal mail. I'm driving back to the coast right away. What's this big sign over here for? Somebody's going to get his eye knocked out on that thing."

"Is that Mr. Levy?" Ignatius called from the floor. He could not see the man over the row of filing cabinets. "Braah. I have been wanting to meet him."

Shedding Miss Trixie, who slumped to the floor, Ignatius struggled to his feet and saw a sportily dressed middle-aged man holding the handle of the office door so that he could flee as rapidly as he had entered. (493 words)

Joe Ch 4 A study of a nagging housewife who is disappointed in her husband 

"You've thrown your father's business down the drain. That's the tragedy of your life."

"Christ, who wants that old factory? Nobody's buying the kind of pants they make anymore. That's all my father's fault. When pleats came in, in the thirties, he wouldn't change over from plain-front trousers. He was the Henry Ford of the garment industry.

Then when the plain front came back in the fifties, he started making trousers with pleats.

Now you should see what Gonzalez calls 'the new summer line.’ They look like those balloon pants the clowns wear in circuses. And the fabric. I wouldn't use it for a dishrag myself."

"When we were married, I idolized you, Gus. I thought you had drive. You could have made Levy Pants really big. Maybe even an office in New York. It was handed all to you and you threw it away."

"Oh, stop all that crap. You're comfortable."

"Your father had character. I respected him."

"My father was a very mean and cheap man, a little tyrant. I had some interest in that company when I was young. I had plenty interest. Well, he destroyed all that with his tyranny. So far as I'm concerned, Levy Pants is his company. Let it go down the drain. He blocked every good idea I had for that firm just to prove that he was the father and I was the son. If I said, 'Pleats,' he said, 'No pleats! Never!' If I said, 'Let's try some of the new synthetics, he said, 'Synthetics over my dead body."

"He started peddling pants in a wagon. Look what he built that into. With your start you

could have made Levy Pants nationwide."

"The nation is lucky, believe me. I spent my childhood in those pants. Anyway, I'm tired of listening to you talk. Period."

"Good. Let's keep quiet. Look, Como's lips are turning pink."

"You've never been a father figure to Susan and Sandra."

"The last time Sandra was home, she opened her purse to get cigarettes and a pack of rubbers falls on the floor right at my feet."

"That's what I'm trying to say to you. You never gave your daughters an image. No wonder they're so mixed up. I tried with them."

"Listen, let's not discuss Susan and Sandra. They're away at college. We're lucky we don't know what's going on. When they get tired, they'll marry some poor guy and everything will be all right."

"Then what kind of a grandfather are you going to be?"

"I don't know. Let me alone. Go get on your exercising board, get in the whirlpool bath. I'm enjoying this show."

"How can you enjoy it when the faces are all discolored."

"Let's not start that again."

"Are we going to Miami next month?"

"Maybe. Maybe we could settle there."

"And give up everything we have?"

"Give up what? They can fit your exercising board in a moving van."

"But the company."

"The company has made all the money it's ever going to make. Now is the time to sell."

"It's a good thing your father's dead. He should have lived to see this." Mrs. Levy gave the shower shoe a tragic glance. "Now I guess you'll spend all your time at the World Series or the Derby or Daytona. It's a real tragedy, Gus. A real tragedy."

"Don't try to make a big Arthur Miller play out of Levy Pants." (571 words)

KumKum Ch 6 Ignatius foments rebellion among the workers at Levy Pants

"Friends!" Ignatius said grandly and lifted the arm that was not holding the sheet. "At last the day is ours. I hope that you have all remembered to bring your engines of war." From the group around the cutting table there issued neither confirmation nor denial. "I mean the sticks and chains and clubs and so forth." Giggling in chorus, the workers waved some fence posts, broomsticks, bicycle chains, and bricks. "My God! You have really assembled a rather formidable and diffuse armory. The violence of our attack may surpass my expectations. However, the more definitive the blow, the more definitive the results.

My cursory inspection of your arms, therefore, confirms my faith in the ultimate success of our crusade today. In our wake, we must leave a sacked and pillaged Levy Pants, we must fight fire with fire."

"What he say?" one worker asked another.

"We shall storm the office very shortly, thereby surprising the foe when his senses are still subject to the psychic mists of early morning."

"Hey, Mr. R., pardon me," a man called out from the crowd. "Somebody tell me you in trouble with a po-lice. Is that right?"

A wave of anxiety and uneasiness broke over the workers.

"What?" Ignatius screamed. "Where did you hear such slander. That is totally false.

Some white supremacist, some upstate red-neck, perhaps even Gonzalez himself no doubt began that vile rumor. How dare you, sir. All of you must realize that our cause has many enemies."

While the workers were applauding him soundly, Ignatius wondered how that worker had learned of the mongoloid Mancuso's attempted arrest. Perhaps he had been standing in the crowd before the department store. That patrolman was the fly in everyone's ointment. However, the moment seemed to have been saved.

"Now this we will carry with us in the vanguard!" Ignatius shouted over the last sprinkled applause. He dramatically whipped from his pelvis the sheet, flapping it open.

Among the yellow stains the word ForwArD was printed in high block letters in red crayon.

Below this Crusade for Moorish Dignity was written in an intricate blue script.

"I wonder who been sleepin on that old thing," the intense woman with the spiritual bent, who was to be the leader of the choir, said. "Lord!"

Several other prospective rioters expressed the same curiosity in more explicitly physical terminology.

"Quiet now," Ignatius said, stomping one foot thunderously on the table. "Please! Two of the more statuesque women here will carry this banner between them as we march into the office."

"I ain puttin my hand on that," one woman answered.

"Quiet! Everyone!" Ignatius said furiously. "I am beginning to suspect that you people are not actually deserving of this cause. Apparently you are not prepared to make any of the ultimate sacrifices."

"How come we gotta take that old sheet with us?" someone asked. "I thought this suppose to be a demonstration dealin with wages."

"Sheet? What sheet!" Ignatius replied. "I am holding before you the proudest of banners, an identification of our purpose, a visualization of all that we seek." The workers studied the stains more intensely. "If you wish to simply rush into the office like cattle, you will have participated in nothing more than a riot. This banner alone gives form and credence to the agitation. There is a certain geometry involved in these things, a certain ritual which must be observed. Here, you two ladies standing there, take this between you and wave it thus with honor and pride, hands held high, et cetera."

The two women whom Ignatius indicated ambled slowly to the cutting table, gingerly took the banner with their thumbs and index fingers, and held it between them as if it were a leper's shroud.

"That looks even more impressive than I had imagined," Ignatius said. (637 words)

Thomo Ch 7 Ignatius gets hired to vend hot-dogs after he tastes them at an old man’s cooking range.

He stepped into the garage and looked around. In a corner an old man was boiling hot dogs in a large institutional pot whose size dwarfed the gas range upon which it rested.

"Pardon me, sir," Ignatius called. "Do you retail here?" The man's watering eyes turned toward the large visitor.

"What do you want?"

"I would like to buy one of your hot dogs. They smell rather tasty. I was wondering if I

could buy just one."

"Sure."

"May I select my own?" Ignatius asked, peering down over the top of the pot. In the boiling water the frankfurters swished and lashed like artificially colored and magnified paramecia. Ignatius filled his lungs with the pungent, sour aroma. "I shall pretend that I am in a smart restaurant and that this is the lobster pond."

"Here, take this fork," the man said, handing Ignatius a bent and corroded semblance of a spear. "Try to keep your hands out of the water. It's like acid. Look what it's done to the fork."

"My," Ignatius said to the old man after having taken his first bite. "These are rather strong. What are the ingredients in these."

"Rubber, cereal, tripe. Who knows? I wouldn't touch one of them myself."

"They're curiously appealing," Ignatius said, clearing his throat. "I thought that the vibrissae about my nostrils detected something unique while I was outside." Ignatius chewed with a blissful savagery, studying the scar on the man's nose and listening to his whistling.

"Do I hear a strain from Scarlatti?" Ignatius asked finally.

"I thought I was whistling "Turkey in the Straw.'"

"I had hoped that you might be familiar with Scarlatti's work. He was the last of the musicians," Ignatius observed and resumed his furious attack upon the long hot dog.

"With your apparent musical bent, you might apply yourself to something worthwhile." 

…

The old man looked at Ignatius and then at the massive pot, the gas range, and the crumpled carts. He said, "I can hire you right here."

"Thank you very much," Ignatius said condescendingly. "However, I could not work here. This garage is particularly dank, and I'm susceptible to respiratory ailments among a variety of others."

"You wouldn't be working in here, son. I mean as a vendor."

"What?" Ignatius bellowed. "Out in the rain and snow all day long?"

"It don't snow here."

"It has on rare occasions. It probably would again as soon as I trudged out with one of these wagons. I would probably be found in some gutter, icicles dangling from all of my orifices, alley cats pawing over me to draw the warmth from my last breath. No, thank you, sir. I must go. I suspect that I have an appointment of some sort."

Ignatius looked absently at his little watch and saw that it had stopped again.

"Just for a little while," the old man begged. "Try it for a day. How's about it? I need vendors bad."

"A day?" Ignatius repeated disbelievingly. "A day? I can't waste a valuable day. I have places to go and people to see."

"Okay," the old man said firmly. "Then pay me the dollar you owe for them weenies."

"I am afraid that they will all have to be on the house. Or on the garage or whatever it is.

My Miss Marple of a mother discovered a number of theater tickets stubs in my pockets last night and has given me only carfare today."

"T'll call in the police."

"Oh, my God!"

"Pay me! Pay me or I'Il get the law."

The old man picked up the long fork and deftly placed its two rotting tongs at Ignatius' throat. (612 words)

Zakia Ch 7 The old man who owns Paradise Vendors equips Ignatius with a fitting dress before he goes out

"Just don't ever try to rob a hot dog man again."

"You've just made your point. Actually, you have made two of them, literally in my throat and muffler. I hope that you are prepared to compensate for the muffler. There are no more of its kind. It was made in a small factory in England that was destroyed by the Luftwaffe. At the time it was rumored that the Luftwaffe was directed to strike directly at the factory in order to destroy British morale, for the Germans had seen Churchill wrapped in a muffler of this sort in a confiscated newsreel. For all I know, this may be the same one that Churchill was wearing in that particular Movietone. Today their value is somewhere in the thousands. It can also be worn as a shawl. Look."

"Well," the old man said finally, after watching Ignatius employ the muffler as a cummerbund, a sash, a cloak, and a pair of kilts, a sling for a broken arm, and a kerchief, "you ain't gonna do too much damage to Paradise Vendors in one hour."

"If the alternatives are jail or a pierced Adam's apple, I shall happily push one of your carts. Though I can't predict how far T'll go."

"Don't get me wrong, son. I ain't a bad guy, but you can only take so much. I spent ten years trying to make Paradise Vendors a reputable organization, but that ain't easy. People look down on hot dog vendors. They think I operate a business for bums. I got trouble finding decent vendors. Then when I find some nice guy, he goes out and gets himself mugged by hoodlums. How come God had to make it so tough for you?

"We must not question His ways," Ignatius said.

"Maybe not, but I still don't get it."

"The writings of Boethius may give you some insight."

"I read Father Keller and Billy Graham in the paper every single day."

"Oh, my God!" Ignatius spluttered. "No wonder you are so lost."

"Here," the old man said, opening a metal locker near the stove. "Put this on." He took what looked like a white smock out of the locker and handed it to Ignatius.

"What is this?" Ignatius asked happily. "It looks like an academic gown."

Ignatius slipped it over his head. On top of his overcoat, the smock made him look like a dinosaur egg about

to hatch.

"Tie it at the waist with the belt."

"Of course not. These things are supposed to freely flow about the human form, although this one seems to provide little leeway. Are you sure that you don't have one in a larger size?

"Upon close scrutiny, I notice that this gown is rather yellow about the cuffs. I hope that these stains about the chest are ketchup rather than blood. The last wearer of this might have been stabbed by hoodlums."

"Here, put on this cap." The man gave Ignatius a little rectangle of white paper.

"I am certainly not wearing a paper cap. The one that I have is perfectly good and far more healthful."

"You can't wear a hunting cap. This is the Paradise vendor's uniform."

"I will not wear that paper cap! I am not going to die of pneumonia while playing this little game for you.

Plunge the fork into my vital organs, if you wish. I will not wear that cap. Death before dishonor and disease." (576 words)

Pamela Ch 8 Patrolman Mancuso loses his copy of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy when he tries to arrest George

Patrolman Mancuso looked at the tiles on the floor. They were out of focus. He felt panic. Then he stared at them more closely and saw that the haze was only the moisture that formed a gray film over almost every surface in the rest room. He looked again at The Consolation of Philosophy, which was opened on his lap, and turned a limp, damp page.

The book was making him more depressed. The guy who wrote it was going to be tortured by the king. The preface had said so. Now all this time the guy was writing this thing, he was going to end up with something driven down into his head. Patrolman Mancuso felt sorry for the guy and felt obliged to read what he had written. So far he had only covered only about twenty pages and was beginning to wonder whether this Boethius was something of a gambler. He was always talking about fate and odds and the wheel of fortune. Anyway, it wasn't the kind of book that exactly made you look up to the brighter side.

After a few sentences Patrolman Mancuso's mind began to wander. He looked out through the crack in the door of the booth, which he always left open an inch or two so that he could see who was using the urinals, the lavatories, and the paper-towel box. There at the lavatories was the same boy that Patrolman Mancuso had been seeing every day, it seemed. He watched the delicate boots moving back and forth from the lavatory to the paper-towel dispenser. The boy leaned against a lavatory and began drawing on the back of his hands with a ballpoint pen. There might be something in this, Patrolman Mancuso thought.

He opened the booth and went up to the boy. Coughing, he tried to say pleasantly,

"What's that you're writing on your hand, pal?"

George looked at the monocle and the beard at his elbow and said, "Get the hell away from me before I kick your nuts in."

"Cawd the police," Patrolman Mancuso taunted.

"No," George answered. "Just get away. I ain't making trouble."

"You afred udda police?"

George wondered who this nut was. He was as bad as that hot dog vendor.

"Look, kookie, move it. I don't want no trouble with the cops."

"You dote?" Patrolman Mancuso asked happily.

"No, and neither does a screwball like you," George said, looking at the watering eye behind the monocle and the moistness at the mouth of the beard.

"You udder arrest," Patrolman Mancuso coughed.

"What? Boy, are you out of it."

"Patrodeman Madcuso. Uddercover." A badge flashed in front of George's pimples.

"Cubb alogg wid me."

"What the hell are you arresting me for? I'm just standing here," George protested nervously. "I ain't done nothing. What is this?"

"You udder suspiciudd."

"Suspicion of what?" George asked in panic.

"Aha!" Patrolman Mancuso slobbered. "You rilly afred."

He reached out to grab George by the arm and handcuff him, but George snatched The Consolation of Philosophy from under Patrolman Mancuso's arm and slammed it into the side of his head. Ignatius had bought a large, elegant, limited edition of the English translation, and all fifteen dollars of its price hit Patrolman Mancuso in the head with the force of a dictionary. Patrolman Mancuso bent over to pick up the monocle, which had fallen from his eye. When he straightened up again, he saw the boy scraping rapidly out of the door of the rest room with the book in his hand. He wanted to run after him, but his head was throbbing too badly. He returned to his booth to rest and grew even more depressed. What could he tell Mrs. Reilly about the book?

Priya Ch 12 Ignatius has a run-in with a cockatoo in a night club in New Orleans 

Lana Lee appeared on the stage in what looked like gold lamé overalls.

"Oh, my God!" Ignatius spluttered. The doped Negro had tricked him. He wanted to bolt from the club, but realized that it would be wiser to wait until the woman had finished and left the stage. In a moment, he was crouched down against the side of the stage. Over his head, the Nazi proprietress was saying, "Welcome, ladies and genitals." It was so dreadful a beginning that Ignatius almost knocked over the table.

"You are pay me now," the woman was demanding, sticking her head under the table to find the face of her customer.

"Shut up, you slut," Ignatius hissed.

The band stumbled into a four-count version of Sophisticated Lady. The Nazi woman was screaming, "And now that pure Virgin-ny Belle, Miss Harlett O'Hara." An old man at one of the tables clapped feebly, and Ignatius peered over the rim of the stage and saw that the proprietress was gone. In her place stood a stand decorated with rings. What was Miss O'Hara up to?

Then Darlene swept onstage in a ball gown that trailed yards of nylon net. On her head was a monstrous picture hat and on her arm a monstrous bird. Someone else clapped.

"Mira, you are pay me now or else, cabron."

"There sure was plenty balls at that ball, but I still got my honor," Darlene said carefully to the bird.

"Oh, my God!" Ignatius bellowed, unable to remain silent any longer. "Is this cretin

Harlett O'Hara?"

The cockatoo noticed him before Darlene did, for its beads of eyes had been focusing on Ignatius' hoop of a novelty earring ever since it had come onstage. When Ignatius bellowed, it flapped from Darlene's arm to the stage and squawking, hopping, dashed for Ignatius' head.

"Hey," Darlene cried. "It's the crazyman."

As Ignatius was about to dash from the club, the bird hopped from the stage to his shoulder. It sank its claws into his smock and snagged his earring with its beak.

"Good heavens!" Ignatius leaped up and beat at the bird with his itching paws. What avian menace had depraved Fortuna spun his way? The champagne bottles and the glasses shattered on the floor as he sprang and began staggering to the door.

"Come back here with my cockatoo," Darlene cried.

Lana Lee was on the stage now, screaming. The band had stopped. The few old male patrons moved out of the way of Ignatius, who was floundering around among the little tables making moose calls and beating at the mass of rose feathers welded to his ear and shoulder.

"How in the hell did that character get in here?" Lana Lee asked the confused septuagenarians in the audience. "Where's Jones? Somebody get me that Jones."

"Come here, you big crazyman," Darlene hollered. "On opening night. Why you hadda come here on opening night?"

"Good grief," Ignatius gasped, feeling for the door. In his wake he had left a trail of overturned tables. "How dare you fiends inflict a rabid bird upon your unsuspecting customers? You may expect to be sued in the morning."

"Come! You are owe twenty-four dollar to me. You are pay right now"

Ignatius knocked over another table as he and the cockatoo lurched forward. Then he felt the earring loosening, and the cockatoo, the earring firmly in its beak, fell from his shoulder. Terrorized, Ignatius bounced out of the door just ahead of the Latin woman, who was waving the check with great determination. (589 words)

Devika Ch 14 Ignatius seeks to escape New Orleans as Myrna arrives from New York and he decides to flee thither where Fortuna beckons 

Escape. Escape.

Ignatius looked in his wallet. The thirty dollars was gone, apparently confiscated by his mother at the hospital. He looked at the clock. It was almost eight o'clock. Between napping and assaulting the glove, the afternoon and evening passed rather quickly.

Ignatius searched his room, flinging Big Chief tablets around, mashing them underfoot, dragging them from beneath his bed. He came up with some scattered coins and went to work on the desk, where he found a few more. The total was sixty cents, a sum that limited and blocked escape routes. He could at least find a safe haven for the rest of the evening: the Prytania. After the theater had closed, he could pass along Constantinople Street to see whether his mother had come home.

There was a slipshod frenzy of dressing. The red flannel nightshirt sailed up and hung on the chandelier. He jammed his toes into the desert boots and leaped as well as he could into the tweed trousers, which he could hardly button at the waist. Shirt, cap, overcoat, Ignatius put them on blindly and ran into the hall, careening against the narrow walls. He was just reaching for the front door when three loud knocks cracked against the shutters.

Mr. Levy returned? His valve sent out a distress signal that established communication with his hands. He scratched the bumps on his paws and peered through the shutters, expecting to see several hirsute brutes from the hospital.

There on the porch stood Myrna in a shapeless olive drab corduroy car coat. Her black hair was braided into a pigtail that twisted under one ear and fell on her breast. A guitar was slung over her shoulders.

Ignatius was about to burst through the shutters, splintering slats and latches, and wrap that one hemplike pigtail around her throat until she turned blue. But reason won. He was not looking at Myrna; he was looking at an escape route. Fortuna had relented. She was not depraved enough to end this vicious cycle by throttling him in a straitjacket, by sealing him up in a cement block tomb lighted by florescent tubes. Fortuna wished to make amends. Somehow she had summoned and flushed Myrna minx from a subway tube, from some picket line, from the pungent bed of some Eurasian existentialist, from the hands of some epileptic Negro Buddhist, from the verbose midst of a group therapy session.

"Ignatius, are you in that dump?" Myrna demanded in her flat, direct, slightly hostile voice. She beat on the shutters again, squinting through her black-rimmed glasses. Myrna was not astigmatic; the lenses were clear glass; she wore the glasses to prove her dedication and intensity of purpose. Her dangling earring reflected the rays of the streetlight like tinkling glass Chinese ornaments. "Listen, I can tell there's somebody in there. I heard you stomping around in that hall. Open up these crummy shutters."

"Yes, yes, I'm here," Ignatius cried. He tore at the shutters and pushed them open.

"Thank Fortuna you've come."

"Jesus. You look terrible. Like you're having a nervous breakdown or something. Why the bandage? Ignatius, what's the matter? Look how much weight you've gained. I've just been reading these pitiful signs out here on the porch. Boy, have you had it."

"I've gone through hell," Ignatius slobbered, pulling Myrna into the hall by the sleeve of her coat. "Why did you step out of my life, you minx? Your new hair-do is fascinating and cosmopolitan." He snatched at her pigtail and pressed it to his wet moustache, kissing it vigorously. "The scent of soot and carbon in your hair excites me with suggestions of glamorous Gotham. We must leave immediately. I must go flower in Manhattan." (621 words)