What is Ignatius Reilly?
1.
The central character of John Kennedy Toole's pulitzer prize winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces.
In his 30s, Ignatius still lives with his innocent, old, alcoholic of a mother. Despite his immense education and former profession as a university professor, our protagonist had no patience for his students' inferior minds.
He could be described as an oafish genius prone to fantastic levels of delusion. His epic viewpoint on even the most trivial of things makes it difficult to sustain a steady job. Ignatius has a particular interest in his disdain for pop culture, and modernity in general. In fact, Reilly goes to such great lengths to revel in this disdain that he will, for example, attend the movie theater just to fiercely ridicule the lesser films.
Easily rivals Patrick Bateman as the most unintentionally humorous fictional character of all time.
Bruce Lee: Who is more unintentionally funny, the infamous Patrick Bateman or the immortal Ignatius Reilly?
Jose Contreras: They're both gut wrenchingly hilarious. Ignatius is loveable despite his ridiculousness, Bateman is despicable but awesome from a birds eye view. Both are pretty far removed from reality in one way or another, but Ignatius is a far more interesting character though
American Psycho 's satire is more pointed and effective.
Bruce Lee: Would you shut the fuck up?
See
