This picaresque novel about a flatulent, misanthropic and objectively loathsome young man in early 1960s New Orleans would never get published in today’s world of woke groupthink. Consider some of the characters: a radical Jewish princess, a ditzy stripper, flaming “sodomites,” violently angry lesbians, and a wisecracking black vagrant who says “Ooo-wee!” after nearly every sentence—all seen through the eyes of an unemployed WASP who finds no redeeming qualities in anyone or anything apart from a few books that most of the world forgot about decades ago.
Despite this (or partly because of it), the novel is uniquely entertaining, a comedic masterpiece with a hint of underlying sadness because (believe it not) unless you ride the PC fast train you’ll find yourself worrying about what is to become of Ignatius Reilly, the story’s spectacularly troubled hero. Ignatius is a mess, but he believes he can make the world a better place. His energy is boundless, but that alone won’t carry him through—although it will carry the reader through 500 pages of his educated, overly articulate idiocy. In the end, Alexander Pope was right: sometimes a little learning is a dangerous thing. Reviewed on Jan. 6, 2022