John Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces

As I have told you in earlier installments, I was emulating the poet Milton by spending my youth in seclusion, meditation, and study in order to perfect my craft of writing as he did; my mother’s cataclysmic intemperance has thrust me into the world in the most cavalier manner; my system is still in a state of flux. Therefore, I am still in the process of adapting myself to the tension of the working world. As soon as my system becomes used to the office, I shall take the giant step of visiting the factory, the bustling heart of Levy Pants. I have heard more than a little hissing and roaring through the factory door, but my presently somewhat enervated condition precludes a descent into that particular inferno at the moment. Now and then some factory worker straggles into the office to illiterately plead some cause (usually the drunkenness of the foreman, a chronic tosspot). When I am once again whole, I shall visit those factory people; I have deep and abiding convictions concerning social action. I am certain that I can perhaps do something to aid these factory folk. I cannot abide those who would act cowardly in the face of a social injustice. I believe in bold and shattering commitment to the problems of our times.

Social note: I have sought escape in the Prytania on more than one occasion, pulled by the attractions of some technicolored horrors, filmed abortions that were offenses against any criteria of taste and decency, reels and reels of perversion and blasphemy that stunned my disbelieving eyes, that shocked my virginal mind, and sealed my valve.

My mother is currently associating with some undesirables who are attempting to transform her into an athlete of sorts, depraved specimens of mankind who regularly bowl their way to oblivion. At times I find carrying on my blossoming business career rather painful, suffering as I do from these distractions at home.

Health note: My valve did close quite violently this afternoon when Mr. Gonzalez asked me to add a column of figures for him. When he saw the state into which I was thrown by the request, he thoughtfully added the figures himself. I tried not to make a scene, but my valve got the better of me. That office manager could, incidentally, develop into something of a nuisance.

Until later,

Darryl, Your Working Boy

Ignatius read what he had just written with pleasure. The Journal had all sorts of possibilities. It could be a contemporary, vital, real document of a young man’s problems. At last he closed the looseleaf folder and contemplated a reply to Myrna, a slashing, vicious attack upon her being and worldview. It would be better to wait until he had visited the factory and seen what possibilities for social action there were there. Such boldness had to be handled properly; he might be able to do something with the factory workers which would make Myrna look like a reactionary in the field of social action. He had to prove his superiority to the offensive minx.

Picking up his lute, he decided to relax in song for a moment. His massive tongue rolled up over his moustache in preparation and, strumming, he began to sing, “Tarye no longer; toward thyn heritage/ Hast on thy weye, and be of ryght good chere.”

“Shut up!” Miss Annie hollered through her closed shutters.

“How dare you!” Ignatius replied, ripping open his own shutters and looking out into the dark, cold alley. “Open up there. How dare you hide behind those shutters.”

He ran furiously to the kitchen, filled a pot with water, and rushed back to his room. Just as he was about to throw the water on Miss Annie’s still unopened shutters, he heard a car door slam out on the street. Some people were coming down the alley. Ignatius closed his shutters and turned off the light, listening to his mother speaking to someone. Patrolman Mancuso said something as they passed under his window, and a woman’s hoarse voice said, “It looks safe to me, Irene. There ain’t no lights on. He must of gone to the show.”

Ignatius slipped his overcoat on and ran down the hall to the front door as they were opening the kitchen door. He went down the front steps and saw Patrolman Mancuso’s white Rambler parked before the house. Bending over with great effort, Ignatius stuck a finger into the valve of one of the tires until the hissing stopped and the tire’s bottom pancaked across the brick gutter. Then he walked down the alley, which was just wide enough for his bulk, to the rear of the house.

Bright lights were burning in the kitchen, and he could hear his mother’s cheap radio through the closed window. Ignatius climbed the back steps silently and looked in through the greasy glass of the back door. His mother and Patrolman Mancuso were sitting at the table around an almost full fifth of Early Times. Patrolman Mancuso looked more downtrodden than ever, but Mrs. Reilly was tapping one foot on the linoleum and laughing shyly at what she was watching in the center of the room. A stocky woman with kinky gray hair was dancing alone on the linoleum, shaking her pendulous breasts, which were slung in a white bowling blouse. Her bowling shoes pounded the floor purposefully, carrying the swinging breasts and rotating hips back and forth between the table and the stove.

So this was Patrolman Mancuso’s aunt. Only Patrolman Mancuso could have something like that for an aunt, Ignatius snorted to himself.

“Whoo!” Mrs. Reilly screamed gaily. “Santa!”

“Watch this, kids,” the gray-haired woman screamed back like a prizefight referee and began shaking lower and lower until she was almost on the floor.

“Oh, my God!” Ignatius said to the wind.

“You gonna bust a gut, girl,” Mrs. Reilly laughed. “You gonna go through my good floor.”

“Maybe you better stop, Aunt Santa,” Patrolman Mancuso said morosely.

“Hell, I ain’t stopping now. I just got here,” the woman answered, rising rhythmically. “Who says a grammaw can’t dance no more?”

Holding her arms outward, the woman bumped across the linoleum runway.

“Lord!” Mrs. Reilly said and guffawed, tipping the whiskey bottle to her glass. “What if Ignatius comes home and sees this.”

“Fuck Ignatius!”

“Santa!” Mrs. Reilly gasped, shocked but, Ignatius noticed, slightly pleased.

“You people cut it out,” Miss Annie screamed through her shutters.

“Who’s that?” Santa asked Mrs. Reilly.

“Cut it out before I ring up the cops,” Miss Annie’s muffled voice cried.

“Please stop,” Patrolman Mancuso pleaded nervously.

Darlene was pouring water into the half-filled liquor bottles behind the bar.

“Hey, Darlene, listen to this shit,” Lana Lee commanded, folding the newspaper and weighting it down with her ashtray. “‘Frieda Club, Betty Bumper, and Liz Steele, all of 796 St. Peter St., were arrested from El Caballo Lounge, 570 Burgundy St., last night and booked with disturbing the peace and creating a public nuisance. According to arresting officers, the incident started when an unidentified man made a proposal to one of the women. The woman’s two companions struck the man, who fled from the lounge. The Steele woman threw a stool at the bartender, and the other two women menaced customers in the lounge with stools and broken beer bottles. Customers in the lounge said that the man who fled was wearing bowling shoes.’ How’s about that? People like that are ruining the Quarter. Some honest Joe tries to make off with one of those dykes and they try to beat him up. Once upon a time it was nice and straight around here. Now it’s all dykes and fairies. No wonder business stinks. I can’t stand dykes. I can’t!”

“The only people we get in here at night anymore is plainclothesmen,” Darlene said. “How come they don’t get a plainclothesman after women like that?”