My Favourite Book.

The easiest question of all.

I’ve often been asked to recommend a book. Your favourite book, what’s that then? A difficult choice for a prolific reader you may have thought. Not so. The book that draws me back, time and time again, isn’t a ‘classic’ by any means. The author didn’t even live to see its success, committing suicide long before his work was eventually published. What would we have gained if he’s gone on to produce a body of work to rival his early masterpiece? Oh, the book? Why, that cult masterpiece, A Confederacy of Dunces by the late and very much lamented genius, John Kennedy Toole.

The story behind the book is as fascinating as the novel itself. Toole’s suicide in 1969 should have marked the end of any hopes of publication – instead it proved the spur for a remarkable turnaround. Not that this was an overnight transformation. Toole’s mother discovered a dog-eared copy of the manuscript among her son’s effects  and made the publication of her son’s novel a quest to which she devoted all her efforts over succeeding years. It wasn’t an easy task and any unpublished author can relate to the eleven years of struggle that led up to the eventual publication of a magnificent novel in 1980. A year later it won a posthumous Pullitzer Prize.

The characters are central to most successful books and the swaggering, truculent, magnificently appalling Ignatius Reilly dominates the narrative. Inimitable and unique in his warped outlook on life, Ignatius is a tour de force and one can readily imagine the problems that beset any film producer contemplating a leading man. Intriguingly, despite many efforts this most filmic of all stories has not yet hit the big screen. Successive attempts to cast John Belushi, John Candy and Divine as Ignatius were foiled by the sudden deaths of the actors in question giving rise to suspicions that the project was cursed. It will happen, it’s a story that is crying out to be filmed.

As for the book itself, well you need to read it yourselves. It’s a novel set in New Orleans, peopled by a cast of grotesques, that defies rational explanation of what makes it work. If you don’t read this book and howl with laughter, you should consider seeking medical attention.It’s a rampant comedy of errors, a wide ranging exploration of the hidden underbelly of society and it brings the most unforgettable character in modern literature to the reader’s attention. Once you’ve met Ignatius Reilly, your life will never be the same again. Read this book.