I stumbled onto this conversation while seeking to understand the exercise board of Mrs. Levy. It has been somewhat surprising to read the comments of so many who did not enjoy this book.
Full disclosure, I listened to this book on Audible and have not read it. I do not know if I would have enjoyed it as enthusiastically without the brilliant vocal performance of Barrett Whitener. If you read this book in your youth and didn’t like it, I highly encourage you to try the audiobook and let it wash over you.
Some of the comments I’ve read suggest readers have approached this book with a great many expectations and found themselves disappointed. Had I read this book before age 30, I might not have appreciated it. The second chapter hooked me, and as the forward to the book alerted me to the demise of the author, I stopped to research him before resuming.
I see Toole in Ignatius but perhaps not so directly as others here have claimed. The similarity is much more subtle. In Ignatius, you have a highly intelligent individual who is frustrated by his own body, his moral predilections, his lack of sexual connection while still having a sexual drive, and his stifling relationship with his mother all seem to point to Toole’s own personal frustrations in life.
Ignatius reeks of Freudian concepts as if Toole, both a dynamic and constrained personality, was observing his own repressed urges and exploding them through Ignatius in a manner he would never act or behave himself in real life. To model the more outsized personality of Ignatius, he drew on other people, for instance, a professor colleague, as mentioned by another forum member. In real life, the hotdog vendor was a tamale cart that belongs to a friend and that Toole sometimes operated. The sights, sounds, and characters are all drawn from his keen observation of New Orleans.
I found all the characters sympathetic and stoked my empathy on their underlying motivations. It is accurate, as another commenter stated, Ignatius drives the action throughout the story, but at its core, his over the top activities serve to free Ignatius from a stagnate life. He and his mother orbit one another, and neither can move forward until they break the history that ties them together. In his mother, an astute reader can observe all the attributes that Ignatius exudes. These attributes have been twisted and exploded by Ignatius’ prodigious intellect. It is an intellect his mother has perpetually praised but cannot share or understand. She has surpassed her ability to nurture him and knows it; feeling she’s failed as a mother, she turns to drink but cannot release her role as mother to a child and thus cannot let her now-adult son go. Nor can Ignatius free himself from her bosom as the world is scary, and mom nurses him so well.
Ignatius is mired in his “world view” in a way that prevents him from fully engaging or appreciating the world; he sees himself as born in the wrong time when he would have it just as hard at any time. He resents his mother who directed and dictated his young life, and supported him through college, but could not ultimately provide the emotional support he needed to balance out an intellect that had turned into a defense mechanism. Absent a father figure, Ignitus sinks into the state we find him, and this seems to have begun (as we learn toward the end) with the loss of his dog, culminating in his conflict with the priest and his mother.
It is worthy of note that highly anxious individuals frequently have digestive issues, and I am interested to know if Toole observed this from someone else or had digestive problems of his own. It also seems to me that Toole was quite possibly gay and didn’t know it or had so repressed the desire he was unaware of an attraction to men, merely of his lack of genuine interest in women.
Toole was an experienced and practiced writer. Highly educated, he wrote clearly and with great thought and depth. I have known many depressed people, some of them who have taken their own lives. I find it hard to believe the rejection of his book was the tipping point. Instead, I suspect the book culminated in such an intimate portrait of his skills that, in the absence of a new project, his natural depression filled the space the book occupied. That’s a bit of an oversimplification that bears more explanation another time.
His Pulitzer is a strange catch 22; had he not died and managed to get published, he likely would not have won. The book is the kind of book that brings a young writer to notice; thereafter, we watch to see if their brilliance grows. In light of his suicide, we drawn in to examine the work closely and then see a depth that would have otherwise been missed by a majority of readers.
Toole got the same message from two different advisors; they wanted more. Reports suggest they were looking for an arch that culminated in a big ah-ha moment, much as many of the commentators here seem to require. I think those editors were wrong, perhaps not from a monetary perspective, but absolutely from a literary standpoint: they failed Toole. It is not the first, nor will it be the last time educated readers fail.
Toole’s mother had him acting and entertaining at a young age; she seems every bit the stage mom. Toole then gave up acting for his academic pursuits. He was well known and liked both by students and friends for his natural mimicry. He displayed his wit and talents both at parties and for his students during his teaching career. I suspect there was a conflict within him between the out front stage performer part of himself and the academic who quickly excelled. Talents and academic achievement can become a mask when internal fear, anxiety, and shame prevents us from exposing and sharing our vulnerabilities with others. It is a fundamental problem of Ignatius he is internally constrained and acts out as a means to distract from his failures and the terror of being exposed. In the end, Ignatius flees for his life to NY, a city where people must interact with the world around them. In NY, they either find their footing or are chewed up and spit out. Ignatius leaves a city heaped in tradition and culture for a town that is ever-changing, the place he is most afraid to be.