Ignatius J. Reilly and Binx Bolling: Redefining reality to suit

We've been reading both John Kennedy Toole's A Confedacy of Dunces and Walker Percy's The Moviegoer in bits and spurts over the past week. It's a strange way to read a novel, trying to balance Toole and Percy's examinations of New Orleans' cast of characters with our own observations, and generally speaking, I've been finding the real people more compelling than the typeset ones. That said, Ignatius and Binx are interesting men, to be sure. (Ignatius in particular is loopier than a crochet convention.)

Earlier this week, Roddey wrote about differentiating between New-Orleans-that-is from New-Orleans-in-that-movie-I-saw-once. Ignatius and Binx have a problem with this.

Ignatius has immersed himself in medieval history and sociology, and chooses to live his life by those rules - which has varying success, as the great philosophers of the middle ages had very little to say on the subject of the food service industry. Ignatius watches television and film in order to sharpen his perceived lines between "right" (i.e., appropriate under divine kingship, pre-Vatican Two) and "wrong" (i.e., Gidget and the beach bunnies), and then lives his life accordingly. What Ignatius, with his "immense intellect," sees as real (relevant, admirable) does not align with the consensus from everyone else in the city.

Binx, on the other hand, uses the gentle golden filter of Hollywood to establish his idea of the real. William Holden, to take the early, gorgeously written example, carries a cloak of "resplendent reality" with him, which makes the existence of the other characters pale in comparison. Binx has a better grasp on realistic self-appraisal than Ignatius, or at least a better grasp of hygiene; both men narrate their lives and explain how their vision/interpretation is superior to everyone else's, but Binx' perception of reality makes it easier for him to "pass" in society.

The similarity between the books lies in the following question: is reality personal or consensual? To quote Binx, "upon my honor, I do not know the answer." As a scientist, I'm trained (generally) to understand reality as fixed, concrete, and universally explicable - no two people, or two equations, can possibly have a different explanation. This is patently untrue, but it's probably a necessary lie, at least as long as we want to keep teaching Physics 101.

If reality is consensual - as firmly believed by my high school English teacher - then shared experiences are what define the real. The rules are what we can agree on, and the weight of history and legislation lie behind them.

Personal realities give us the most freedom, however, and the most control. Terri Apter writes,
"One of the main tasks of adolescence is to achieve an identity--not necessarily a knowledge of who we are, but a clarification of the range of what we might become, a set of self-references by which we can make sense of our responses, and justify our decisions and goals."
Identity-building - or reality-building - is something that we have to do for ourselves. If our realities come to match up with society and the norm, does that make us successful adults? (And if so, will anyone bother to write novels about us, or are we too boring?) If the two fail to align, to we become characters out-of-step, like Ignatius and Binx?

Again, I do not know the answer. Ask me again when I'm all grown-up and starring in novels.


(As for which character New Orleans would be, I'll argue for Santa, from Condeferacy, second adolescence and all. Also because the idea of NOLA personified gleefully and unapologetically drinking, dancing, bowling, abusing affectionate diminutives, cooking, and bitching her way through life seems to fit.)