It is said that we all have a novel within us, but sometimes literary recognition comes too late. I am an enormous fan of John Kennedy Toole’s ‘Confederacy of Dunces’. Toole was a deeply troubled soul, and his repeated attempts to get his novel published ultimately came to nothing. Tragically, he passed away at the age of thirty-one, having struggled with paranoia and depression for much of his adult life. Toole died in a state of absolute despair, and he believed that he was a total failure. Eleven years later, his novel was published posthumously and to great critical acclaim. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1980. Not much happens in ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’. We follow the fortunes of the scholarly but unemployed Ignatius Reilly as he bumbles his way around the French Quarter of New Orleans. Overweight and still living with his mother, Ignatius grandly laments a world that has lost the medieval values of geometry and theology. His laziness, slovenly ways, and irritable nature are strangely compelling. Ignatius’ stint as a filing clerk is disastrous and compelled by his despairing mother Irene to find work, Ignatius secures employment as a hot dog vendor dressed as a pirate. Consuming most of his inventory whilst pondering the philosophical works of Boethius and others, Ignatius’ inner scholarly disposition is at odds with the dysfunctionality that characterizes his outer life and the contemptuous disdain for the curious characters whom he encounters.
Another writer who met with very little success during his own life is Gerald Basil Edwards (1899-1976). Edwards was born in Guernsey and read English at the University of Bristol though he failed to graduate. He launched himself on the London literary in the 1920s and was considered an intellectually brilliant ‘bright young thing’. He was mentioned alongside such figures as D H Lawrence. The weight of expectation was too much for Edwards to bear and apart from a few articles in the Adelphi Magazine, he produced little of substance. The big projects of which he had previously spoken never materialised and Edwards’ life gradually appeared to disintegrate. He abandoned his wife and children and became an itinerant teacher of drama and a lowly civil servant. Eventually, Edwards became something of a recluse and, towards the end of his life, took up lodgings in a boarding house in Weymouth. It was here that he encountered the art student Edward Chaney who encouraged him to complete his novel, ‘The Book of Ebenezer Le Page’.
‘The Book of Ebenezer Le Page’ was published after five years after Edwards’ death and in the year that followed the publication of ‘The Confederacy of Dunces’. It won high praise from figures such as William Golding, and it is now recognised as a twentieth century literary classic. It is a fictionalised autobiographical account of the life of a Guernsey man who spends his whole life growing tomatoes and fishing. Ebenezer never marries and he leaves Guernsey just once to watch a football match in neighbouring Jersey. Nothing much happens in the novel, but we learn much of life in a small island community. Ebenezer enjoys an extraordinary on-off affair with local woman Liza Queripel but neither can commit to a life together. There is one extraordinary moment of tenderness when his nephew Raymond dies during the German occupation of the island. The taciturn and emotionally undemonstrative Ebenezer falls weeping into his sister’s lap, and this tender image of despair has lived on in my mind throughout adulthood. It is a beautifully lyrical novel, and its themes of friendship, secrets and familial strike are universally relatable.
Ebenezer and Ignatius are unremarkable figures. Both were conceived by authors who died before their creations were projected onto our literary consciences. In their loneliness, insecurities, frustrations and struggles, we cannot help but see a glimpses of our own fragilities.
Last week we celebrated world book day, and I do think people would have looked at me strangely if I had dressed up as Ebenezer Le Page or Ignatius Reilly, but both figures deserve to be better known. Heroes do not always wear capes, and great writers are able to draw out that which is truly heroic in those who flip burgers or grow tomatoes. Both Ebenezer and Ignatius perceive the world with a rare, although admittedly somewhat misanthropic clarity. I think that both Edwards and Toole would have been astonished by their posthumous success. Both Edwards and Toole perceived themselves to be outsiders and yet their ability to understand the human condition was quite extraordinary.
