Best of John Kennedy Toole Scholarship #10

As I said in June 2013, I would like to offer an annotated bibliography, one citation at a time, of the best of the scholarship on Toole's Confederacy that is findable via MLA Bibliography (as opposed to obscure). Here is item number ten:

Citation: Reilly, Edward C. "Batman and Ignatius J. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces." Notes on Contemporary Literature 12, no. 1 (1982): 10-11.

Annotation: This brief article discusses the references to Batman in Confederacy. Reilly shows that Ignatius sees himself as a crusader, just like Batman. And just as Batman appears from nowhere, Ignatius, the green capped mother, really does appear when he is needed and saves people from their bad situations. Reilly analyzes the Batman references more accurately than Gardner (Comedy of Redemption in Three Southern Writers (1995) 117). He does not discuss the possibility that the Batman / Robin relationship is gay and the possible double entendre of Batman's "rigid" morals. Reilly concludes: “As do Salinger, Kesey, Heller, and Bellow, Toole believes that man must actively contend with the absurdities and injustices of life instead of isolating himself from them” (10). This conclusion is true for the other characters in the novel, but it ignores the fact that Ignatius in the end does not face the absurdities and injustices of life. His first impulse upon seeing Myrna is to strangle her. He is a force of disorder and only ends his isolation in order to escape. A good article, despite the problematic conclusion.