Is Artie Lange the Incarnation of Ignatius Reilly?

Will the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, "Confederacy of Dunces" finally be made into a movie 40 years after it was written?

The answer should be yes.

ARTIE LANGE IS IGNATIUS REILLY!

There can no longer be any reason for the drug addled Hollywood directors to delay bringing the funniest character in literary history (my opinion)to the Silver Screen.

Read this description of Ignatius from Walker Percey's foreward to the original publication of the classic novel:

"Here at any rate is Ignatius Reilly, without progenitor in any literature I know of -- slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one -- who is in violent revolt against the entire modern age, lying in his flannel nightshirt, in a back bedroom on Constantinople Street in New Orleans, who between gigantic seizures of flatulence and eructations is filling dozens of Big Chief tablets with invective..................

An intellectual, ideologue, deadbeat, goof-off, glutton, who should repel the reader with his gargantuan bloats, his thunderous contempt and one-man war against everybody -- Freud, homosexuals, heterosexuals, Protestants, and the assorted excesses of modern times. Imagine an Aquinas gone to pot, transported to New Orleans whence he makes a wild foray through the swamps to LSU at Baton Rouge, where his lumber jacket is stolen in the faculty men's room where he is seated, overcome by mammoth gastrointestinal problems. His pyloric valve periodically closes in response to the lack of a "proper geometry and theology" in the modern world."

I ask you, is this character a clone of the Artie Lange we know and love? Is the author of "Confederacy", John Kennedy Toole who committed suicide in 1961 many years before his epic was published,a distant uncle of Artie?

What a great movie this would be. Lange would be sure to win an Oscar as he would be playing himself; there would be no need for him to act. Hand him the script and make sure he stays with it. Of course, knowing Artie,he will probably be back on heroin before the movie is completed but that would make him even more like Ignatius.

My suggestions for casting the major characters from the novel:

Patrolman Mancuso....................... Jim Carrey (a blockbuster supporting role is just what he needs to revitalize his, dead in the water, career.)

Ignatius Reilly's whacko mother................ Celest Holm, an Oscar winner in the 50's, 92 years old going on 48, still hot, either senile or insane but, still damn funny.

Myrna Minkoff of the Bronx,Reilly's Socialist gril friend..........Marisa Tomei

Jones, the black bum turned janitor, a hilarious observer of the New Orleans scene who gets back at whites for 200 years of oppression with his acidic tongue.

He can ONLY be played by Tracey Morgan.

Your suggestions and opinions are invited and welcomed.

A QUESTION TO MYSELF

Mr. Blogmeister, what is your favorite poem?

My favorite poem is the saddest poem I have ever read. At the same time it is the most anti-war poem. There is nothing more seductive and destructive in the soul of man than war. I read and reread this great poem by Walt Whitman when I forget that fact:

Come Up From the Fields Father
by Walt Whitman


Come up from the fields father, here's a letter from our Pete,
And come to the front door mother, here's a letter from thy
dear son.

Lo, 'tis autumn,
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages with leaves fluttering in the
moderate wind,
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the
trellis'd vines,
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately
buzzing?)

Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain,
and with wondrous clouds,
Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm
prospers well.

Down in the fields all prospers well,
But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter's
call,
And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right
away.

Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps
trembling,
She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap.

Open the envelope quickly,
O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is sign'd,
O a strange hand writes for our dear son, 0 stricken
mother's soul!
All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the
main words only,
Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry
skirmish, taken to hospital,
At present low, but will soon be better.

Ah now the single figure to me,
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and
farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.

Grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter speaks
through her sobs,
The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay'd,)
See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.
Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to
be better, that brave and simple soul,)
While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,
The only son is dead.

But the mother needs to be better,
She with thin form presently drest in black,
By day her meals untouch'd, then at night fitfully sleeping,
often waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep
longing,
O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape
and withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son

Daily Question?

Yes, I will post a question every day and then answer it.

The question will be timely and provocative.

My answer, I hope will be thought provoking and concise.

I am a "Jack of all trades and a Master of none" so readers

might expect surprises.