The View of the Middle East From Mar-a-Lago

The novel centers on two main characters: Lena Grove, a pregnant white woman searching for the father of her child, and Joe Christmas, a man of mixed ethnicity struggling with his identity. The story is set in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County and explores the Southern gothic and modernist literary genres. It delves into themes of alienation, Christian allegory, and the persistent obsession with blood and race in the South. The narrative is characterized by its non-linear structure, using flashbacks and a fluid transition between past and present to highlight the burden of history on the present and the splintering of personal identity.

A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel that tells the story of Ignatius J. Reilly, an overweight, unemployed, and intellectually arrogant man living with his mother in New Orleans. The novel is a rich satire that critiques modern society through Ignatius's interactions with a diverse cast of characters, including his mother Irene, his girlfriend Myrna Minkoff, and various eccentric figures from New Orleans. Written in the early 1960s while Toole was in the army, the book was published posthumously in 1980 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981. It is celebrated for its witty and absurd portrayal of life in New Orleans and its memorable protagonist, Ignatius J. Reilly.