Confederacy of Dunces and my juvenile sense of humor

Walt Disney World, which is not far from where I live, puts on an annual Christian rock festival it calls Night of Joy.
In the great New Orleans novel Confederacy of Dunces, the Night of Joy is a French Quarter strip club where dim-witted Darlene works on her "exotic" dance routine involving a cockatoo; a tipsy Irene Reilly sells her hat to vintage clothing dealer Dorian Greene; Lana Lee masterminds her illegal porno ring; and janitor Burma Jones plots the sabotage that will bring this wacky house of cards tumbling down.
(Snicker snicker snicker.)

Lafayette's Confederacy of Dunces

One of the great Louisiana novels is "A Confederacy of Dunces," by John Kennedy Toole. Some would argue that it is a New Orleans novel, and it is. But it also contains a whole lot of things that mark the general south Louisiana area - particularly a rollicking sense of fun and a fear of the bland hinterlands. The plot: Ignatius J. Reilly, medieval scholar and all-around eccentric, navigates his way through New Orleans condemning violations of taste and geometry, while his mother hectors him to get a job. I think it's hilarious, but it's also a novel that draws love-it-or-hate-it reactions.
The Independent, a smart weekly in Lafayette, La., recently published a story about the year that Toole lived there teaching English at the local university (now named the University of Louisiana at Lafayette). It's been local legend for years that Toole based Ignatius J. Reilly on a UL professor; The Independent's story connects the dots.
I love the quotes from Pat Rickels, one of the UL professors who knew Toole when he taught at the school in 1960. She called him Ken, and she said his inspiration for Ignatius was a medievalist by the name of Bobby Byrne.

Byrne retired in 1985 and passed away in 2000. Rickels says she is probably the last person alive on the faculty who knew Toole and Byrne well. "Any day I can spend talking about Ken and Bobby is a happy day for me," she says. "When we first saw that chapter in New Orleans magazine," Rickels says, "We thought, 'How awful.' We thought it would destroy Bobby.

"Finally I had the courage to ask Bobby if he liked Confederacy of Dunces," she remembers. "Apparently he never saw it. He knew he was the inspiration for Ignatius, but he didn't care. He didn't read modern books and said he never read best sellers. He was reading Boethius."