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This is Maybe, But Not Really, Ignatius J. Reilly's House

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Here's your chance to own a piece of literary history! Well, kind of. Not really at all, actually. In a bit of New Orleans-centric clickbait, The Advocate had an item this weekend about an Uptown house on the market that, according to the headline, belonged to the fictional Ignatius J. Reilly and his mother in the novel A Confederacy of Dunces. But then in the next paragraph it says "nowhere in John Kennedy Toole's classic New Orleans novel ... does the author identify the address on Constantinople Street where the flatulent blowhard lived with his mother." And in fact "it may not be the likeliest candidate for Ignatius' house." So why are we talking about Ignatius, again?

The article says the house has "been pegged" as the possible home for the fictional character, but by whom? Unclear. It seems that the writer is making the connection because the fictional house is on the same street Uptown, where in the 1960s-set book you could get a mortgage for $7,000 (lol!).

OK, let's just say you can forgive the misleading Ignatius trivia and are just interested in the house, a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom Victorian camelback, and are willing to pony up for the $889,000 asking price. Well, you probably can't do that either because the article says the house is already under contract. This hypothetical house-hunter with interest in New Orleans literature is really striking out today.

The only thing you can take from this real estate non-news is some eye candy. Head on over to the listing for that.

· A million bucks for Ignatius Reilly's New Orleans house? Be still, my pyloric valve [The Advocate]
· 1032 Constantinople Street [Latter & Blum]