A Confederacy of Dunces chronicles the picaresque adventures of Ignatius Jacques Reilly, a slovenly academic and cultural Luddite with a phobia of travel and a long-standing pen relationship with Jewish beatnik Myrna Minkoff. Ignatius's escapades in the town of his birth, where he lives with his alcoholic and domineering mother, form the body of the novel along with his hypocritical commentaries on modern cultural and his correspondence with Myrna, who despite being his philosophical opposite is in fact his close friend and eventual salvation.