Ignatius J. Reilly Statue — Under the Old D.H. Holmes Clock

The bronze Ignatius stands under the clock where Holmes used to be, 800 Canal at Dauphine, green hunting cap tugged low, pyloric valve and all. William Ludwig sculpted him in 1996, modeled on John 'Spud' McConnell, who played the role onstage at Le Petit Théâtre. The clock still hangs where it hung on page one of *A Confederacy of Dunces*—the entrance to D.H. Holmes Department Store, which opened in 1849 and closed in 1989. It's a hotel now. John Kennedy Toole's novel won the Pulitzer in 1981, eleven years after his suicide. The statue's entire job is to mark what's gone. New Orleans has always changed—French to Spanish to French to American, river port to cotton port to tourism port, rebuilt after storms, remade after floods. The city keeps moving. Ignatius stays put, waiting for his mother, studying the crowd for signs of bad taste, frozen mid-complaint at the corner where the department store used to stand. Free to visit any time. You can stand where Ignatius stands and feel the whole joke: the city that invented reinvention built a monument to a man who refused to move.