Managing Ignatius: The Lunacy of Lucky Dogs and Life in the Quarter

For more than 20 years, Strahan managed the Lucky Dog company, whose vendors sell wienies out of the seven-foot-long hot dog-shaped carts that can be found on almost any street corner in New Orleans's French Quarter. He gave his book its present title because Ignatius J. Reilly, the outsized hero of John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, is a composite of actual Lucky Dog vendors, though Strahan confesses he thought of calling it A Hundred and One People I Wish I Had Never Met. Apparently, altar boys don't peddle pups in the Quarter, and the author found himself riding herd on a crew mainly of transients too antsy to do any other kind of work; some stayed for years, but most took off after a few weeks, often with the company's share of the proceeds. ""Deep down inside they were basically kind, loyal, and caring people,"" writes Strahan, ""but these qualities rarely surfaced."" A historian who dropped out of the Tulane doctoral program for a temporary job that became a permanent one, Strahan kept his sanity by flexing a comic sense that also keeps the reader laughing. And drooling, too, because only a diehard frankophobe will be able to read Managing Ignatius without intermittent longings for a Lucky Dog in a steamed bun topped with chili, cheese and onions; the product stays the same, even if the vendors don't. 24 halftones. (Mar.)