John Kennedy Toole
John Kennedy Toole (
December 17,
1937 –
March 26,
1969) was an
American novelist from
New Orleans, Louisiana, best known for his
novel A Confederacy of Dunces.
No work of Toole's was published during his lifetime. (Toole committed
suicide.) After his death his mother brought the manuscript of
A Confederacy of Dunces to the attention of the novelist
Walker Percy, who ushered the book into print. In
1981 Toole was posthumously awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Toole's childhood in Uptown New Orleans was rather sheltered, dominated by his mother Thelma Ducoing Toole who seldom let her only child play with other children. She informed everyone that her son was a
genius.
After an undergraduate degree from
Tulane University, Toole received a master's degree at
Columbia University, and spent a year as assistant professor of
English at the
University of Southwestern Louisiana (now UL Lafayette) in
Lafayette, Louisiana.
Toole's next academic post was in
New York, where he taught at
Hunter College. Although he pursued a doctorate at
Columbia, his studies were interrupted by his being drafted into the
U.S. Army in
1961. Toole served two years in
Puerto Rico teaching
English to
Spanish-speaking recruits.
After his time in the military, Toole returned to New Orleans to live with his parents and teach at
Dominican College. He spent time hanging around the
French Quarter with musicians and, on at least one occasion, helped a musician friend with his second job selling
tamales from a cart. While at
Tulane University, Toole had worked briefly in a men's clothing factory. Both of these experiences inspired memorable scenarios in his great
comic novel A Confederacy of Dunces.
Toole sent the manuscript of his novel to
Simon and Schuster. Although there was initial excitement about the book, the publisher eventually rejected it, commenting that the book "isn't really about anything." Toole began to deteriorate after he lost hope of seeing the book published; he considered it a masterpiece. He began to drink heavily and was medicated for headaches; he also stopped teaching at Dominican and quit his doctoral classes at Tulane.
Some biographers have suggested that Toole a factor in his depression was confusion about his sexuality. One friend has suggested that his domineering mother left no emotional room for any other woman in Toole's life. Some friends and relatives of Toole disagree with suggestions that Toole was a
homosexual, including David Kubach, a longtime friend who also served with Toole in the army.
The authors of the first biography of Toole to be published were not aquainted with him, and "not knowing him makes a big difference", Kubach said. Ronald W. Bell's Ph.D. thesis, "The Nihilistic Perspective of John Kennedy Toole," (2000, California State University, Dominguez Hills) posits that Toole's novels are a mirror of the author's life, reflect his bleak view of human existence, and convey Toole's despair over the human condition.
Toole committed
suicide on March 26, 1969, after disappearing from New Orleans, by putting one end of a garden hose into the exhaust pipe of his
car and the other into the window of the car in which he was sitting. The suicide note he left was destroyed by his mother, who made conflicting statements as to its general contents. He was buried at
Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans.
After his death, Toole's mother insisted that author
Walker Percy read the manuscript for
Dunces. Percy eventually gave in and fell in love with the book.
A Confederacy of Dunces was published in
1980, and Percy provided the foreword.
Toole was posthumously awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in
1981, and the book has sold more than 1.5 million copies in 18 languages.
Toole's only other novel is
The Neon Bible, which he wrote at age 16 and considered too juvenile a writing attempt to submit for publication while he was alive. However, due to the great interest in Toole,
The Neon Bible was published in
1989. It was made into a
feature film in
1995.
A statue of Toole's most famous character,
Ignatius Reilly, can be seen at 800 Iberville Street in New Orleans.
Novels by Toole:
*
A Confederacy of Dunces, (LSU Press,
1980).
*
The Neon Bible, (Grove Press,
1989).
Works about Toole:
*Ronald W. Bell, "The Nihilistic Perspective of John Kennedy Toole," (California State University [Dominguez Hills] Ph.D. Dissertation, 2000).
* Joel L. Fletcher,
Ken & Thelma: The Story of A Confederacy of Dunces, (Pelican Publishing Company,
Gretna, Louisiana, 2005).
* Rene Pol Nevils and Deborah George Handy,
Ignatius Rising: The Life of John Kennedy Toole, (LSU Press, 2001).
*
John Kennedy Toole Virtual Gravesite
