John Kennedy Toole

Mary's Dominican College in New Orleans. Having persuaded Simon & Schuster to accept A Confederacy of Dunces, he was unable to resolve editorial disputes. Due in part to the novel's failure, he suffered from paranoia and depression, dying by suicide at the age of 31. Toole was born to a middle-class family in New Orleans. From a young age, his mother, Thelma, taught him an appreciation of culture. She was thoroughly involved in his affairs for most of his life, and at times they had a difficult relationship. On an academic scholarship, Toole received his bachelor's degree from Tulane University in New Orleans. He then earned an MA in English Literature at Columbia University in New York. He returned to Columbia in pursuit of a PhD. While at Columbia, he taught at Hunter College. He also taught in Louisiana. During the early part of his academic career, his colleagues valued his wit and gift for mimicry, which he displayed at parties. His studies were interrupted when he was drafted into the Army, where he taught English to Spanish-speaking recruits in San Juan, Puerto Rico. After receiving a promotion, he used his private office to begin writing A Confederacy of Dunces, which he finished at his parents' home after his discharge. Toole submitted A Confederacy of Dunces to publisher Simon & Schuster, where it reached editor Robert Gottlieb. Gottlieb considered Toole quite talented, but did not regard the book's themes and conflicts as sufficiently meaningful, or culminating in a unified end. Suffering from depression and feelings of persecution, Toole left home on a journey around the country. He stopped in Biloxi, Mississippi where he died by suicide; he ran a garden hose from the car exhaust into the car window. In 1981, Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

John Kennedy Toole studied at Columbia University, Tulane University and Alcee Fortier High School. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is literary activity. Employment is recorded with Tulane University, Hunter College and University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Works named in the authority record are A Confederacy of Dunces. Distinctions recorded are Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Toole was born to John Dewey Toole Jr. and Thelma Ducoing Toole. Kennedy was the name of Thelma's grandmother. The first of the Creole Ducoing family arrived in Louisiana from France in the early 19th century, and the Tooles immigrated to America from Ireland during the Great Famine of the 1840s. Toole's father worked as a car salesman, and his mother, forced to give up her teaching job when she married (as was the custom at the time and place), gave private lessons in music, speech, and dramatic expression. Toole was known to friends and family as "Ken" until the final few months of his life, when he insisted on being called John. As a child, Toole had an intense affection for his black nursemaid Beulah Matthews, who cared for him when his parents were both working. Toole's highly cultured mother was a controlling woman, especially with her son. His father was less involved and sometimes complained of his lack of influence in their child's upbringing. Despite this, he and his father bonded through a shared interest in baseball and cars. Toole's mother chose the friends he could associate with, and felt his cousins on his father's side were too common for him to be around. Toole received high marks in elementary school and, from a young age, expressed a desire to excel academically. He skipped ahead a grade, from first to second, after taking an IQ test at the age of six, and would also eventually skip the fourth grade. When Toole was ten, his mother gathered a group of child stage entertainers she named the Junior Variety Performers. The troupe, with Toole as its star, consisted of 50 children of varying skills and ages. While the troupe was well-received, Toole also engaged in other entertainment ventures, such as playing the lead in three productions of the Children's Workshop Theatre of New Orleans, emceeing a radio show called Telekids, modeling for newspaper ads, and developing a solo show of comic impersonations entitled Great Lovers of the World. An excellent student, Toole curtailed his stage work when he entered high school (Alcée Fortier High). He concentrated on his academic work. Toole wrote for the school newspaper Silver and Blue, worked on the yearbook The Tarpon, and won several essay contests on subjects such as the Louisiana Purchase and the American Merchant Marine. He took up debating, a skill his father had used to win the state debate championship in high school. Toole spoke at gatherings of civic organizations such as Kiwanis and Rotary Clubs. Toole's father bought him an Oldsmobile, in which Toole delivered newspapers at the age of 13, despite the legal driving age being 15. In high school, Toole spent a lot of time at the home of classmate Larry McGee, and dated McGee's sister, Jane. Jane later said that Toole never wanted to go home and would purposely spend almost all of his free time at the McGees'. With the McGees, Toole would engage in mischievous pranks and go on double dates with Larry and his girlfriend, Buzz. The couples spent their free time at the local pool or cruising in Toole's car. As a teenager in 1954, Toole made his first trip out of Louisiana. On a field trip, he visited Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington, D.C. He especially enjoyed New York and filled a cherished scrapbook with pictures from his visit, which included trips on the New York City subway, an excursion on a boat in the New York Harbor, and visits to the Statue of Liberty, Chinatown, and Times Square; he also enjoyed a performance of The Rockettes at the Radio City Music Hall and brought home a program. Toole became the editor of the news section of the school newspaper, and maintained high marks throughout high school. He received many awards, including a National Merit Scholarship, selection to the National Honor Society, and being named the Most Intelligent Senior Boy by the student body. He was one of two New Orleanians voted outstanding citizen at the Pelican (now Louisiana) Boys State convention and he was invited back to serve the following year as a counsellor. He also took part in the Newman Club, a Catholic organization for teenagers, where he won an award for outstanding student in the group. He received a full scholarship to Tulane University at age 17. During his senior year, Toole wrote The Neon Bible, a short Southern Gothic novel that has been compared in style to Flannery O'Connor, a favorite author of Toole’s. The book's protagonist, David, had lived with his family in a "little white house in town that had a real roof you could sleep under when it rained," before his father lost his job, forcing the family into a small shoddily built home. Set in 1940s Mississippi, the backwoods Baptist community setting is similar to a location to which Toole had traveled with a high-school friend for a literary contest. The novel's sudden outburst of violence at the end has been described as incongruous with what preceded it. Toole later described the novel in correspondence with an editor, "In 1954, when I was 16, I wrote a book called The Neon Bible, a grim, adolescent, sociological attack upon the hatreds caused by the various Calvinist religions in the South—and the fundamentalist mentality is one of the roots of what was happening in Alabama, etc. The book, of course, was bad, but I sent it off a couple of times anyway." Neon Bible failed to attract interest from publishers and did not appear in print until after Toole's death.

Toole's studies were interrupted by his being drafted into the United States Army in 1961. Toole (who was fluent in Spanish) served two years at Fort Buchanan in Puerto Rico, teaching English to Spanish-speaking recruits. He rose quickly in the military ranks. In under a year, he attained the rank of sergeant, and received numerous awards and citations. While serving in Puerto Rico, he frequently traveled throughout the Caribbean, either alone or with members of his company. Toole, however, began to dread the frustrations of military life and the oppressive heat of Puerto Rico. He described his work there in a letter to a friend: He also engaged in one of the favorite activities of military personnel on the island: alcohol consumption. Both the soldiers and the instructors at the base drank excessively, as alcohol was cheap and plentiful. Toole remarked in another letter to Fletcher, "We are all rotting here at the moment. The decreased draft has meant no trainees since June... the inactivity here, coupled with the remnants of a rainy and enervating summer has (have?) plunged the English instructors into an abyss of drinking and inertia. Occasionally someone will struggle off to the beach or to San Juan, but the maxim here remains, 'It's too hot. When Emilie Griffin paid Toole a visit in December 1961 she was dismayed at what she saw. Toole was notably depressed and while dining at a local hotel she noted that "the windows on all sides of our table were filled with perfect rainbows. Ken was sitting in a pocket of darkness surrounded by these brilliant colored arches and he never looked at them." Adding to Toole's dismay, his class ring from Tulane went missing and he searched the entire base for it, questioning everyone, until concluding that it had been stolen. Disgusted, he wrote home, "It's a wonder I haven't been stabbed yet or paralyzed by intestinal diseases on this insane little geographical mountain top protruding from the Caribbean. However, under any circumstances the loss of the ring affects me deeply." In the early portion of Toole's military career one of his primary motivations for advancement was to acquire a private office. Privacy was a significant luxury on the island with some of the men renting rooms in nearby hotels so they could have some solitude. Toole's army buddy David Kubach, also an aspiring writer, lent him a green Swedish-made Halda typewriter for use in his office. The barracks consisted solely of college educated English professors, which gave it a different makeup from usual army companies. In contrast to almost all other army barracks where gays kept their sexual orientation a secret, this barracks had a contingent of men who were open about their homosexuality. The gay men reserved a portion of the barracks for themselves and, as they did not proposition any of the straight instructors, they were left alone. However, this particular group of gay men drank significantly more than the rest of the group and eventually began to exhibit a loud, rowdy, and vulgar brand of behavior that made the straight men uncomfortable. Toole's response was to ignore their behavior and it lost him the respect of some of the men in the barracks. The problem came to a head when a gay instructor attempted suicide by overdosing on APC (aspirin, phenacetin, and caffeine) tablets after being spurned by another soldier. When Toole found the man he waited a half-hour to call for help, hoping he would awaken on his own. His friend Kubach stated that this was because it would look bad for the soldier and that he would most likely get himself court martialed for a suicide attempt. Some of his fellow soldiers were livid and held a meeting deciding whether to report Toole's negligence. Ultimately, they did not report his behavior and the army never filed any charges but his relationships with many of the men were irrevocably changed. After this incident, Toole became withdrawn and began spending more and more time in his office typing what would eventually become his master work, A Confederacy of Dunces. It was not a secret that Toole was writing a book. Late at night, his fellow soldiers could often hear the sound of the typewriter keys. Although he was secretive about the novel among the other men, Toole showed the early portions of it to Kubach, who gave him positive feedback. Around this time, Kubach was transferred and took his typewriter with him, so Toole was forced to buy his own. He later commented that he began to "talk and act like Ignatius" during this period as he became more and more immersed in the creation of the book. His letter home to his parents of April 10, 1963, shows these similarities:

Toole received a hardship discharge as his parents were having difficult economic times, his father struggling with deafness and an increasing incidence of irrational fear and paranoia. Toole looked forward to coming home and spending time talking with his mother. Toole turned down an offer to return to his post at Hunter, and arrived home to a teaching position at Dominican College, a Catholic all-female school. He initially liked the position as it allowed him to teach for only 10.5 hours a week and afforded him the same leisure time he had during his less active periods in the service. The nuns on the faculty were enamored of Toole from the start, considering him well mannered, genteel, and charming. He used his free time to work on his novel, and to spend some time with his musician friend Sidney Snow at Snow's home in the Irish Channel and at various night clubs where he would watch Snow and his bandmates perform, among other things, covers of songs by The Beatles. The November 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy caused Toole to fall into severe depression. He stopped writing and drank heavily. In February 1964 he resumed writing, at which point he added an ending and sent the manuscript to Simon & Schuster. A Confederacy of Dunces has been described as a "grand comic fugue" and is considered one of the seminal works of twentieth century Southern literature. It has received praise for its accurate use of various New Orleans dialects, including the Yat dialect. It concerns protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly, a slothful, obese, self-styled philosopher who lives with his mother. After an early financial setback for the Reilly family, caused by Ignatius, he is forced by his mother to seek employment in a variety of menial jobs to help the household financially, for which he is continually resentful of her. He subsequently takes revenge on several businesses for perceived slights. He incites black workers to insurrection at Levy Pants Company, eats more hot dogs than he sells, and attempts to break up a strip club. Along the way he runs into a divergent cast of characters, including Myrna Minkoff, a rebellious socialist intellectual with whom he conducts an ongoing literary correspondence. Although Reilly is partially modeled after Toole's eccentric friend Bob Byrne, Byrne and others have stated that much of Reilly is actually based on Toole himself: Ken Toole was a strange person. He was extroverted and private. And that's very difficult. He had a strong... desire to be recognized.... but also a strong sense of alienation. That's what you have in Ignatius Reilly. The book eventually reached senior editor Robert Gottlieb, who had talked the then-unknown Joseph Heller into completing the classic comic novel Catch-22. Gottlieb and Toole began a two-year correspondence and dialogue over the novel which would ultimately result in bitter disappointment on both sides. While Gottlieb felt Toole was undoubtedly talented, he was unhappy with the book in its original form. He felt that it had one basic flaw which he expressed to Toole in an early letter: • Illustration — Toole made an unannounced trip to see editor Robert Gottlieb in person at the Simon & Schuster building in New York City in February 1965. When he found out Gottlieb was out of town, Toole felt humiliated. Initially, although Toole was disappointed that the novel could not be published as is, he was exuberant that a major publisher was interested in it. He entered his second year of teaching at Dominican as one of the favorite new professors on staff. Students marveled at his wit, and Toole would make entire classes burst into laughter while hardly showing any expression. He never retold a story or joke, and had many repeat students. Shortly before Christmas break in 1964, Toole received a letter from Gottlieb. In it Gottlieb remarked that he had shown the novel to Candida Donadio, a literary agent whose clients included Joseph Heller and Thomas Pynchon. Gottlieb told Toole they felt he was "... wildly funny often, funnier than almost anyone around". Also they liked the same portions and characters of the book and disliked the same parts as well. Gottlieb gave a list of things he did not like concluding with: But that, all this aside, there is another problem: that with all its wonderfulnesses, the book—even better plotted (and still better plotable)—does not have a reason; it's a brilliant exercise in invention, but unlike CATCH [22] and MOTHER KISSES and V and the others, it isn't really about anything. And that's something no one can do anything about. Later on in the letter, Gottlieb stated that he still had faith in Toole as a writer and that he wished to hold onto the manuscript in case he or Toole would be able to see a way around his objections. Toole decided that it would be best for Gottlieb to return the manuscript, saying "Aside from a few deletions, I don't think I could really do much to the book now—and of course even with revisions you might not be satisfied." Toole made a trip to New York to see Gottlieb in person; however, he was out of town and Toole came back disappointed. He felt that he had embarrassed himself by giving a rambling, uncomfortable speech explaining his situation to one of Gottlieb's office staff. He returned home having left a note for Gottlieb to call him, and they later talked for an hour on the phone. In this conversation Gottlieb reiterated that he would not accept the novel without further revision. He suggested that Toole move on to writing something else, an idea which Toole ultimately rejected. In a long, partially autobiographical letter he sent to Gottlieb in March 1965, Toole explained that he could not give up on the book since he wrote the novel largely from personal observation and because the characters were based on real people he had seen in his life. I don't want to throw these characters away. In other words, I'm going to work on the book again. I haven't been able to look at the manuscript since I got it back, but since something of my soul is in the thing, I can't let it rot without trying. Gottlieb wrote him an encouraging letter, in which he stated again that he felt Toole was very talented (even more so than himself) and that if Toole were to re-submit the manuscript he would continue to "read, reread, edit, perhaps publish, generally cope, until you are fed up with me. What more can I say?" In early 1966, Toole wrote Gottlieb one final letter, which has never been located. Gottlieb wrote back to him on January 17, 1966, reiterating his feelings on the book and stating that he wanted to read it again when Toole created another revision.

• Illustration — Toole taught English at Dominican College in New Orleans from Fall of 1963 until Fall of 1968. Initially, his Dominican students marveled at his wit and comedic talents. Later, as he began suffering from mental problems, his behavior appalled them. Toole took the rejection of the book in his intended form as a tremendous personal blow. He eventually ceased work on A Confederacy of Dunces and for a time left it atop an armoire in his bedroom. He continued to teach at Dominican where he remained a favorite among the student body with his classes regularly filling up well before official registration. His comedic performances during lectures remained especially popular. He attempted to work on another novel which he titled The Conqueror Worm, a reference to death as portrayed in Edgar Allan Poe's poem of the same name, but he found little peace at home. Toole's mother persuaded him to take A Confederacy of Dunces to Hodding Carter Jr., who was well known as a reporter and publisher for the Delta Democrat Times in Greenville, Mississippi, and was spending a semester teaching at Tulane. Carter showed little interest in the book but complimented him on it. This face-to-face rejection drove Toole further into despair, and he became angry with his mother for causing him further embarrassment. Except for a few trips by car to Madison, Wisconsin to see army pal David Kubach, Toole spent most of the last three years of his life at home or at Dominican. In the winter of 1967, Kubach, who had come down to visit Toole, noticed an increased sense of paranoia on Toole's part; once when driving around New Orleans, Toole became convinced they were being followed and attempted to lose the car. The family moved to a larger rental house on Hampson Street, and Toole continued teaching, with his students noticing that his wit had become more acerbic. He continued to drink heavily and gained a great deal of weight, causing him to have to purchase an entire new wardrobe. Toole began having frequent and intense headaches; because aspirin was no help, he saw a doctor. The doctor's treatment was ineffective, and he suggested that Toole see a neurologist, an idea Toole rejected. • Illustration — Toole lived in this house in the Carrollton neighborhood of New Orleans while teaching at Dominican. Toole tried to maintain a sense of normality and enrolled in Tulane in the fall of 1968 with the hopes of acquiring a Ph.D. He took a course studying Theodore Dreiser, on whom he had lectured while at Hunter, and was particularly interested in Dreiser's close relationship with his mother and his anti-Catholic beliefs. The assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 added to his feelings of grief and heightened his paranoia. Several of Toole's longtime friends noticed he had an increasing sense of feelings of personal persecution. Toole went to see his friend Bob Byrne at his home in August 1968, where he again expressed sadness and humiliation that his book would not be published. Toole told Byrne that people were passing his home late in the night and honking their car horns at him, that students whispered about him behind his back, and that people were plotting against him. Byrne had a talk with him, which he felt, for the time being, calmed him down. In the months before his suicide, Toole, who was usually extremely well groomed, "began to appear in public unshaved and uncombed, wearing unpolished shoes and wrinkled clothes, to the amazement of his friends and students in New Orleans." He also began to exhibit signs of paranoia, including telling friends that a woman who he erroneously thought had worked for Simon & Schuster was plotting to steal his book so that her husband, the novelist George Deaux, could publish it. Toole became increasingly erratic during his lectures at Dominican, resulting in frequent student complaints, and was given to rants against church and state. Toward the end of the 1968 fall semester, he was forced to take a leave of absence and stopped attending classes at Tulane, resulting in his receiving a grade of incomplete. The Tooles spent Christmas of 1968 in disarray, with Toole's father in an increasing state of dementia and Toole searching the home for electronic mind-reading devices.

• Illustration — Toole was a lifelong admirer of Southern Gothic fiction writer Flannery O'Connor; his posthumously published novel The Neon Bible is said to resemble her work. Shortly before his suicide, Toole attempted to visit the home of the deceased writer. When Toole was unable to resume his position at Dominican in January 1969, the school had to hire another professor. This upset his mother and on January 19, 1969, they had an argument. He stopped by the house the next day to pick up some things and spoke only to his father, as Thelma was out at the grocery store. He left home for the final time and withdrew from his savings account. After a week she called the police, but, without any evidence as to his whereabouts, they took a report and waited for him to surface. Thelma became convinced that Toole's friends the Rickels knew where he was and called them repeatedly, even though they denied knowing where he had gone. Items found in Toole's car show that he drove to California where he visited Hearst Castle and then to Milledgeville, Georgia. Here he most likely attempted to visit Andalusia, the home of deceased writer Flannery O'Connor, although her house was not open to the public. This was succeeded by a drive toward New Orleans. It was during this trip that he stopped outside Biloxi, Mississippi, and died by suicide by running a garden hose from the exhaust pipe in through the window of his car on March 26, 1969. His car and person were clean, and the police officers who found him reported that his face showed no signs of distress. An envelope discovered in the car was marked "to my parents." The suicide note inside the envelope was destroyed by his mother, who later gave varying vague accounts of its details. In one instance she said it expressed his "concerned feeling for her" and later she told a Times-Picayune interviewer that the letter was "bizarre and preposterous. Violent. Ill-fated. Nothing. Insane ravings." He was buried at Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans. A few years earlier, Toole had driven his army buddy David Kubach to the exact spot where he would later die by suicide. As the location was unremarkable, Kubach did not understand why Toole had taken him there. He left his parents a life-insurance policy, several thousand dollars in savings, and his car. Toole's funeral service was private and attended only by his parents and his childhood nursemaid Beulah Matthews. The students and faculty at Dominican College were grief-stricken over Toole's death, and the school held a memorial service for him in the college courtyard. The head of Dominican gave a brief eulogy which, because of the institution's religious beliefs (it wasn't until 1992 that the Church no longer considered suicide a mortal sin), did not mention the suicide.

• Fletcher, Joel L. Ken and Thelma: The Story of A Confederacy of Dunces. Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing Company, Inc., 2005. • Nevils, René Pol, and Hardy, Deborah George. Ignatius Rising: The Life of John Kennedy Toole. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001.