John Kennedy Toole

December 17, 1937 – March 26, 1969

One of my favorite books is A Confederacy of Dunces written by John Kennedy Toole about a hapless character named Ignatius J. Reilly who lives and works in the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana.  He worked several menial jobs in the book, including pushing a hot dog cart where he ate more than he sold!

(A bronze statue of Ignatius J. Reilly standing on Canal Street by John McConnell)

Sadly, the book was not published during his lifetime.  The story of how it came to be published is the story of the love of a mother and her determination to see her son’s work in print.

Toole was a professor first at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, then at Hunter College, and finally at St. Mary’s Dominican College.  Toole wrote two books, The Neon Bible and A Confederacy of Dunces.  His first novel he considered an adolescent attempt at writing and largely dismissed it.  But he considered A Confederacy of Dunces to be his opus which had been written on personal observations and with characters modelled from his own life.  When he could not get it published, after years of submitting his manuscripts to at least seven different publishers, including the famous editor, Robert Gottlieb, Toole became despondent and depressed and eventually committed suicide. 

His mother, Thelma Toole, picked up the manuscript and made it her life’s work to get it published.  After much hounding and badgering, she eventually convinced the great Southern writer, Percy Walker to read it.  He reluctantly agreed and loved the book and wrote a foreword for it.  With his endorsement, A Confederacy of Dunces was finally published by the Louisiana State University Press in 1980.  The following year, his book received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  Since its first printing, it has been published in over 18 languages and sold nearly two million copies. 

Toole was buried in the family tomb in the Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans.