John Kennedy Toole - Another Paradise Lost
1937 - 1969

Born December 7, 1937 in New Orleans, Louisiana to parents in their late 30s who never expected to have children, John Kennedy Toole was called "Ken." His father, John D. Toole, Jr., was an entertaining man who worked as an automobile salesman and mechanic before he retired early due to deafness and "failing health." Both these conditions could have been brought about by Ken's mother, Thelma Ducoing Toole.

Toole's mother sheltered him, keeping him apart from other children because of his "genius.' She was a dynamic, narcissistic woman who seemed to totally control his life.

He was, indeed a genius. When he was 16 years old, he spent a summer writing his first novel, "The Neon Bible.'' He entered it in a literary contest and it lost. Like many artists whose work springs in large part from states of intellectual fluidity, he took this failure hard. He put the book away and never showed it to anyone again.

Ken wasn't just smart; he was funny, and a natural mimic. He wrote a humor column for his high school paper and was a cartoonist for the Tulane Hullabaloo. In spite of that, he was a loner. John Geiser, who'd known him in their nursery school and kindergarten days, was a headline writer for the Hullabaloo. He says that he never saw Ken Toole there, because Toole evidently dropped off his cartoons and left.

It wasn't until after his graduation from Tulane University that a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship allowed him to escape to a more independent life in New York City. There he completed a Master's degree in English literature at Columbia, and had an opportunity to find his true voice.

One of his friends from the "New York Period" speaks of him as "fun to be with," often jumping into an impression of a New Orleans character of the time.

"Everybody fightin and scratchin and screamin and that big fat freak laying in the gutter like he daid.... Ooo-wee! Whoa! I'm gonna be the mos famous vagran in the city...."

This was in stark contrast to the very strait-laced persona his students later saw. "He was so quiet and so meticulous, always in his tie and coat."

He returned to New Orleans in the spring of 1961 and was called up by the draft. It was while teaching English to Spanish-speaking enlistees at the U.S. Army Training Center at Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico that he completed a draft of the novel that would become A Confederacy of Dunces. He submitted his novel to Simon and Schuster and received an encouraging letter from an editor named Robert Gottlieb, who suggested a few revisions.

He finished his military stint, moved back home with his parents, and took a teaching position at St. Mary's Dominican College, a few blocks away, marking time until his book was published. But the editor demanded revision after revision after revision, and finally told Ken he didn't see any point in publishing the work after all. Toole was devastated.

Now, in his eyes, his second novel, the one that was to launch his brilliant literary career, had been ruthlessly dissected and then rejected. He didn't search for another publisher or seek out an agent. He shoved the manuscript on top of the old armoire in his bedroom.

It is difficult to write of John Kennedy Toole in chronological order, because the most important results of his life took place after his death.

After quarrelling with his mother, he disappeared one day in January 1969. It seems he drove to the West coast, then across the country to the home of writer Flannery O'Connor in Midgeville, Georgia. On his way back to New Orleans, he stopped on an isolated road outside Biloxi, Mississippi, and connected a hose to his Chevy's exhaust pipe. This was on March 26, 1969. His mother read the suicide note he left and then destroyed it. Nobody knows what it said.

Thelma never stopped her attempts to get A Confederacy of Dunces published. She was unashamed and tireless, and after years of hounding Walker Percy (Winner of the 1962 National Book Award for his first novel, The Moviegoer), she finally got him to agree to look at the manuscript. Percy reluctantly began to read, and fell in love with the book. He was instrumental in getting it published in 1980. John Kennedy Toole's novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981, the first posthumously awarded in the history of the prize.

One thing elevates this book to true brilliance, and that's the perfection of its central character. Ignatius J. Reilly is quite simply one of the all time great comic characters. A true monster, whose excesses appall, enthrall, and entertain equally.

It has been said that A Confederacy of Dunces is the most accurate ever recording of the type of dialogue spoken in New Orleans. Some think that it is the most accurate depiction of the city in a work of fiction. However, some New Orleanians think it portrays the city and its inhabitants in an unfavorable light.

Nevertheless, New Orleans is proud of this character. Today, a nearly life-sized statue stands in front of the hotel Chateau Sonesta, the former D. H. Holmes Department Store. The bronze statue shows Ignatius J. Reilly standing "under the clock."

Even though his mother strictly forbade it, after her death The Neon Bible was published in 1989. The novel was amazing, primarily because it was written by a sixteen year old boy.

There have been biographies written about John Kennedy Toole, the most famous of which is Ignatius Rising, but none are definitive. Perhaps the reason is that his life was so short.

There is, however, another book available, which gives greater insight into the relationship between Ken and his mother. It was written by a long-time friend, Joel L. Fletcher, and is more of a memoir of his relationship with the two. After Ken's death, Joel went on to have a long-term relationship with Thelma. His book Ken & Thelma: The Story Of A Confederacy Of Dunces was published in 2005.

Toole is one of those rare instances in the literary world when the life of the author overshadows his work in the memory of the book-buying public. The story of the publication of Confederacy of Dunces is likely better known than the plot of the book itself, even by many of the people who have actually read it.

There has been much speculation over the life and death of John Kennedy Toole, with whispers of latent homosexuality, and the smothering control of his mother. However, there is every reason to believe that, like so many other creative people, he suffered from schizophrenia and manic depression.

Sadly, no one was there to bring him up out of the dark hole of depression that Wednesday, so he never got to know that he was a success.

"The mind is its own place, and of itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."
-John Milton in PARADISE LOST

Glenda Glayzer