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A native of New Orleans, John Kennedy Toole was born in December, 1937.  He earned his master’s degree at Columbia University and taught at the University of Southwestern Louisiana.  He returned to New York and taught at Hunter College while working on a doctorate at Columbia, but he was drafted by the Army and never completed this degree.  While stationed in Puerto Rico, Toole wrote Confederacy of Dunces.  Upon returning from Puerto Rico, he tried for two years, with absolutely no success, to find a publisher for his novel. Though we will never know exactly why, Toole committed suicide in 1969 at the age of 31.  He never saw his book published.

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His mother, determined to see her son’s work published, repeatedly contacted Walker Percy pleading with him to read her son’s manuscript. Eventually, Percy gave in to her request.  He tells of this extraordinary experience  in the novel’s foreword.  A touching, inspiring, yet tragic tale of one struggling, talented writer.

In 1980, eleven years after his death, Confederacy of Dunces was published.  In 1981, the novel won the Pulitzer Prize for best fiction.

See our book review of
Confederacy of Dunces.

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