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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.
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.
For more books about John Kennedy Toole
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