John Kennedy Toole was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, whose posthumously published novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981; he also wrote The Neon Bible. Although several people in the literary world felt his writing skills were praiseworthy, Toole's novels were rejected during his lifetime. Due in part to these failures, he suffered from paranoia and depression, dying by suicide at the age of 31.
John Kennedy Toole
While studying at Columbia University in New York City, one of Toole's favorite activities was dancing at the Roseland Ballroom with girlfriend Ruth Kathmann. For $2.00 they could dance to big band music all night.
Fortuna with the Wheel of Fortune from a medieval manuscript of a work by Boccaccio. Fortuna, as interpreted by Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy, was a favorite subject of Toole's Dunces protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly.
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.
A Confederacy of Dunces is a novel by American writer John Kennedy Toole that was published in 1980, 11 years after Toole's death. Published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy and Toole's mother, Thelma, the book became first a cult classic, then a mainstream success; it earned Toole a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981 and is now a canonical work of modern literature of the Southern United States.
A Confederacy of Dunces
Canal Street, New Orleans in the late 1950s; the D. H. Holmes store at right
A "Lucky Dogs" cart from the era of the novel
