John Kennedy Toole must be one of the most talked about and equally unknown of all American writers, maybe even all around the world. Many have not read any of his books - A Confederacy of Dunces or the earlier Neon Bible - yet that didn't stop them from talking, writing or at least hearing about Toole and his writing. He was one of the most interesting and original writers of the last century, at the same time a tragic figure who could not handle the mere thought of his novel being rejected. So he chose the easy way out, unfortunatelly for his readers and himself. For after his death his only two completed novels, mentioned above, became best-sellers, and A Confederacy of Dunces even received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
An only child - and if we take for granted that his literature had a strong autobiographical side - smothered child, Toole lost his father at an early age and had to deal with a strong and much too loving mother. Maybe this would eventually lead to his lack of confidence, maybe it was just a coincidence. He studied at the Tulane University and later at the Columbia University, where he wasn't a very good of very poor student, right in the middle, and later taught English at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. For a year. Who could have known that this teacher would prove to be one of the best American writers of his century ? Certainly not his students or coleagues, as he didn't seem to leave a long-lasting impression on them.
After being drafted in the Army and returning in 1963 to New Orleans, where he continued living with his mother and teching, Toole also held various jobs, such as working in a men's clothing factory or selling tamales, both experiences being humourosly depicted in A Confederacy of Dunces. According to the surviving notes and scraps, Toole must have finished the novel which will bring his posthumous fame in the 60s, and surely he was more than proud of the result. He considered it a great novel, a novel which combined humour and keen eye of spirit, a novel which could easily become a best-seller, if a publishing house would undertake to job. Toole had already written his first novel, The Neon Bible, when he was just 16 years onld, and despite the lack of experience the novel was more that very good. It would eventually be published after the writer's death.
It seems that he sent the manuscript to Simon and Schuster, and in the end the publishing house decided to reject it, one of those tremendous errors so common in the history of literature. Just remember what happened to the masterpiece of Marcel Proust, which was initially rejected by no less than Andre Gide. While Proust found the heart to carry on, John Kennedy Toole was too sick, too hurt and too disilusioned to see his work fade into oblivion. He gave up his job, abandoned his doctoral studies, began drinking and taking large quantities of painkiller, rejecting the few who tried to help him.
It seemed he was on the verge of destruction, and saddly this would eventually happen. Saddened and in a prelonged crisis, he would get into severe fights with his mother, who he blamed for his failures and state of being, and finally left home, in a rage, on January 20th 1969. After wandering through the region, he finally committed suicide on March 26th 1969, asphyxiating himself in his car, by a hose connected to the exhaust pipe. It was his final and definite way of protesting the rejection he had faced. He killed himself in Biloxi, Mississippi, and was buried in New Orleans. The note that he had left, a suicide note which might have shed some light upon his reasons, was destroyed by his ever-present mother.
But his mother, not matter how high were the tensions between the two of them and how much they ended up hating eachother, was the one who struggled to publish A Confederacy of Dunces in 1980, after convincing Walker Percy, who would also write the foreword. It was an instant hit and in 1981 the book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Toole's other novel, The Neon Bible, would only be published in 1989, because the author deemed it unsuitable for publication. It was rather successful, but not as much as the first one.
The story of John Kennedy Toole is by all means a tragic one, as this greatly talented writer simply didn't stand the pressure and caved in, abandoning the fight and leaving behind only two novels, these two novels being one step away from being lost forever.
October 2008
