While spending time in Puerto Rico in 1963, American Novelist John Kennedy Toole wrote his magnum opus, the absurdist black comedy, A Confederacy of Dunces. Based partially on some of his own life experiences and his friend, college professor Bob Byrne, Toole completed his novel in 1964 and immediately sent it to Simon & Schuster seeking publication.
The book fell into the hands of senior editor Robert Gottlieb, who had a two-year back-and-forth with Toole over whether A Confederacy of Dunceswas publishable. Gottlieb believed Toole was supremely talented and the book was quite good; however, he felt various stories in the book were unresolved, and it lacked a concrete through line. Toole, on the other hand, was not willing to change what he wrote and, ultimately, accepted defeat and fell into a depression.
Toole’s alcoholism and depression eventually resulted in paranoia that led him to take his own life with his manuscript unpublished in 1969. He was only 31.
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Following Toole’s death, his mother, Thelma, found a carbon copy of A Confederacy of Dunces left behind in his home and swore to both herself and her late son that she would see it published and her son’s talent would be known. Thelma sent it to seven publishers over a five-year period, all of whom rejected it.
Then in 1976, Thelma learned that author Walker Percy was joining the faculty at Loyola University in New Orleans. When Percy ignored her repeated phone calls, Thelma literally pushed her way into his office to demand he read the manuscript. Percy loved the book, saying:
“My only fear was that this one might not be bad enough, or might be just good enough, so that I would have to keep reading. In this case I read on. And on. First with the sinking feeling that it was not bad enough to quit, then with a prickle of interest, then a growing excitement, and finally an incredulity: surely it was not possible that it was so good.”
While it still took more than three years, eventually Louisiana State University Press published A Confederacy of Dunces in 1980, 11 years after Toole’s death. Percy provided the foreword.
The novel was extremely buzzy and a hit in the literary world, and the year after, in 1981, Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The book has since sold more than 2 million copies, been translated into over 18 languages, and was ranked 58 of the “100 Most Loved Books in America” by PBS.
A Confederacy of Dunces follows protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly, a brilliant but unmotivated 30-year-old who lives with his mother in New Orleans. While trying to secure a job, Ignatius has multiple misadventures and continuously finds himself in preposterous situations with various characters across the French Quarter. Ignatius’ one-man journey continues to get more and more ludicrous throughout the novel, resulting in a totally humorous and cult classic story.
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