John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole was born in 1937 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Toole was a bright child and his mother, Thelma Ducoing Toole, had extremely high hopes for his future success. Throughout school, Toole excelled academically and wrote his first novel, The Neon Bible, when he was only 16. At 17, Toole received a scholarship to attend Tulane University, where he studied English Literature. During his time at university, Toole worked as an editor for the college newspaper and spent a lot of time in the French Quarter of New Orleans with his friends, who were musicians. The area was considered disreputable and Toole’s relatives disliked him spending time there. Toole later completed a Master’s degree at Columbia University in New York and was then offered a job as an assistant professor at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. Toole then took a job as a professor at Hunter University in New York. He was drafted into the army in 1961 and stationed in Puerto Rico, where he taught English to the Spanish recruits. Toole was soon promoted and given a private office, where he began work on A Confederacy of Dunces. He completed the novel after his return to New Orleans and tried to get it published several times without success. Toole took a teaching position at a Catholic college, where he was known as a popular and witty professor. Unfortunately, after Dunces was rejected, Toole entered a period of mental ill-health and took his own life in 1969 at the age of 31. Toole’s mother had the novel published in 1980, after several unsuccessful attempts. Toole was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1981.