John Kennedy Toole, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

John Kennedy Toole

American novelist

Date of Birth: 17-Dec-1937

Place of Birth: New Orleans, Louisiana, United States

Date of Death: 26-Mar-1969

Profession: screenwriter, writer, professor, author, journalist, soldier, novelist

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius


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About John Kennedy Toole

  • John Kennedy Toole (; December 17, 1937 – March 26, 1969) was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, whose posthumously published novel A Confederacy of Dunces won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
  • 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.
  • After suffering from paranoia and depression due in part to these failures, he committed suicide at the age of 31. Toole was born to a middle-class family in New Orleans.
  • From a young age, his mother taught him an appreciation of culture.
  • She was thoroughly involved in his affairs for most of his life, and at times they had a difficult relationship.
  • With his mother's encouragement, Toole became a stage performer at the age of 10 doing comic impressions and acting.
  • At 16 he wrote his first novel, The Neon Bible, which he later dismissed as "adolescent".Toole received an academic scholarship to Tulane University in New Orleans.
  • After graduating from Tulane, he studied English at Columbia University in New York while teaching simultaneously at Hunter College.
  • He also taught at various Louisiana colleges, and during his early career as an academic he was valued on the faculty party circuit for his wit and gift for mimicry.
  • His studies were interrupted when he was drafted into the army, where he taught English to Spanish-speaking recruits in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
  • After receiving a promotion, he used his private office to begin writing A Confederacy of Dunces, which he finished at his parents' home after his discharge. Dunces is a picaresque novel featuring the misadventures of protagonist Ignatius J.
  • Reilly, a lazy, obese, misanthropic, self-styled scholar who lives at home with his mother.
  • It is hailed for its accurate depictions of New Orleans dialects.
  • Toole based Reilly in part on his college professor friend Bob Byrne.
  • Byrne's slovenly, eccentric behavior was anything but professorial, and Reilly mirrored him in these respects.
  • The character was also based on Toole himself, and several personal experiences served as inspiration for passages in the novel.
  • While at Tulane, Toole filled in for a friend at a job as a hot tamale cart vendor, and worked at a family owned and operated clothing factory.
  • Both of these experiences were later adopted into his fiction. Toole submitted Dunces to publisher Simon & Schuster, where it reached editor Robert Gottlieb.
  • Gottlieb considered Toole talented but felt his comic novel was essentially pointless.
  • Despite several revisions, Gottlieb remained unsatisfied, and after the book was rejected by another literary figure, Hodding Carter Jr., Toole shelved the novel.
  • Suffering from depression and feelings of persecution, Toole left home on a journey around the country.
  • He stopped in Biloxi, Mississippi, to end his life by running a garden hose in from the exhaust of his car to the cabin.
  • Some years later, his mother brought the manuscript of Dunces to the attention of novelist Walker Percy, who ushered the book into print.
  • In 1981, Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

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