John Kennedy Toole’s hero is one, “huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. So enters one of the most memorable characters in American fiction, Ignatius J. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once.”

“A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. –Jonathan Swift, “Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting” You may know him by this sign, that the dunces “When a true genius appears in the world, Following the success of A Confederacy of Dunces, The Neon Bible, which Toole had written when he was only sixteen, was first published by Grove Press in 1989. Percy became one of the novels many admirers and A Confederacy of Dunces would eventually be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1981, one year after the books first printing. Toole’s book was eventually published, after his mother brought the work to the attention of the author Walker Percy and insisted that he read her son’s manuscript. In 1969, frustrated at his failure to interest a publisher in A Confederacy of Dunces, he committed suicide.

After two years in the army, Toole returned to New Orleans, where he taught at Dominican College. In 1961, while pursuing a doctorate and Columbia University, Toole was drafted into the United States Army, where he spent his time teaching English, while stationed in Puerto Rico.

After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Tulane University, Toole received a master’s in English from Columbia University, and taught at Hunter College and the University of Southwestern Louisiana (University of Louisiana-Lafayette). John Kennedy Toole was born in New Orleans in 1937.

A confederacy of dunces book