I, John Kennedy Toole
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- £11.99
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- £11.99
Publisher Description
A rich new novel that explores the true story of A Confederacy Of Dunces and the remarkable life of its author, John Kennedy Toole.
I, John Kennedy Toole is the novelized story of the funny, tragic, riveting narrative behind the making of an American masterpiece.
The book traces Toole’s life in New Orleans through his adolescence, his stay at Columbia University in New York, his attempts to escape the burden of his demanding mother and his weak father, his retreat into a world of his own creation, and finally the invention of astonishing characters that came to living reality for both readers (and the author himself) in his prize-winning A Confederacy of Dunces.
The other fascinating (and mostly unknown) part of the story is how after a decade of rebuke and dismissal the novel came to a brilliant author, Walker Percy, and a young publisher, Kent Carroll, who separately rescued the book, then published it with verve and devotion.
The novel that almost never came to be went on to win a Pulitzer Prize and continues to sell at a satisfying rate as it winds its way to the 2 million mark. That audience is the happy ending for this brilliant, unrepentant writer, whose only reward before his untimely death was his unending belief in his work and his characters.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This boisterous fictional take on the life and career of author John Kennedy Toole (1937 1969) from Carroll, a publishing veteran, and Blanco (Please Stop Laughing at Me, a memoir) is a bit of a mixed bag. The authors do a good job depicting the family life of only child Toole in New Orleans, in particular the tension between the sensitive, gifted Toole and his overbearing mother, Thelma, who ensured the publication of her son's masterpiece, A Confederacy of Dunces, after his suicide. Simon & Schuster editor Robert Gottlieb, who rejected Dunces (because it "isn't really about anything"), is fairly portrayed, though references to the 1968 novel Superworm, a highly touted but now forgotten Gottlieb acquisition, suggest his editorial judgment wasn't always perfect. Book industry insiders will enjoy the account of how Carroll, then an editor at Grove Press, negotiated the paperback rights for Dunces with LSU, netting an instant bestseller after the book won the Pulitzer in 1981. Less satisfying is an undeveloped subplot involving a fictional reporter seeking to write about Toole. The authors also indulge in unnecessary historical scene setting ("in August of 1963, as Beatlemania continued to entrance the country, President Kennedy and the First Lady mourned the death of an infant son"). This love letter to Toole fans offers plenty of insights into the tragic literary figure.
