Ignatius Rising: The Life of John Kennedy Toole Hardcover - 2001

From the publisher

The story of the phenomenal success of John Kennedy Toole's comic masterpiece, A Confederacy of Dunces, is now legendary in its soundbite version: a wonderful but wacky novel by a long-dead author with a wacky but determined mother finally gets published -- by a university press -- wins the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and sells more than 1.5 million copies in eighteen languages. It's story that rivals the book itself in outlandishness and has always beckoned deeper exploration into the life, mind, and demise of the writer responsible for Ignatius J. Reilly.

In Ignatius Rising, Rene Pol Nevils and Deborah George Hardy present the first biography of John Kennedy Toole, a riveting work based upon scores of interviews with contemporaries of the writer and acquaintances of his mother, Thelma, as well as unpublished letters, documents, and photographs. Known variously as "Ken", "Tooley", and "John", Toole is revealed to have been many things: a coddled only child; an academic prodigy; a soul tortured by conflicting feelings for his mother and about his sexual identity; a fun-loving cut-up, a master of mimicry, and a conversationalist nonpareil; an impeccable, popular college teacher; a straitlaced constant worrier by day and a back-street blues devotee at night; a writer who cherished the many nuances of his native city, New Orleans; and a man ultimately depressed, overweight, hard-drinking, promiscuous, and mad.

Brought to light is Toole's closely held aspiration to be a successful novelist in New York. A Confederacy of Dunces, which he wrote with passion and confidence while stationed in Puerto Rico with the army, was to be his tribute to the Crescent City, his ticket to the Big Apple,and his release from the entrapment of responsibility for his parents. When the New York publishing world hesitated over the novel, however, Toole gave up on his manuscript and eventually himself.

Nevils and Hardy recount the numerous hands Confederacy passed through on its way to realization as a book, including those of Robert Gottlieb, Hodding Carter Jr., Walker Percy, Roger Straus, and Les Phillabaum. Thelma, reflected here in all her fascinating and irritating dysfunction (her resemblance to Ignatius in oratorical style is striking), receives due credit for bringing her "genius" son's novel to its enthusiastic readership even as her contribution to his suicidal state of mind is pondered.

Frank yet sympathetic, packed with wit and surprise, Ignatius Rising deftly describes a life that is dark, tragic, bizarre, and amazing -- but luminous with the gift of laughter, a life not unlike Toole's beloved characters, now loved the world over. It is a remarkable achievement as the first account of one of the twentieth century's most intriguing literary figures.