Butterfly in the typewriter : the tragic life of John Kennedy Toole and the remarkable story of A confederacy of dunces

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Title:

Butterfly in the typewriter : the tragic life of John Kennedy Toole and the remarkable story of A confederacy of dunces

Author:

MacLauchlin, Cory

ISBN:

9780306820403

Edition:

1st Da Capo Press ed.

Publication Information:

New York : Da Capo Press, 2012.

Physical Description:

xv, 319 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. ; 24 cm.

Personal Subject:

Toole, John Kennedy, 1937-1969.

Subject Term:

Novelists, American -- 20th century -- Biography.

Summary:

"The saga of John Kennedy Toole is one of the greatest stories of American literary history. After writing A Confederacy of Dunces, Toole corresponded with Robert Gottlieb of Simon & Schuster for two years. Exhausted from Gottlieb's suggested revisions, Toole declared the publication of the manuscript hopeless and stored it in a box. Years later he suffered a mental breakdown, took a two-month journey across the United States, and finally committed suicide on an inconspicuous road outside of Biloxi. Following the funeral, Toole's mother discovered the manuscript. After many rejections, she cornered Walker Percy, who found it a brilliant novel and spearheaded its publication. In 1981, twelve years after the author's death, A Confederacy of Dunces won the Pulitzer Prize. In Butterfly in the Typewriter, Cory MacLauchlin draws on scores of new interviews with friends, family, and colleagues as well as full access to the extensive Toole archive at Tulane University, capturing his upbringing in New Orleans, his years in New York City, his frenzy of writing in Puerto Rico, his return to his beloved city, and his descent into paranoia and depression"--

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Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake)	921 TOOLE	Searching... Unknown
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	921 TOOLE	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

The saga of John Kennedy Toole is one of the greatest stories of American literary history. After writing A Confederacy of Dunces , Toole corresponded with Robert Gottlieb of Simon & Schuster for two years. Exhausted from Gottlieb's suggested revisions, Toole declared the publication of the manuscript hopeless and stored it in a box. Years later he suffered a mental breakdown, took a two-month journey across the United States, and finally committed suicide on an inconspicuous road outside of Biloxi. Following the funeral, Toole's mother discovered the manuscript. After many rejections, she cornered Walker Percy, who found it a brilliant novel and spearheaded its publication. In 1981, twelve years after the author's death, A Confederacy of Dunces won the Pulitzer Prize.

In Butterfly in the Typewriter , Cory MacLauchlin draws on scores of new interviews with friends, family, and colleagues as well as full access to the extensive Toole archive at Tulane University, capturing his upbringing in New Orleans, his years in New York City, his frenzy of writing in Puerto Rico, his return to his beloved city, and his descent into paranoia and depression.

Author Notes

Cory MacLauchlin is a producer, biographer, and member of the English Faculty at Germanna Community College. He lives in northern Virginia with his wife and son.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

In this thoughtful and thorough biography, MacLauchlin recounts the short and tragic life of John Kennedy Toole, author of A Confederacy of Dunces-a book cast aside by publishers during the author's life, but finally published and awarded the Pulitzer Prize after his suicide at 31-years-old. Born in New Orleans in 1937, Toole was the only son of a "pure" Creole mother and an Irish immigrant father, and was a precocious student growing up and at Tulane. MacLauchlin tracks Toole from his Cajun upbringing, to his graduate work at Columbia in New York City at a time when the likes of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg were basking in "newfound literary fame," and to his being drafted and stationed in Puerto Rico as an English teacher in 1960, during which assignment his book began to take shape. Unfortunately, finding a publisher for the idiosyncratic comic novel proved difficult; Simon & Schuster editor Robert Gottleib took interest in Toole and his work, but remained unconvinced that publishing A Confederacy of Dunces was a tenable business move. Meanwhile, Toole's mental health rapidly deteriorated, a process abetted by his work on the novel. The final days of the young writer's life are the hardest to recreate, but MacLauchlin does an admirable job distinguishing facts from speculations as he recounts the events leading up to Toole's suicide on a lonesome Mississippi roadside. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Review

A brief study of the too-brief life of John Kennedy Toole (19371969), author of the classic comic novel A Confederacy of Dunces. Odd as it might be to say about a novelist who was unpublished in his lifetime and who killed himself at 31, Toole led something of a charmed life. The New Orleans native was an academic success, skipping two grades as a child and earning top marks studying literature at Tulane and Columbia. Later, his students at Hunter College and Dominican College would recall him as a charming and engaging teacher. An easy Army stint gave him plenty of free time, and in 1963 he began writing A Confederacy of Dunces, a brilliant picaresque novel set in his hometown. He hit the literary jackpot when the manuscript caught the admiring attention of editor Robert Gottlieb, who shepherded Catch-22 and other classics in the 1960s. But Gottlieb's demands for revisions demoralized Toole, and after giving up on the book he slipped into a mental decline that concluded in 1969 on a Mississippi roadside, where he asphyxiated himself on his car's exhaust fumes. MacLauchlin (English/Germanna Community Coll.) delivers this story in prose that never rises above workmanlike, but he cleanly lays out the brief life of his subject and his work's unlikely afterlife: Thanks to his mother's dogged efforts, Confederacy found an advocate in novelist Walker Percy, and the book became a sensation when it was published in 1980, winning the Pulitzer Prize. MacLauchlin is careful not to stray far from the documented record, and he criticizes a previous biography, Ignatius Rising (2001), for indulging in speculation about Toole's alcoholism and sexual orientation. But apart from identifying friends and colleagues who were likely models for Confederacy's characters, MacLauchlin engages little with the novel itself, which diminishes a sense of Toole's accomplishment and his ongoing influence on comic novelists today. A valuable biography, albeit lacking in Confederacy's lively spirit.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal Review

MacLauchlin (English, Germanna Community Coll.) dedicated five years to learning and writing about the life story of John Kennedy Toole, who killed himself at age 31 in 1969, his novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, still unpublished. The hard work certainly shows in the resulting biography. The reader experiences the life and death of Toole, as well as the amazing journey that the manuscript of A Confederacy of Dunces took long after its author was gone. MacLauchlin's thorough research included interviewing those who knew Toole and examining Toole's personal papers at Tulane University. He shows a connection to and understanding of Toole that translates to readers, making them feel as if they, too, have entered Toole's mind and are with him through his ups and downs. There are several instances where Toole's behavior seemed unusual to MacLauchlin but would make complete sense to other native New Orleanians (such as this reviewer). Those moments aside, MacLauchlin has a deep understanding of Toole without making any unfounded assumptions. Verdict Recommended to all literary biography collections and necessary for all those studying the prominent cultural figures of New Orleans.-Sonnet Ireland, Univ. of New Orleans Lib. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Summary

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Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Kirkus Review

Library Journal Review

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