John Kennedy Toole: The Genius New Orleans Almost Lost

There is a bronze statue on Canal Street, right where the old D.H. Holmes department store used to stand, of a large man in a hunting cap clutching a shopping bag. That's Ignatius J. Reilly, the fictional hero of A Confederacy of Dunces, and he might be the most accurate portrait of New Orleans stubbornness ever committed to paper.

A Brilliant Kid from Uptown

John Kennedy Toole was born on December 17, 1937, in New Orleans. He skipped two grades, entered high school at 12, and graduated at 16. He earned his degree from Tulane and his master's from Columbia. While stationed in Puerto Rico by the Army, he began writing A Confederacy of Dunces.

The Book Nobody Wanted

Toole submitted the manuscript to Simon and Schuster, where editor Robert Gottlieb found it talented but ultimately rejected it. The rejection devastated Toole. On March 26, 1969, he died by suicide near Biloxi at age 31.

A Mother's Crusade

Thelma Toole pushed the manuscript on novelist Walker Percy at Loyola. Percy couldn't put it down. The book was published in 1980 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981.

Dirty Coast Connection

If You Can Read This You Are Local is pure Ignatius energy. Nola Gothic captures the literary side of the city. Strange Things Below Sea Level is basically the thesis of A Confederacy of Dunces.