John Kennedy Toole
American novelist (1937–1969)
Biography
John Kennedy Toole was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, whose posthumously published novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981. At 16 in 1954, he wrote his first novel, The Neon Bible, which he shelved in the same year, not finding a willing publisher; he later dismissed it as "adolescent". Toole was a successful and popular professor, first at University of Southwestern Louisiana, then Hunter College, and finally St. Mary's Dominican College in New Orleans. Having persuaded Simon & Schuster to accept A Confederacy of Dunces, he was unable to resolve editorial disputes. Due in part to the novel's failure, he suffered from paranoia and depression, dying by suicide at the age of 31.
Occupation
John Kennedy Toole is recorded as a novelist, a journalist, a military personnel, a professor, a writer and a screenwriter, born in Louisiana (1937–1969).
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John Kennedy Toole was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1937. Explore other notable figures from Louisiana, historic sites connected to this era, and the full colonial and statehood history of the state using the links below.
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Biographical content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source: Wikipedia.
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