A Confederacy of Dunces
Author(s): John Kennedy Toole
The comedy of A Confederacy of Dunces is writ large in and between its many lines: a grand farce of overeducated white trash, corrupt law enforcement, exotic dancing and the nouveau riche in steamy New Orleans. The Pulitzer committee thought highly enough of Toole's comic prowess to give his only novel the Prize posthumously. Therein lies the tragedy of this huge and hugely funny book: John Kennedy Toole didn't live to see this now-classic novel published. He committed suicide in 1969 at the age of thirty-two. It was his mother who was responsible for bringing his book to public light, pestering the hell out of Walker Percy, who was teaching at Loyola in 1976, to read it until finally that distinguished author relented. In his foreword to A Confederacy of Dunces, Percy laments the body of work lost to the world of literature with the author's death, but rejoices "that this gargantuan tumultuous human tragicomedy is at least made available to a world of readers."
Product Information
Winner of Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1981.
John Kennedy Toole was born in New Orleans in 1937 and died in 1969. He received a master's degree in English from Columbia University and taught at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He wrote A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES in the early sixties and tried unsuccessfully to get his novel published; depressed by his failure to do so he committed suicide. It is only through the tenacity of his mother, wholse faith in her son's work never wavered, that his book has found its deserved audience.
General Fields
- :
- : pengui
- : pengui
- : 0.23
- : 01 February 1999
- : 181mm X 111mm X 26mm
- : United Kingdom
- : books
Special Fields
- : John Kennedy Toole
- : Paperback
- : 813.54
- : 416
