Butterfly in the Typewriter

by Cory MacLauchlin

  Toole enjoyed traveling while in the army. He visited Aruba, the Virgin Islands, and parts of Puerto Rico. Here he leans on a window sill confidently looking into the distance. (LaRC, Tulane University)

  The English instructors enjoyed access to the officers’ club where they would drink and socialize. With laughter in his eyes, Toole looks to Bob Young. Walter Carreiro prepares a smoke, and Toole’s close friend Dave Kubach, whose typewriter he borrowed to begin Confederacy, digs into Christmas dinner. (Personal collection of Walter Carreiro)

  The original building of Dominican College facing St. Charles Avenue. Toole taught on the second floor. (Joseph Sanford)

  Toole in his academic robes at a commencement ceremony at Dominican. This picture appeared on his memorial page in the 1969 yearbook. (St. Mary’s Dominican College)

  Head of the English department at Dominican, Sister Beatrice was a close confidant to Toole. After the publication of Confederacy, she refused to grant interviews to reporters, vowing never to violate the trust Toole had in her.

  Sculptor Angela Gregory was another of Toole’s confidants at Dominican. They would often walk to and from campus together.(St. Mary’s Dominican College)

  Taken in the fall of 1968, this is the last picture of Toole before his death. He always prided himself on looking sharp, but in his Tulane library card photo he appears to have gained weight and looks unshaven. (LaRC, Tulane University)

  Toole was laid to rest in the Ducoing tomb. Only three people attended his funeral: his mother, his father, and his childhood nanny, Beulah Mathews. (Joseph Sanford)

  The “Queen Mother” in her glory. After Confederacy won the Pulitzer Prize, Thelma Toole became a local celebrity in New Orleans. Performing at events in her honor, she gave readings, played piano, and sang. She spent the last few years of her life relishing the attention, but she always gave her son credit and often ended an evening with the line, “I walk in the world for my son.” (LaRC, Tulane University)

  A picturesque view down Chartres Street leading to the iconic Saint Louis Cathedral on Jackson Square in the French Quarter. New Orleans was Toole’s greatest source of inspiration. (Joseph Sanford)

  As such, he welcomed his return to 390 Audubon Street as a temporary arrangement.

  Content and focused on his life after the army, with his departure date set for August 6, Toole sought opportunities to escape Fort Buchanan. He visited Ponce, a fishing village on the coast of the Caribbean Sea in Puerto Rico. And he took a short leave to visit the Virgin Islands. He brought his typewriter along, but he rested much of the time. He splurged on hotel rooms equipped with air conditioning. And he observed scenes of island life he had not witnessed from the window of his barracks room.

  He also received word that his best friend Cary Laird had become engaged. He writes to his parents, ribbing his old friend,The announcement of Cary’s impending marriage came as no surprise.... However, the poor girl will have to adjust to a life free of the most sentimentally romantic notions along with a permanently bare coin purse. For all of Cary’s sighs and valentines, I seriously doubt that he will ever permit his heart to govern his Hearty Green financial concepts.

  Toole’s droll response to his friend’s nuptials may have come from his own loneliness. He continues,Sgt. Toole, alas, is rapidly approaching spinsterhood, it seems. I will have to cultivate a pet or two upon my return to civilian life.

  By mid-July he prepared for his return to New Orleans. In his makeshift writer’s studio, the sparse furnishings accented the seriousness of his artistic pursuit; he shipped his typewriter home, insuring it for two hundred dollars; it was his most valued possession. He asked his parents to make his car presentable as he planned to take some road trips, likely to visit Kubach in Wisconsin. And he accepted a teaching position at St. Mary’s Dominican College, a small Catholic school in Uptown just a few blocks from his parents’ house. He bragged and likely exaggerated to his mother that Dominican seemed to think it had a celebrity on its hands:The administration hired me with breathtaking dispatch. Later, they asked for a photo, and, after I had sent one, asked whether I would be willing to teach a course on WYES-TV also . . . I receive two page letters from Dominican almost daily; the nuns, apparently, are growing more and more excited as my date of arrival nears. Who knows? It might be a relatively pleasant experience . . . and will certainly provide me with the financial security for writing.

  At $6,000 a year, his salary was a substantial increase from army pay. He would once again return to the task of teaching English; the job would serve his family’s financial needs, as he worked to publish his novel. Ideally, once published, he would have the means to live and write independently. It seemed, in 1963, to be an exciting plan that would benefit everyone.

  It is unclear how much of the novel he had completed by the time he sent his typewriter home, but it seems certain most of it was finished. What he had was enough to convince him of its imminent success. And by end of July it had become much more than a New Orleans story. He had developed a complex network of literary allusions, echoing the dark humor and sharp phrasing of Evelyn Waugh, employing insights from A. J. Liebling who concisely expressed the paradoxes of New Orleans from a New Yorker perspective, and perhaps gleaning lessons from Robert Gover, whose novel featuring a jive-talking black prostitute akin to Burma Jones, One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding, Toole had acquired in Puerto Rico. And once people read Toole’s novel, they would see in his characters hints of Miguel Cervantes, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and Charles Dickens.

  In addition to his wide-ranging inspirations from the canon of Western literature, Toole also applied the lesson he had expressed as an undergraduate at Tulane: every writer is “a mirror to the temper of his times.” So as he drew upon his literary predecessors, he also satirized American society in the early 1960s, primarily through Ignatius Reilly. The rotund medievalist sings in falsetto the wildly popular song “Big Girls Don’t Cry” that played on radios all over the country. Ignatius becomes a ludicrous civil rights leader, seeking to spark the violent “Crusade for Moorish Dignity,” at a time when the Civil Rights Movement reached a fever pitch. Ignatius also tries to form “The Army of Sodomites,” as gay rights groups, taking cues from the Civil Rights Movement, gained traction in major cities. The absurdities of Ignatius’s exploits are drawn from entrenched camps of the culture wars in American society of the early 1960s. But alas, Ignatius’s plans are vested when the black laborers are unmoved by his suggestive gyrations and he is pummeled by a group of belligerent lesbians.

  Toole had originally set out to write the quintessential New Orleans novel. His close friend Emilie Dietrich Griffin remembers that he felt New Orleans writers had operated under stereotypes of the city and “Out of the stereotypes . . . each writer had created some delusionary myth, missing the genuine texture of the place.” His predecessors, such as William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, had missed the greatest lesson of New Orleans: that its texture does not come from its gritty underbelly but rather from its centuries-long ability to enfold new voices, while never losing track of its elaborate roots, a cultural value that comes from living on the edge of existence. Toole not only understood this lesson, but in writing Confederacy he applied it, and in doing so he wrote a novel that did more than capture the essence of New Orleans; he struck a chord that would eventually reverberate through many countries and many languages.

  Finally, his departure day arrived. On August 6 he awoke to his last morning in Puerto Rico. The sun shining through the louvered windows announced a day he had long awaited. He would no longer tread through the wet clay in the rainy season or retreat to his mosquito net in the evenings. He would no longer eat army-rationed meals or worry about surprise military inspections. But he would also surrender his private room, his creative sanctuary where he composed his literary masterpiece. In a letter to Fletcher, he reflected on his time in Puerto Rico:The two years in the Caribbean were, surprisingly worthwhile from several points of view. I
at least completed the active military obligation, and the Army treated me well (Remember that we are speaking here in the context of military treatment.) and gave me the leisure to accomplish several projects of my own. Puerto Rico itself was worth experiencing: one can appreciate Conrad much more deeply after having lived there for two years.

  In the afternoon, he boarded an Air Force plane bound for Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Ascending over the Atlantic, the island gradually shrank behind him, a small green sentinel in the vast ocean. He was free. And yet Puerto Rico would always be a part of him. In fact, it gave him more than a room to write. It offered him distance and perspective. It offered him a pace of life that allowed him to take stock of his dreams and seize opportunities. But years would pass before he fully realized the significance of his time in Puerto Rico. Stepping down from the plane, he may have “kiss[ed] the ground in South Carolina,” as he had said he would. After two days of processing his discharge papers, Toole traded in his army uniform for a gray suit. He returned to civilian life, he returned to New Orleans with his manuscript in hand.

  Chapter 10

  Back Home in New Orleans

  Toole loved his city, and he undoubtedly loved his parents. But having held a teaching position at two colleges and earning a series of promotions and commendations in the army, he aspired to something more than a small apartment with two aging parents as roommates. He must have had some inclination that such a living condition would be difficult, although he may have underestimated the stress of it. Whatever the challenges, he could take solace in his master plan. So, like Theseus entering the Labyrinth, Toole held his novel as the string to lead him out of the maze that New Orleans and life at home would inevitably become.

  In the year ahead he would use his spare time to refine his manuscript for submission to publishers. And in that year his mother, overjoyed to have him back home, encouraged his pursuit. She recalled the day he returned and presented her his manuscript. She read the first chapter and told him it was “promising.” The next day she completed reading the whole thing. “It’s a masterpiece, son,” she told him. She was excited at the prospect of her son’s work, but she noticed something different about him. He seemed quieter, as if completely absorbed by his book. She would eventually find his restraint and retreat worrisome, but for now he was to begin his teaching job, and the Toole household would enjoy a boon to its anemic coffers.

  A few days after his return home, Toole visited Bobby Byrne. The two former officemates chatted over coffee. Never mentioning the novel, Toole told Byrne about his new job at Dominican. As a staunch devotee to the Franciscan order, Byrne was horrified. He found the Dominicans ridiculous and potentially dangerous. He cautioned Toole that “that Byzantine institution” would surely ruin him. Toole likely dismissed the comment with his trademark half smile. What an Ignatian thing to say. Despite Byrne’s ill feelings toward the Dominicans, Toole had his plan that would ensure a short tenure at the college. And he retained his optimism as he began the school year.

  In September Toole wrote to Fletcher, who was traveling across Europe,For now I have sought temporary shelter in New Orleans by teaching at Dominican College for the 1963–64 academic year. Because I teach only 10½ hours a week, I will seem to have the same leisure I enjoyed in the Army. The college has been in session for about two weeks, and so far the routine there has been extremely pleasant. Barring some Inquisition, I should have a serene year, and, with the salary they’ve given me, a very financially solvent one, also.

  The quaint college, a few blocks from Tulane and Loyola universities, offered him a warm welcome. While it did not hold the stature of its larger academic neighbors, the small school had a charming campus and rich traditions. Two towering palm trees marked the entryway to campus along St. Charles Avenue, and a brick pathway led to the main hall; a three-story building adorned with a cupola, onion-shaped dormers and a two-level arcade shading the huge sash windows. Toole taught in a classroom on the second floor. And among the faculty composed primarily of clergy, he quickly gained the adoration of his colleagues and students. The students were thrilled to have a smart, young scholar—who was also a New Orleanian—from the Ivy League teaching them. He left an impression of intelligence and gentility. In 1980 the Dominican alumni newsletter described him asThe gentlemanly English teacher who asked for [student’s] permission before removing his jacket on humid summer days in Dominican’s fan cooled classrooms.... Students will remember his polite Southern manners, his impeccably neat appearance, his dry humor, his insight into literature and his profound understanding of the absurdities of life in the 1960s.

  His salient commentary in his lectures echoed aspects of the novel he labored over at home. Pam Guerin, who was an English major for a short time at Dominican, took many classes with Professor Toole. She recalls that his lectureswere mainly on issues from childhood or from New Orleans area situations. Not so different from his book. He made fun of the hot dog vendors in the city. And I did see a lot of his childhood in the lectures . . .

  Of course, his students at the time were unaware of his novel writing. He kept his two roles as teacher and writer separate. And while he would later comment to his friends about the drudgery of teaching, once he was in the classroom it appeared to his students that he enjoyed it, and they enjoyed him. Perhaps his most lasting devotees to his memory at Dominican are the three Trader sisters. As they recalled, Toole routinely entered class at the last moment. And at times he could take on that supercilious tone so evident in Ignatius Reilly (as well as Toole’s mother) that could be entertaining. He “ridiculed Reader’s Digest” and occasionally spoke of “legitimate theater.” He often commented on “the coming trend of making books into movies.”

  Toole left a lasting impression on Joan Trader Bowen, who took courses with him throughout her four years at Dominican. She identified a performance-like quality to his lectures. “He made the class interesting,” she recalls, “how he said it was just as enjoyable as what he said.” And Joan’s sister Barbara Trader Howard observed that Toole was “subdued” but had “a spark underneath” it all.

  In his courses he assigned authors such as J. D. Salinger and James Joyce, but also as an enthusiast of Southern literature, he often praised works such as Lanterns on the Levee—the autobiography of William Alexander Percy—who was the uncle and guardian of novelist Walker Percy. And somehow Toole seamlessly connected these works to life experiences to which his students could relate.

  Among students and professors, he earned a reputation as a professor not to be missed. As Guerin confesses,I tried to take all my required English classes with him. . . . I found him to be very approachable but also very set in his opinions and grades. He had a dry wit about him that I enjoyed.

  To this day his students and the Dominican sisters that once ran the college fondly remember Toole as one of the “most respected and well-liked faculty members.”

  He enjoyed the praise and attention at Dominican, but much like Hunter College, the job was a means to an end. And while most people had no idea he had written a novel, there were a few people that he trusted. In his first semester at Dominican, a senior named Candace de Russy caught his eye. And his mother, concerned about her son’s introverted behavior, encouraged him to invite friends to their home. Whether by chance or design, Toole and de Russy kept running into each other on campus, although it seemed to her that the young professor sought her out. Over lunch or coffee they would talk about literature. He was undeniably smart, but de Russy thought he “projected a kind of loneliness, even timidity,” even though he was always “proper and appropriate.” As their conversations became more frequent de Russy noticed there was a “remoteness” about him, as if he had difficulty sustaining a conversation. He would listen, and he could tell a great story, but engaging in an exchange of ideas became awkward and clumsy for him. For a moment, she thought he might be depressed.

  One autumn afternoon Toole invited her back to his house to meet his parents.
They strolled down St. Charles Avenue to Audubon Street. Thelma Toole greeted de Russy at the door and eagerly welcomed her into their home. She was introduced to his father, as he sat in a darkened room. He kindly waved but did not join them for tea. Over the course of the afternoon, it seemed to de Russy that Thelma was careful to create a pleasurable experience. It occurred to her that her invitation might have stemmed from Toole’s interests in dating her or from a mother’s hope for her son “to gain a more normal life.” It must have taken substantial trust on Toole’s part for him to invite home a student at the college where he taught. But de Russy, perhaps through her empathy for him, had gained his confidence, so much so that he talked to her about his novel.

  What she previously identified as depression, she now recognized as an astoundingly deep immersion in his manuscript. She noticed that Toole acted as if his mind was split between reality and his book, not as if he couldn’t distinguish between the two, but because he had poured his soul into the novel. “The center of his existence had become his book,” she observed. “When he walked on campus, he looked straight forward, not making eye contact, and every once in a while he would kind of chuckle to himself as if something just struck him as absurd.” He discussed characters and scenes with de Russy, but sensing that more lay underneath his plot summaries, she attempted to draw out what troubled him. She gleaned from their conversations that he had “a consuming desire to have the book acknowledged and recognized. He was not egotistical, but it was something deeper. He believed in the exceptionalism of the book, but he had anxiety about it. It had very much to do with his identity and profound sense of self.”