Perhaps in an attempt to re-center himself on a track toward the prestigious and gratifying future he so deserved, Toole once again took up the pursuit of his PhD. But his condition and commitment to his parents left Tulane the only viable option for graduate studies. Between Dominican and Tulane he walked in two different worlds, a professor by day and a student by night, just as he had done at Hunter and Columbia. He took only two courses: a seminar on Dreiser and an Old English course with Professor Huling Ussery. His classmates remember him as intelligent and well prepared. His class notes demonstrate clear thinking and the ability to reason. These were not the scribblings of a madman, but rather notes from a mind that could parse out academic pursuits and the unnerving anxiety that something was not right in his world. Toole often visited Professor Ussery during office hours and after class. They began frequent and long one-on-one discussions, conversations that convinced Ussery his student was not well. Ussery could tell Toole was suffering. Just as Toole had done with Sister Beatrice and Angela Gregory, he confided in Ussery. When asked about the nature of their discussion, Ussery declined to comment. But he admits they did not discuss Old English or the PhD program. They were delving deeper and more personal than two professors talking shop. With growing concern for his student’s well being, Ussery went to his department chair to suggest they recommend Toole for psychological evaluation. The chair decided that the department would not get involved in the personal matters of a student.
Toole’s paranoia came to a head one day in Ussery’s class. Thomas Bonner was in the course with Toole and remembers him as “competent in his preparations and quiet in demeanor.” Having taught at University of Southwestern Louisiana (formerly SLI), Bonner knew Toole’s old Lafayette circle. But after acknowledging their common acquaintances, such as the Rickelses, Byrne, and Broussard, their communication ceased. It appeared Toole kept to himself, not socializing with other graduate students. One day in the basement classroom in Gibson Hall, as Toole sat in his regular seat by a pillar in the middle of the room, he stood up during the class session. As Bonner recalls, Toole announced “There’s a plot against me here.” There was sudden quiet. Professor Ussery asked him to point out the plotters. Toole said nothing. Then Professor Ussery asked those who had nothing to do with this situation to leave the room. Everyone left but Toole. My last sight of him was his standing silently facing Professor Ussery, who was partially sitting on the edge of his desk.
The students were clearly unaware of any event in class that might have prompted such a reaction. Toole never returned to class. Obviously, he sensed that forces beyond his control confined him. He had become suspicious of his students at Dominican, and he determined some contingent at Tulane worked against him.
But, these neuroses were minor compared to his most horrifying realization that he shared with Patricia and Milton Rickels. Since returning from Puerto Rico, he often spent an overnight in Lafayette visiting the Rickelses. Typically he would make the drive on a Saturday afternoon; they would have dinner and drinks, talking into the evening, then enjoy a relaxing breakfast the next morning before he returned to New Orleans. But on one of his weekend visits in 1968, he pulled into the Rickelses driveway after the two-hour trip and remained in the car. Noticing he was not moving, Patricia went out to greet him. “What are you doing, Ken? Come on inside.” He looked at her and said, “No. I don’t think you want me.” Patricia dismissed his self-pity. “Oh don’t be an ass!” she replied. “Come on inside.” Ken nodded, “Ok. But I am going to leave my bags in here, because I don’t think you want me.” He came into the home, and they enjoyed a pleasant meal. After dinner they sat around the table, talking as usual, but Toole’s conversation surprised them. For the first time, he told them that he had written a novel and that it had been under consideration at Simon and Schuster. They praised his worthy accomplishment. But then Toole shared his shocking insight: A Confederacy of Dunces had been stolen and given to another author at Simon and Schuster.
In what sounded like an elaborate conspiracy theory, Toole explained that George Deaux, the writer who came to teach at SLI a few weeks after Toole left for Columbia University, had gained access to A Confederacy of Dunces and Simon and Schuster published it under a different title. Indeed, during the time Toole and Gottlieb exchanged letters and the manuscript, Simon and Schuster had published three of Deaux’s novels, and Robert Gottlieb had worked as an editor on them all. Deaux’s second wife worked in the publishing industry, as well, and Toole somehow connected her to Simon and Schuster. According to Toole, Deaux had gained access to the manuscript through his wife and Robert Gottlieb.
Patricia listened to her dear friend explain how the work that was supposed to save him from the rigors of teaching and the pressures of living with his parents, had been unjustly taken from him. Sympathetic to his distress, Patricia assumed him correct. While there was no evidence to support his claim, she had an unfavorable view of Deaux from his days at SLI. But Milton Rickels placed the story in context with Toole’s odd behavior in the driveway. Much like Byrne, Milton recognized his symptoms of paranoia and his increasing detachment from reality. That night, as Toole rested in the guest room across the hall, Milton explained to his wife that her dear friend was losing his mind. “No. No, it can’t be true,” Patricia muttered, as she lay on her pillow in disbelief.
While Toole’s faculties of reason might have made emotional leaps of logic, perhaps spurred by jealousy of Deaux’s success as a novelist at Simon and Schuster, his suspicions were not entirely unfounded. Toole never mentioned any specific titles by Deaux, but there are some remarkable similarities between A Confederacy of Dunces and Deaux’s third novel, Superworm, which was published in 1968 just before Gottlieb left Simon and Schuster to become editor-in-chief at Knopf. Considering Toole’s theory sprang from a troubled mind, it should be stressed that a comparison between the two novels serves only to offer insight into how Toole may have come to believe his work was stolen from him, not to legitimize his claims.
Toole owned Deaux’s first novel, The Humanization of Eddie Cement , which had been published in 1964, but that novel as well as Deaux’s second book, Exit, are nothing like Confederacy. Toole must have read Superworm to conclude that his novel had been stolen. In Superworm , history professor Claude Flowers can no longer stand the villainies of modern times. Taking to task adversaries that represent modernity, Claude dons a self-made superhero costume and plots to undermine the grand inequities in “the system.” The dust jacket commentary describes Claude as an American Don Quixote. In the foreword of Confederacy, Walker Percy defines Ignatius as “a fat Don Quixote.” And while Toole was not alive to read Percy’s commentary, he was certainly well aware of the quixotic nature of his main character.
Both Ignatius Reilly and Claude Flowers are self-marginalized intellectuals. They bite their thumb at the modern world through their actions, comments, and dress. Claude “wears Clark’s desert boots and Rooster ties, and shirts with button-down collars.” Most days his jacket and trousers are mismatched. Ignatius wears a hunting cap, a plaid flannel shirt, “voluminous tweed trousers,” and “suede desert boots.” Through their misadventures, both characters modify their apparel. Claude becomes Superworm, dressed in long underwear dyed black. And Ignatius becomes a piratical hot dog vendor, complete with eye patch, plastic cutlass, and hot dog cart. They both disregard social standards of dress, and both characters find costumes that empower them to revolt boldly against society.
Claude is much more proactive than Ignatius in his attack on the Modern Age. He is highly attuned to the places of the worst offense with a “nose, sensitive to evil” and the “fetid wave of wrong thought.” He searches for the perfect opportunity to “leap” into his superhero roll. His lectures in history classes bore his students, but his subversive actions inspire them. The laziness of Ignatius prohibits such zest, although his physique certainly gains destructive momentum. While Claude aims to embody the revolutionary spirit, Ignatius aims to incite
revolution.
And through their social activism, they develop a savior complex, wherein they continually speak and act for the disenfranchised populations of society. But in both books their schemes to save the world are more about legitimizing their own place in society, rather than a sincere attempt at social reform. In Confederacy Ignatius feels compelled to impress the radical activist Myrna Minkoff, his epistolary love. From his Crusade for Moorish Dignity to the Army of Sodomites, he fantasizes about Myrna’s amazed reaction. And Claude’s subversive heroism offers him an avenue of personal expression, where he can render the paradox of lecturing students on the glories of revolution from the bourgeois comforts of a university professorship; he can operate in mainstream society but take on a persona to become the revolutionary. But the villains they take on—a polluting pizza factory, a billboard sign, and an old custodian in the Smithsonian in the case of Claude, and a pants factory in the case of Ignatius—convey the absurdity of their revolutionary spirit.
So the noble ambitions in both Ignatius and Claude are skin deep; they are both incredibly selfish men. While they claim to fight for justice, they mistreat the people that they depend upon most. Ignatius constantly insults his mother, while Claude verbally and at times physically assaults his wife. And yet the most abused characters remain surprisingly devoted to their abuser.
And in the end Ignatius and Claude must leave their home. Ignatius narrowly escapes the Cadillac ambulance coming to take him to the psychiatric ward in Charity Hospital, as he heads to New York City with Myrna Minkoff. Claude is not so lucky; the men “in immaculate white suites” place him in the “padded compartment” of a police wagon. While they meet different fates, both characters are purged from the community; their psychotic self-indulgence had become a consuming vortex. And despite the pleading of their loved ones to change, they could not. The only way to deal with Ignatius and Claude is to get rid of them.
Of course, despite their numerous similarities, one glaring difference between these two novels remains. Under the auspices of Robert Gottlieb, Superworm was published; Confederacy was not. Toole must have asked, “Why Deaux and not me?” Some key aesthetic differences between the two novels offers insight into Gottlieb’s decision against Confederacy . Superworm has a focused plot, closely following the protagonist and not wandering into the lives of other characters. In essence, the plot drives the characters. But the plot of Confederacy is the medium providing opportunity for the humorous expression of the characters. Indeed, Toole had spent his life observing and mimicking characteristics of personalities, and his characters take a primary role in the book. In this regard Confederacy is quite Dickensian: the seemingly disparate yarns of various characters strewn about the city weave together to form the narrative. But this approach requires time, space, and patience from the reader—and perhaps a willingness to lose oneself in a character. But unlike Dickens, Toole avoids sentimentality and agendas of social reform.
Furthermore, Superworm offers a pointed commentary on society in the 1960s. Its message was quite clear. The final words of the novel cast Claude, the radical activist, as “just another naked nut.” Through satire, it critiques the tide of social activism in the late 1960s. Thomas Lask of the New York Times explains, “Mr. Deaux makes a few sharp comments on the do-gooders who are more concerned with action than with results.... He is also acute in showing how often personal drives are elevated to crusades.” Clearly Gottlieb’s final criticism of Confederacy was not only an expression of his opinion, but a valid observation from the standpoint of an editor with the responsibility of finding sellable material in a particular market. In Superworm, Gottlieb may have seen marketability; it must have had that “meaning” that he deemed missing in Confederacy.
And yet Superworm received similar criticism to that of Confederacy, even though a decade separated the publication of the novels. Reviewers said of both writers they were “trying too hard.” Lask observed that Deaux’s “humor was too mechanical.... You can feel him cranking the machine up. But there are scenes of genuine hilarity.” Lask sees the meaningful commentary in the novel but finds the point and humor forced at times.
In his belief that Confederacy had been stolen, Toole had created a compelling and elaborate narrative of Gottlieb and Deaux conspiring against him. Deaux points out that Gottlieb actually had very little to do with Superworm. And it would be remarkably out of character for Gottlieb, who had behaved with so much compassion and took two years to help a writer with whom Simon and Schuster had no contract, only to lift the ideas and hand them to another writer in their house that had proved a moderate success. But to a powerless and once aspiring writer now defeated, the publishing world could be enigmatic. Writers on the margins have used all kinds of methods to understand the road to publication, looking for clues at the bottom of teacups, hoping to make sense out of the exclusive and seemingly insurmountable stratosphere in those high-rise buildings of midtown Manhattan.
If Toole kept up with the New York Times, then he may have seen in March of 1968 the profile detailing the sweeping changes in the publication world, including Gottlieb’s transition to Knopf. As Henry Raymont reported, “Possibly the most striking change was that of Mr. Gottlieb, who took with him Simon and Schuster’s top editorial production team.” Raymont acknowledges that in the midst of this consolidation and emergence of multimillion-dollar publishing houses, a shift from family-owned businesses to huge corporations, publishing houses would be less likely to take risks on writers. Ultimately, the publishing world was getting bigger, stronger, more concentrated, and far more difficult to navigate, and the media cast Gottlieb’s move to Knopf as a key indicator of this dramatic change. In this context the exchange Toole had with Gottlieb appears remarkably rare. And if Toole read the newspaper article, it may have put a final end to any thoughts of resubmitting the novel. The editor who once said he would never abandon Mr. Micawber likely seemed unreachable now. Gottlieb finished up his spring 1968 list for Simon and Schuster. Superworm was one of the last novels under his wing. From Toole’s perspective, Gottlieb had thrown his creative work to another writer as he jumped ship, and there was nothing Toole could do about it.
But even in the midst of his outrage, Toole never lost his capacity for wit. When Patricia Rickels asked about his plans for the novel, now that it had been stolen, Toole replied dismissively that he had given up on it. He had begun writing another novel. The working title of his new novel, he said, was The Conqueror Worm. He would outdo Deaux; he would conquer Superworm.
Patricia and Milton caught the allusion to the poem with the same title by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s poem is an allegorical tragedy of Man, who succumbs to the all-consuming worm. Over the breakfast table at the Rickelses house, Toole cited the horrific futility of life. He determined the world had entered into a confederacy against him. And it seems he began to see his life as if he were sitting in the theater of Poe’s mind:Lo! ’tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
A mystic throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly—
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast shadowy things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!
That motley drama—oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
But see, a
mid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And angels sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out—out are the lights—out all!
And, over each dying form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the seraphs, all haggard and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
Butterfly in the Typewriter Page 24
