Butterfly in the Typewriter
Page 35
223 In a reply . . . : Letter to John Toole, June 19, 1971. Box 11, Folder 13, Toole Papers.
223 Harold Toole recalls . . . : Harold Toole, Jr., interview by the author, May 9, 2009.
223 On December 28 . . . : John D. Toole, Certificate of Death. Box 11, Folder 9, Toole Papers.
223 In the spring . . . : Box 11, Folder 13, Toole Papers.
224 In March of . . . : Thelma D. Toole letter to Knopf, April 8, 1973. Box 11, Folder 13, Toole Papers.
224 Indignant when they . . . : Thelma D. Toole letter to Knopf, May 16, 1973. Box 11, Folder 13, Toole Papers.
224 She contacted literary . . . : Thelma D. Toole letter to Matson and Matson, May 8, 1973. Box 11, Folder 13, Toole Papers.
224 She informed them . . . : Thelma D. Toole letter to Knopf, May 16, 1973. Box 11, Folder 13, Toole papers.
224 “It has literary” . . . : I Walk in the World for My Son, film.
224 Perhaps feeling rebuffed . . . : Thelma D. Toole letter to Pelican, May 30, 1973. Box 11, Folder 13, Toole Papers.
224 In July she . . . : Thelma D. Toole letter to Harcourt, July 25, 1973. Box 11, Folder 13, Toole Papers.
225 “Each time I” . . . : Film footage of the Levy Lecture Series.
225 When asked why . . . : Ibid.
225 She spent much . . . : Thelma Toole letter to International City Bank and Trust. August 6, 1976. Box 11, Folder 13. Toole Papers.
225 She made an . . . . . . : Thelma D. Toole letter to Third Press. July 16, 1976. Box 11, Folder 13, Toole Papers.
226 One day in . . . : I Walk in the World for My Son, film.
226 She first reached . . . : Percy, “Foreword,” in A Confederacy of Dunces.
226 She told Arthur . . . : Details of this narrative are taken from the impressions Walker Percy conveyed to his wife, Bunt Percy. Bunt Percy interview by the author, November 4, 2010.
227 “But you are” . . . : Film footage of the Levy Lecture Series.
227 He walked into . . . : Bunt Percy interview by the author, November 4, 2010.
227 Originally from a . . . : Ibid.
228 A few days . . . : Ibid.
228 He prided himself . . . : Ibid.
228 The Chicago Tribune . . . : Stephen E. Rubin, “The Saga of a Rejected Novelist,” Chicago Tribune, June 29, 1980.
229 In March she . . . : Thelma D. Toole letter to New Orleans Review, March 21, 1978. Box 11, Folder 15, Toole Papers.
229 He saw an . . . : Faust interview by the author, June 10, 2011.
229 Meanwhile, Percy got . . . : Bunt Percy interview by the author, November 4, 2010.
230 Thelma entertained self-publication . . . : Film footage of the Levy Lecture Series.
230 On April 19 . . . : Les Phillabaum letter to Thelma D. Toole. Box 11, Folder 15, Toole Papers..
231 She claimed the . . . : Thelma D. Toole speech. Box 13, Folder 16, Toole Papers.
231 Thelma sent a . . . : Letter from LSU Press, July 10, 1979. Box 11, Folder 15, Toole Papers.
232 It was upon . . . : Bunt Percy interview by the author, November 4, 2010.
232 “the guardian spirit” . . . : Film footage of the Levy Lecture Series.
232 Before the release . . . : Form for [Arthur Ducoing], February 8, 1978. Box 11, Folder 14, Toole Papers.
232 LSU Press printed . . . : LSU contract. Toole Papers.
233 In March 1980 . . . : “John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces,” in Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 1980.
233 A month later . . . : “A Confederacy of Dunces,” Publisher’s Weekly, April 11, 1980: 71.
233 In the summer and fall . . . : Comprehensive collection of reviews. Box 9, Folders 1–3, Toole Papers.
234 In 1980 in . . . : Michael O’Connel, “Observations of an Outcast,” Bloomsbury Review, November–December 1980.
234 Even the Chicago . . . : Shirley Ann Grau, “Slapstick Tragedy from a Writer Rescued by Percy,” Chicago Tribune Book Review, June 29, 1980.
234 David Shields barely . . . : David Shields, “Confederacy of Dunces Called Very Good Book,” Waycross Journal-Herald, August 6, 1981.
234 Jonathan Yardley . . . : Jonathan Yardley, “A Posthumous Protege Proves Himself Worthy of Direct Comparison,” Washington Star, July 1980.
235 Anthony Burgess imagined . . . : Anthony Burgess, “Mad Knight of New Orleans,” London Observer, May 31, 1981.
235 And one reviewer . . . : Marcel Sauvage, “Notes: A Confederacy of Dunces,” San Francisco Review of Books, November–December 1980.
236 Toole made changes . . . : Fletcher interview by the author, December 23, 2008.
236 She instructed LSU . . . : Film footage of the Levy Lecture Series.
236 David Evanier, fiction . . . : David Evanier, “Behemoth,” National Review, June 26, 1981.
236 Evanier echoes . . . : Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984).
237 It was one . . . : Edwin McDowell, “Five Nominated for Writing Prize,” New York Times, February 12, 1981.
237 She was interviewed . . . : Fletcher, Ken and Thelma.
237 And a few . . . : Ibid.
237 However, when it . . . : Film footage of the Levy Lecture Series.
Chapter 14: Fame
239 Joel Fletcher, who . . . : Fletcher, Ken and Thelma.
239 She told the . . . : Typescript of interview with Tom Snyder. Box 14, Folder 8, Toole Papers.
239 When Dalt Wonk . . . : Wonk, “John Kennedy Toole’s Odyssey Among the Dunces: Part 2.”
240 And when . . . : Mary Vespa, “A Much Rejected Novel Creates a Literary Sensation Thanks to an Indomitable Mother,” People, September 1980: 56–57.
240 Nola Schneider wrote . . . : Toole Papers.
240 Aunt Thelma, I . . . : Marion Toole Hosli letter to Thelma D. Toole. Box 11, Folder 19, Toole Papers.
241 In a 1981 . . . : Film footage of the Levy Lecture Series.
241 And yet Nick . . . : Polites interview by the author, February 14, 2009.
241 When asked if . . . : Film footage of the Levy Lecture Series.
241 She claimed that . . . : Ibid.
241 And in this . . . : Vespa, “A Much Rejected Novel Creates a Literary Sensation Thanks to an Indomitable Mother.”
242 There remained, according . . . : Korda, Another Life.
242 But in a . . . : Sudie Frese letter to Thelma D. Toole. October 1, 1980. Box 11, Folder 20, Toole Papers
243 Southeastern Louisiana University . . . : SLU honorary diploma. Box 11, Folder 20. Toole Papers.
243 Barely ambulatory, standing . . . : Film footage of the Levy Lecture Series.
243 She never failed . . . : Ibid.
243 Occasionally she claimed . . . : Laborde, “Remembering a Pulitzer Winner.”
244 She confessed she . . . : Film footage of the Levy Lecture Series.
244 Despising the name . . . : Ibid.
244 The trite expression . . . : Thelma D. Toole letter to Mr. Langdon and Mr. Wolf. January 24, 1983. Box 12, Folder 13. Toole Papers.
245 Still, in the . . . : Jane Bethune interview in John Kennedy Toole: The Omega Point.
245 In a promotional photo . . . : Karen Kane, “Anatomy of a Pulitzer Prize,” Texas Houston Chronicle Magazine, December 2, 1984. Photos by Larry Reese.
245 One writer sent . . . : Gus Levy letter to Robert Gottlieb. Box 12, Folder 4. June 1, 1981. Toole Papers.
245 Through a series . . . : David Rosen letter. Box 13, Folder 6. Toole Papers.
246 She attempted to . . . : Bunt Percy interview by the author, November 4, 2010.
246 And in the . . . : Martin interview by the author, May 5, 2011.
246 One afternoon she . . . : Bunt Percy interview by the author, November 4, 2010.
246 At a promotional . . . : Ibid.
246 And when Joel . . . : Fletcher, Ken and Thelma.
247 In February of . . . : Thelma D. Toole letter to David Treen. Box 11, Folder 3, Toole Papers.
248 On
March 4 . . . : Cyrus Greco letter to Thelma D. Toole. Box 11, Folder 3. Toole Papers.
248 In October the . . . : Letter from heirs to Thelma D. Toole. October 3, 1983. Box 11, Folder 3. Toole Papers.
248 In July, Thelma’s . . . : John L. Hantel letter to Brian M. Bégué. July 5, 1984. Box 11, Folder 3. Toole Papers.
249 And in late . . . : Fletcher, Ken and Thelma.
249 Her son had . . . : Wonk, “John Kennedy Toole’s Odyssey Among the Dunces: Part 2.”
249 In her will . . . : Kenneth Holditch, “Introduction,” in The Neon Bible, by John Kennedy Toole (New York: Grove Press, 1989), v–xi.
249 Rhoda Faust filed . . . : Susan Feeney, “Suit Adds Chapter to an Early Work by Author of ‘Dunces’,” Times Picayune- The States Item, August 10, 1984: Book A1, 4.
250 And the Tooles . . . : Harold Toole, Jr., interview by the author, March 2, 2009.
250 Thelma once claimed . . . : Film footage of the Levy Lecture Series.
250 The director and . . . : Cath Clarke, The Directors: Terence Davies, n.d., accessed on July 12, 2011, at http://www.timeout.com/film/features/show-feature/2761/2/.
251 She established the . . . : Geiser interview by the author, June 2008.
251 And with a . . . : Correspondence from Tulane anonymously given to author. January 1, 2010.
251 She intended to . . . : Hantel interview by the author, April 13, 2011.
251 Shortly after her . . . : Geiser interview by the author, June 2008.
Chapter 15: Toward the Heavens
253 Statements like the . . . : Georgia Brown, “The Fire Within,” review of The Neon Bible, Village Voice, February 27, 1996: 61.
253 In 2007 Michael . . . : Michael Hardin, “Between Queer Performances,” Southern Literary Journal, 2007: 58–77.
254 Despite his sympathy . . . : Raymond-Jean Frontain, “John Kennedy Toole,” 2004, accessed July 14, 2011, at http://www.glbtq.com/literature/toole_jk,4.html.
255 In September of . . . : Robert Coles, The Flora Levy Lecture in the Humanities Volume II: Gravity and Grace in the Novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Lafayette: University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1981).
255 When the Italian . . . : Luciana Bianciardi letter to Thelma D. Toole, May 25, 1984. Toole Papers.
256 H. Vernon Leighton . . . : H. Vernon Leighton. “Evidence of influences on John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, including Geoffrey Chaucer,” accessed December 12, 2011 at http://www.winona.edu/library/staff/vl/toole/Leighton_Toole_Chaucer.html.
256 Rudnicki asserts that . . . : Robert Rudnicki, “Euphues and the Anatomy of Influence: John Lyly, Harold Bloom, James Olney, and the Construction of John Kennedy Toole’s Ignatius,” Mississippi Quarterly, 2009: 281–302.
258 His friend that . . . : Lynda Martin letter to Thelma D. Toole. April 21, 1981, Box 12, Folder 3, Toole Papers.
258 And . . . “taken his place among them” . . . : Ibid.
Index
Acadian Profile
Adams, Jane Pic
Adler, Mortimer
Allsup, James
Alpaugh, Jerry
Amis, Kingsley
Andry, Stephen
Angers, Trent
Apollo Theater (New York)
Aquinas, Thomas
“The Arbiter” (poem)
Archy and Mehitabel (poetic satire)
Armstrong, Louis
Army. See Toole, John Kennedy: in army in Puerto Rico
Aruba
Auden, W. H.
Bakhtin, Mikhail
Ballard, E. Goodwin
Barranger, Garic
Baudelaire, Charles
Beatrice, Sister
Beats
Becket, Saint Thomas à
Belushi, John
Berlin (Germany)
Bethune, Jane
Bianciardi, Luciana
Bienville, Jean Baptiste de
Bienville, Sieur de
Birth of a Nation (film)
Black Mischief (Waugh)
Bloomsbury Review
Boethius
Boggs, Lindy
Bonner, Thomas
Bourdelle, Antoine
Bowen, Joan Trader
Bozanich, Robert
Bradbury, Ray
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (film)
Bronte, Emily
Broussard, J. C.
Brown, Georgia
Brown vs. Board of Education (1954)
Bryant, William Cullen
Brynner, Yul
The Buccaneer (film)
Buckley, Jerome
Burgess, Anthony
Bus Stop (film)
Buzzy (girl in high school)
Byrne, Bobby
and Boethius
and “downtown people,”
and drinks with Toole and Fletcher
and Ignatius Reilly
and Milton Rickels’s accident
on New Orleans
at Southwestern Louisiana Institute
and Toole at St. Mary’s Dominican College
on Toole keeping his counsel
and Toole’s mental illness
and Toole’s mother
Byron, Lord
Cajuns and Cajun country
Campbell, Joseph
Canada A. M.
Capote, Truman
Carnival (student literary magazine)
Castro, Fidel
Catch-22 (Heller)
The Catcher in the Rye
Cervantes, Miguel
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Cheever, John
Chicago Tribune Review of Books
Citizen Kane (film)
Civil rights movement
Clark, Dick
Clein, Joseph
Clifford, James
Cold War
Coleridge
Coles, Robert
Columbia University. See Toole, John Kennedy: at Columbia University
Communism
A Confederacy of Dunces (Toole)
and anti-Semitism
and beatniks
and caricature
and characters
continued success, popularity, and translations of
and Crusade for Moorish Dignity
and Deaux
decoding
and dialogue
and “Disillusionment,”
and Farrar, Straus and Giroux
and females in book’s saga
and film
and gay party and gay rights
and Gottlieb and Simon and Schuster
and Grove
and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
and homosexuality
and humor and wit
and Knopf
and literary allusions
and Louisiana State University (LSU) Press
and New Orleans
and New Orleans Review
and Norton
and PEN Faulkner Award
and Percy
philosophical underpinnings of
and plot and meaning
and Pulitzer Prize
and reviews
and sales
and satire
sketching in New York of
and Third Press
and title
Toole abandons
and Toole family heirs
and Toole letter to Fletcher
and Toole scholarship fund
and Toole’s changed outlook on life
and Toole’s expectations
and Toole’s identity, sense of self, and pride
and Toole’s mother
and Toole’s suicide
writing at St. Mary’s Dominican College of
writing in army in Puerto Rico of
The Conqueror Worm
Conrad, Joseph
Crosby, Bing
Crowther, Bosley
Cuba
Dalferes, Clayelle
Davies, Terrence
Davis, Miles
de Russy, Candace
Delta Tau Delta
DeMille, Cecil B.
Diament, Elise Trader
Dichmann, Mary
Dickens, Charles
as influence
study of
Dickinson, Emily
Dietrich, Emilie “Russ,”
See also Griffin, Emilie
DiMaggio, Joe
“Disillusionment” (short story)
Domino, Fats
Donadio, Candida
Dreiser, Theodore
Ducoing, Arthur
Ducoing, George
Ducoing, James
Ducoing, Jean François
Eliot, T. S.
Ellen (romantic letter writer)
Evangeline (poem)
Evanier, David
Exit (Deaux)
Fair Play for Cuba Committee
Farr, Dave
Faulkner, William
Faust, Rhoda
Faye, Frances
Fellini
Fletcher, Joel
and drinks with Toole and Byrne
and Ignatius Rising
and Ken and Thelma
and Kennedy
and Myrna Minkoff
and New York
in Paris
and Purdy
and Snyder
at Southwestern Louisiana Institute
Thelma Toole’s banishing of
on Toole as indigenous New Orleanean
and Toole at Hunter College
and Toole at St. Mary’s Dominican College
and Toole in army
and Toole’s alleged homosexuality
and Toole’s home in Lafayette
and Toole’s mental illness
and Toole’s visit home from army
and trip to New Orleans with Toole (1960)
and Waugh
Fogle, Richard
Foote, Alvin
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Friedman, Bruce Jay
Friedman, Ellen R.
Frontain, Raymond-Jean
Geiser, John
Ginsberg, Allen
Gottlieb, Robert
and correspondence with Toole
critiques by
and “cult of editing,”
and Deaux
decision against Confederacy
and emotional investment of writers
and figures in saga
likely fatigue and grumbling of
and meeting with Toole
moves to Knopf
suggests Toole work on another novel
Thelma Toole’s vicious public derision of