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John Kennedy Toole Quotes

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. He also wrote The Neon Bible. Although several people in the literary world felt his writing skills were praiseworthy, Toole's novels were rejected during his lifetime. After suffering from paranoia and depression due in part to these failures, he committed suicide at the age of 31.

Toole was born to a middle-class family in New Orleans. From a young age, his mother, Thelma, taught him an appreciation of culture. She was thoroughly involved in his affairs for most of his life, and at times they had a difficult relationship. With his mother's encouragement, Toole became a stage performer at the age of 10 doing comic impressions and acting. At 16 he wrote his first novel, The Neon Bible, which he later dismissed as "adolescent".Toole received an academic scholarship to Tulane University in New Orleans. After graduating from Tulane, he studied English at Columbia University in New York while teaching simultaneously at Hunter College. He also taught at various Louisiana colleges, and during his early career as an academic he was valued on the faculty party circuit for his wit and gift for mimicry. His studies were interrupted when he was drafted into the army, where he taught English to Spanish-speaking recruits in San Juan, Puerto Rico. After receiving a promotion, he used his private office to begin writing A Confederacy of Dunces, which he finished at his parents' home after his discharge.

Dunces is a picaresque novel featuring the misadventures of protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly, a lazy, obese, misanthropic, self-styled scholar who lives at home with his mother. It is hailed for its accurate depictions of New Orleans dialects. Toole based Reilly in part on his college professor friend Bob Byrne. Byrne's slovenly, eccentric behavior was anything but professorial, and Reilly mirrored him in these respects. The character was also based on Toole himself, and several personal experiences served as inspiration for passages in the novel. While at Tulane, Toole filled in for a friend at a job as a hot tamale cart vendor, and worked at a family owned and operated clothing factory. Both of these experiences were later adopted into his fiction.

Toole submitted Dunces to publisher Simon & Schuster, where it reached editor Robert Gottlieb. Gottlieb considered Toole talented but felt his comic novel was essentially pointless. Despite several revisions, Gottlieb remained unsatisfied, and after the book was rejected by another literary figure, Hodding Carter Jr., Toole shelved the novel. Suffering from depression and feelings of persecution, Toole left home on a journey around the country. He stopped in Biloxi, Mississippi, to end his life by running a garden hose in from the exhaust of his car to the cabin. Some years later, his mother brought the manuscript of Dunces to the attention of novelist Walker Percy, who ushered the book into print. In 1981, Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Wikipedia  

✵ 17. December 1937 – 26. March 1969
John Kennedy Toole photo

Works

A Confederacy of Dunces
A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole
The Neon Bible
The Neon Bible
John Kennedy Toole
John Kennedy Toole: 28   quotes 1   like

Famous John Kennedy Toole Quotes

“Oh, Fortuna, blind, heedless goddess, I am strapped to your wheel,' Ignatius belched, 'Do not crush me beneath your spokes. Raise me on high, divinity.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

“I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Variant: ... I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.
Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

“You can always tell employees of the government by the total vacancy which occupies the space where most other people have faces.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces (1980, posthumous), Ch. 9, p. 226

“I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

“My mother is currently associating with some undesirables who are attempting to transform her into an athlete of sorts, deprave specimens of mankind who regularly bowl their way to oblivion.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

“When Fortuna spins you downward, go out to a movie and get more out of life.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Ch. 2, section V http://books.google.com/books?id=xXxWIS_KF5gC&q=%22When+Fortuna+spins+you+downward+go+out+to+a+movie+and+get+more+out+of+life%22&pg=PA48#v=onepage
Source: A Confederacy of Dunces (1980, posthumous)

John Kennedy Toole Quotes about God

“With the breakdown of the Medieval system, the gods of Chaos, Lunacy, and Bad Taste gained ascendancy.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces (1980, posthumous), Ch. 2, opening line

John Kennedy Toole Quotes about parting

“I suspect that I am the result of particularly weak conception on the part of my father. His sperm was probably emitted in a rather offhand manner.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

“"Is it the part of the police department to harass me when this city is a flagrant vice capital of the civilized world?" Ignatius bellowed over the crowd in front of the store. "This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft."”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces (1980, posthumous), Ch. 1, p. 21

“Is it the part of the police department to harass me when this city is a flagrant vice capital of the civilized world?”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Ignatius bellowed over the crowd in front of the store. "This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft."
Source: A Confederacy of Dunces (1980, posthumous), Ch. 1, p. 21

John Kennedy Toole Quotes

“Apparently I lack some particular perversion which today's employer is seeking.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

“Is my paranoia getting completely out of hand, or are you mongoloids really talking about me?”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

“You could tell by the way he talked, though, that he had gone to school a long time. That was probably what was wrong with him.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

School , Way , Time

“I refuse to "look up." Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

Optimism , Universe

“My life is a rather grim one. One day I shall perhaps describe it to you in great detail.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

Life

“I avoid that bleak first hour of the working day during which my still sluggish senses and body make every chore a penance. I find that in arriving later, the work which I do perform is of a much higher quality.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

Sense

“Canned food is a perversion,' Ignatius said. 'I suspect that it is ultimately very damaging to the soul.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

Food , Soul

“Leaving New Orleans also frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

Heart

“A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

“Oh, Fortuna, you capricious sprite!”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

A Confederacy of Dunces

“It's not your fate to be well treated," Ignatius cried. "You're an overt masochist. Nice treatment will confuse and destroy you.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

Fate

“… When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occassional cheese dip.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

“employers sense in me a denial of their values… they fear me. i suspect that they can see that i am forced to function in a century which i loathe.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

Fear , Sense

“I really don't have the time to discuss the errors of your value judgements.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

Error , Time

“The human desire for food and sex is relatively equal. If there are armed rapes, why should there not be armed hot dog thefts?”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces (1980, posthumous), Ch. 7, p. 184

Food , Dogs , Sex

“The war had been on for quite a while now when Poppa got his notice from the draft. He didn't have to go, but he more or less enlisted. Mother and I and Aunt Mae went down to the train to see him off, and when he left he kissed Mother and he cried, and I'd never seen a man cry before. The train pulled away, and we stood there and watched it go, and Mother kept looking long after it had passed around the hill.”

John Kennedy Toole book The Neon Bible

Source: The Neon Bible, Ch. 4, opening paragraph.

War , Kiss , Cry , Training

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