Toole, John Kennedy, 1937-1969

John Kennedy Toole was born in New Orleans in 1937 and graduated from Tulane University. He earned a master's degree from Columbia University. He served in the army and later taught at Hunter College, the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now University of Louisiana at Lafayette), and Dominican College. Toole commited suicide in 1969. In 1981 he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel A Confederacy of Dunces.

John Kennedy Toole, posthumous winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981, was born in New Orleans on December 17, 1937. After skipping several grades, he finished high school at the age of sixteen. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with Honors in English at Tulane University in 1958. He received his M.A. 1959 from Columbia University, and taught at Hunter College. He was drafted in 1962 and stationed with the Army in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he continued to teach English and wrote A confederacy of dunces. Upon returning to New Orleans, he unsuccessfully attempted to have his manuscript published; he taught at Dominican College and in 1968 enrolled in graduate school at Tulane University to work on his Ph.D. In 1969, he asphyxiated himself in his car in Biloxi, Mississippi. The novel was ultimately published by Louisiana State University Press in 1980 after his mother, Thelma Ducoing Toole, approached Walker Percy with the manuscript. A confederacy of dunces won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as the Louisiana Literary Award. A musical production based on the novel premiered at LSU in 1984.