Faust, Rhoda K.

Rhoda K. Faust owned and operated Maple Street Bookshop and Faust Publishing, both of New Orleans, La. Around 1979, Faust befriended Thelma Toole, mother of author John Kennedy Toole (1937-1969). Together Faust and Thelma Toole, with the help of author Walker Percy, succeeded in convincing the Louisiana State University Press to publish John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces in 1980. Although John Kennedy Toole had committed suicide eleven years earlier in 1969, he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for A Confederacy of Dunces in 1981. Before writing A Confederacy of Dunces in his late 20s, John Kennedy Toole had authored another novel, The Neon Bible, at age 16. According to Rhoda K. Faust, Toole's mother, Thelma Toole, loaned Faust the manuscript of this earlier work and granted her permission to publish it. Sometime around 1980, the friendly relationship between Faust and Thelma Toole turned sour, and Thelma Toole demanded the return of the manuscript and denied ever giving Faust permission to publish The Neon Bible . Faust filed suit against Thelma Toole claiming that Toole had entered into a verbal contract with her, which granted her company, Faust Publishing, the right to publish The Neon Bible . Lower courts and appeals courts in Louisiana failed to recognize the validity of the verbal contract. The Neon Bible was finally published by Grove Press in 1989.

From the guide to the Rhoda K. Faust Collection on John Kennedy Toole and Other Materials, 1925-2000, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.)

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