The UL Lafayette Foundation has obtained a rare manuscript of A Confederacy of Dunces, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by John Kennedy Toole.
Acquisition of the 290-page manuscript of Toole’s farcical novel, which has handwritten corrections on many pages, is especially significant because no known original of the manuscript exists. The author committed suicide in 1969 at the age of 31, after numerous unsuccessful attempts to get his book published. A Confederacy of Dunces was printed in 1980; Toole was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction posthumously a year later.
Toole was a professor of English at the University from 1959 to 1960. It’s commonly believed that he based at least two of the novel’s central characters, Ignatius Reilly and Myrna Minkoff, on fellow faculty members.
The manuscript was purchased at a Sotheby’s auction in New York City. It was part of Lot No. 228, which had been given to the author’s high school friend, Cary Laird, by Toole’s mother, Thelma. The lot also included photographs of Toole with Laird.
The Foundation obtained several Toole-related items in 2012, including a personal letter he wrote to the late Drs. Patricia and Milton Rickels, both former English professors at the University, and their son, Gordon.
The artifacts will be utilized for study and research about Toole’s life and work. The Friends of the Humanities, which supports interdisciplinary humanities at UL Lafayette, intends to hold an event related to Toole next year. “We are still in the planning stages, but some of the activities being considered include a daylong symposium, and perhaps a screening of a film about the author,” said Linda Alessi, president of the organization.