John Kennedy Toole
Born 1937 · Died 1969
John Kennedy Toole (December 17, 1937 – March 26, 1969) was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, whose posthumously published novel A Confederacy of Dunces won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was a big success. 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 died by suicide at the age of 31.
Quotes
“When Fortuna spins you downward, go out to a movie and get more out of life.”
A Confederacy of Dunces, Chapter 2 “You can always tell employees of the government by the total vacancy which occupies the space where most other people have faces.”
A Confederacy of Dunces, Chapter 9 “Ignatius...stared raptly at the previews of coming attractions. One of the films looked bad enough, he thought, to bring him back to the Prytania in a few days.”
A Confederacy of Dunces, Chapter 2 “The human desire for food and sex is relatively equal. If there are armed rapes, why should there not be armed hot dog thefts?”
A Confederacy of Dunces, Chapter 7
Quotes from Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0), chosen with AI.
Books by John Kennedy Toole in order
Books by John Kennedy Toole in the order they were published, from A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) to The Neon Bible (1989).
