Customer Reviews

Ignatius Rising: The Life of John Kennedy Toole

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I still remember the first time I read "Confederacy of Dunces" lying on the bed in my college dorm room, kicking my feet laughing. I have returned to it many times and still consider it the funniest book ever.

So when I saw the biography of J.K. Toole, the author and suicide, in my local bookstore I had to buy it. I did not anticipate, though, being so swept up. The authors do an outstanding job compiling the minute details of Toole's too-short life, which could not have been easy since he was unknown and until well after his death. I was surprised how interested I could be in his grade school years-- although that is in large part owed to my fascination with Toole going in.

The key mystery to me has always been about Toole's relationship with Robert Gottlieb. For an unpublished novelist (indeed he had barely published anything) to gain the attention of perhaps the leading book editor of his genration is incredible. What happened? Why was it not published?

It's hard to fault Gottlieb. His letters-- reproduced over his own initial objoections-- show his committment to the book. On the other hand, his objections to the book-- that it lacked "meaning"-- were, however sincere, maddeningly unhelpful and unspecific, as he admitted.

Thelma Toole is presented as a domineering, overbearing, grandiose nutcase. But her successful effort to finally have the book published shows a great strength. It's actually inspiring.

Toole eventually killed himself after despainring of the book ever being published. This "failure" hardly explains his act-- how many failed authors go on with their lives or write a second book that is published? Suggestions are made about his homosexulaty (closeted) and his finances (bad since he had to support his parents). Neither is enough. But the events leading to the tragedy, the descent into madness, are touchingly detailed.

One mystery remains. Nevils and Hardy, also first time authors, show that Toole was an excellent student, though hardly a world-beater when he ventured beyond New Orleans. They reproduce many of his letters. While the letters are fine, there is not a single inkling of either the prose style, the imagination, or the comedy that is on every page of Toole's novel. Though we are told constantly how funny Toole was in real life, we never see it. Where did the genius in the book spring from, and why was it not eviedent in any of his other work?

A chilling thought occurred to me towards the end of the book. The authors reproduce a letter from Thelma Toole to her lawyer. Shen concludes a trademark harangue: "My nervous system is drained by this harrwoing legal matter." That's Ignatius all over.

Is it possible that Thelma had a hand in the book or was-- even weirder-- it's ghostwriter? It's a bizzare notion and I have not one shred of evidence to back it up. But throughout the biography, Thelma is portrayed as not of the sensibility to even appreciate the book or its humor. Yet she is the one person-- including J.K. Toole-- who had the strength and faith to see the project through.

In the end, I recommend "Ignatius Rising" to anyone who read "Confederacy" and loved it. As to those who read it and did not love it, they lack all sense of taste or decency. As to those who never read the novel, read it first, then read the biography of the tragic author who (probably) created it.

Ever since I read "A Confederacy of Dunces" and heard the legend about how it got published, I have been interested in the character of its author. This biography provides an interesting look at the life of John Kennedy Toole and sheds some light on a complex man whose inner demons finally destroyed his spirit and ultimately, his life. His mother, probably the greatest influence on John, is drawn as vividly as he is, and comes across as a fascinating and maddening woman who nonetheless always believed in her son's work. Their relationship is at the core of John's life as well as his pain. The ultimate tragedy for us readers is that we won't ever see any more of his work. John's tragedy was that he thought no one would ever want to. A well documented character study that is a must read for anyone who is a fan of Toole's masterpiece!

I was very glad to find this book, after being haunted for 20 years by an eerie public silence on the life and death of John Kennedy Toole. It seemed strange that someone could produce such a great novel and then take his own life before getting it published and before writing anything else. It seemed incomprehensible that there was no published biographical information about such a person, particularly that there was nothing examining his unfortunate end.

"Ignatius Rising" gave me a lot of incidental details about Toole's life, but no better understanding of why he decided to end it so abruptly. Discovering that he only submitted the manuscript to one publisher raises the new question of why he didn't try again, and some other new but less interesting questions are raised. But I still wonder just as before how much the failure to get his novel published contributed to his decision, and whether sexual and maternal problems were also involved. There was already reason to speculate about all of that, based on the novel itself and on Walker Percy's introduction, and this biography only presented new bases for the same speculations. It didn't reliably confirm or deny any of them. Much of the evidence provided about those questions is suspect, as the authors themselves acknowledge, and even the more reliable evidence is often ambiguous or contradictory. Moreover, some of the conclusions the authors draw are so contrary to the evidence that I have to wonder whether they may have, handicapped by the same misunderstanding, omitted some important material.

For example, on page 162 they present a 1968 interview with Bob Byrne, a close friend of Toole's, in which he says that "...the editor objected to the picture of the New York Jewish girl; they said it was anti-Semitic or something, but she's a typical Hunter (College) girl..."

On the next page Nevils and Hardy discount that notion, saying that Toole "worried that the Jewish firebrand Myrna had become more of 'a cartoon' than the other characters. This concern may have been discussed with Gottlieb in a phone conversation or in some lost correspondence, but there is nothing to show who, if anyone, initiated this subject."

The first sentence is obviously based on Toole's long, grovelling March 1965 letter to editor Robert Gottlieb (page 138) "Myrna turned into a cartoon, in a book where almost everyone else was basically real, ...". It may reflect Toole's genuine feeling, or it may reflect a desire to appear to agree with his editor.

But the second sentence is simply wrong. In a December 1964 letter Gottlieb had written (page 131) "... What we think is this. That you are wildly funny often, funnier than almost anyone around, and our kind of funny. That many of the characters are wonderful -- Burma, Santa, Irene, Mancuso, Lana Lee, and others (Miss Trixie too). That certain things don't work: Myrna in particular. ..."

That settles the question of who initiated the subject, and since Myrna is no more cartoonish than Miss Trixie or any of the other characters Gottlieb named, and no more offensive an ethnic stereotype than Burma or Santa, it's quite possible that Toole correctly understood Gottlieb's bias, kowtowed to it in his March letter, and later reported it accurately to Byrne.

In the same letter to Gottlieb, Toole also apologizes for the Levys, who were the only other characters Gottlieb had objected to in his December letter ("That the Levys are not so hot.")

In the March letter, Toole also reaches pathetically for opportunities to praise Jewish artists -- novelist Bruce Jay Friedman, creator of comical and stereotypical Jewish characters; and radio/TV stars Goodman and Jane Ace (Aiskowitz), who he says, absurdly, may have been a "hazy" model for the Levys. When combined with the grovelling apology for all three Jewish characters Gottlieb had criticized, that suggests that Toole may have been trying furtively to assure Gottlieb that he was not anti-Semitic.

This book is shockingly bad. If you are a fan of Toole's work and life, this is not the place to get your info. The majority of the work is neither footnoted nor substantiated in any way. There are a tremendous amount of assumptions, speculations, and what appear to be outright fabrications, that would paint Toole to fit their convenient image. Sadly, there is still a void where a true biography should be and this will only confuse things until then. I would greatly recommend Ken & Thelma, or take a trip to New Orleans and study his letters personally.

The person who said "great subject, poor execution" pretty much nailed it. I enjoyed finally learning in detail about the background of Toole and the circumstances under which the novel was written, but this is basically a dry assemblage of facts with no real sense of Toole as a person or an artist. The correspondence between Toole and Gottlieb also says nothing enlightening about why Simon and Schuster wouldn't publish Confederacy and the authors don't even attempt a hypothesis beyond "they didn't like the Myrna Minkoff character very much". My own feeling has always been that Toole was ahead of his time. His brand of satire was far too dark and biting for the 1960s, and I think if the book had been published then there would have been an extremely negative public reaction to it - which might have been even worse for Toole than not being published at all. Either way, given the struggles he was having with depression and alcoholism it's unlikely he would have survived long enough for his true audience to emerge at the end of the following decade.

Note to the guy who thinks Thelma was the "ghostwriter" of Confederacy because her letter-writing style is so much like Ignatius Reilly's - you're overlooking the obvious. Thelma wrote letters to her son the entire time he was in Puerto Rico working on the first draft of the novel. Where do you think he got it from? Thelma may have acted as a sort of twisted Muse to Toole, but I highly doubt she was capable of conceiving of such a masterpiece of comic writing, much less committing it to paper. I suppose we should be grateful towards her for finally getting it into print, even if she was motivated by her own ego as much as anything else.

If you're reading this review you obviously have a love affair with Confederacy, the single greatest novel to grace the shelves of book stores throughout the world. You also have a desire to learn more about John Kennedy Toole. You will learn a great deal about the beloved creator of Ignatius, but it isn't all pleasant. Thelma was a horror show, and John's demise can hardly be directly linked to the failure of the book to be published. He was an alcoholic in the throes of a deep depression. A tortured soul who likely would have done himself in one way or another.

The book does a great deal to shed light on the Gotlieb connection to the book and Toole. I found Robert Gotlieb not guilty as charged by the whacky Thelma Toole. In fact, Gotlieb comes off as a caring and kind editor. It is a great shame Toole couldn't/wouldn't work on revisions as suggested by Gotlieb. It may have helped him.

Lastly, the authors did a good job. It will hopefully open the door for future scholarship on Toole. There are still many questions to be answered, but Rene and Deborah deserve our thanks (certainly mine, thank you ladies) for the first book to give us light into the life of this wonderful yet tragic soul.

To all of the battered souls who had to endure Thelma to bring this book to light, my heartfelt thanks to you (I hope you actually read this to get the praise) for getting this masterpiece published.

Peace and love to all who endure the people who just don't get the meaning of Confederacy.

Notice the 5-star reviews are clustered around June 2001, when the hardcover came out, and April 2005, when the paperback came out--could it be the authors got their friends and sources to put in a good word?-- because these reviews focus not on the merits of Ignatius Rising as a literary effort, but on their interest in Dunces itself, and are superficial in whatever analysis they provide. They happen to be predominantly from NY or Louisiana. Meanwhile, the most detailed reviews concerning the book itself express disappointment with the quality of scholarship and writing.

The classical construct of a traditional biography is to end with the subject's death. In the singular case of John Kennedy Toole this is simply not possible, for after his death at his own hand something of his spark animated his eccentric and marginally functional mother to ceaselessly seek recognition of his work and get "Confederacy of Dunces" into print. Finally, in an inspired move that has given the world a great gift, she approached the late blessed Walker Percy and the chain of events that has led to public attention to one of the greatest novels ever written was put in motion: the Wheel of Fortuna finally ascended.

The authors of "Ignatius Rising," the first biography of Toole, Rene Pol Nevils & Deborah George Hardy, therefore, had a difficult choice. To remain true to the discipline of biography, or attempt to mirror the tapestry of existence that Toole both lived and gave expression to in his masterpiece. Sadly, the constraints Nevils and Hardy operated under are all too evident in this important work, for it pulls in both directions and leaves the reader unsatisfied. In addition, the best section is that which details the tension between Toole and his "editor" Gottlieb. The attention which Hardy and Nevils give undoubtedly reflects some of their own experience with their teacher, for they completed this work as part of their requirements for a course in writing.

Nevertheless, this is a work that deserves attention and respect, for Nevils and Hardy have done difficult spade work in uncovering details of Toole's life. For those readers that complain that his life was dull, I assign to the tension Hardy and Nevils felt in sticking with the facts of his life. For the interior life is always more complex than that which is on the surface, for each day the arc of life is actually quite dull: we rise, eat, work, defecate, occasionally copulate, and sleep. That Toole's life had mere routine and a limited life of itinerant academic toil is a fact that cannot be escaped.

What is unsatisfying about this work is that Hardy and Nevils need to re-write it: for this is a first draft, obviously completed for an academic assignment. They need to follow the instinct that is tugging at them throughout, which is to fill in the details of the tapestry of Toole's life, which necessitates departure from the strict biographical construct. Additional interviews with those who knew Toole, even slightly, are needed, as well as additional interviews with former students of his mother, with Walker Percy's daughter, with Robert Gottlieb and those who worked with him during the period, and tougher questions need to be asked of him. Such as: did you demand changes in Confederacy because some of the comic characters were Jewish and that offended you? Do you believe it is okay that poor whites, blacks, creoles, and Italians can be painted with a comic brush, but somehow Jews never can be? These are the tough questions that need to be asked, for undoubtedly Gottlieb is aware of Thelma Toole's own anti-Semitism, which perhaps was only born because of his rejection of J. K. Toole's masterwork.

There is another chapter absent to the Toole story of publication, and it also is dramatic. Toole wrote one other novel, also excellent, "The Neon Bible." Because of the unique inheritance laws of Louisiana, the publication of this novel was delayed by Toole's squabbling heirs on his father and mother's sides. Drama is made of catfights, and this is a story waiting to be told.

In summation, this is an excellent but flawed work, but Toole is so inherently interesting that any scrap, or even a bad job, is worth the candle, for his light was so luminous, even after death, that it shines over flaws. We pray the soul of John Kennedy Toole is received into eternal light, and this work helps us offer up that intercession.

This book is a fascinating look at the troubled life of the man who gave us one of the funniest and most memorable American novels of all time, "A Confederacy of Dunces". Toole was odd, brilliant with words, confused, sometimes scathing, but very likable despite his problems. His mother, on the other hand... oh my god! When you are done with this novel, you will understand why the characters in "Confederacy..." are the way they are. You'll be heartbroken at Toole's decision to kill himself, mystified by both his decisions about his book and the last weeks of his life, and stunned by his mother's interactions with everyone. There were parts of this bio that were so painful that I had to close it- yet it was so compelling a story that I had to open it again right away. The authors covered nearly everything from every angle, and their sources are diverse and really flesh out Toole's different lives. (You'll know what that means when you read this book.)

"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head."

"Taking the pigtail in one of his paws, he pressed it warmly to his wet moustache."

Between those sentences lies "A Confederacy of Dunces," the masterpiece of John Kennedy Toole, a mystery of which for me has always been how any mere human could have come up with that set of fabulous characters, that amazingly original dialogue, those brilliantly off-beat and hysterically funny situations.

It's pretty clear now, with Nevils and Hardy's terrific biography of John Kennedy Toole, "Ignatius Rising," that we'll have to settle for as much "how" as they've been able to come up with, for this book is a masterwork of plumbing. While there is in the biography lots and lots about all other aspects of his interesting life, the genesis of his writing gift (I agree with Dan Acker below) is securely hidden. But I'm not sure we should want to know how Toole was able to materialize, for instance, combinations such as the following:

"Envy would gnaw at Myrna's musky vitals." Or "Ignatius emitted a little Paradise gas."

Or, on a banner, "Crusade for Moorish Dignity."

To choose just one of the many things "Ignatius Rising" IS able to uniquely provide regarding Toole and his life, Nevils and Hardy's discussion of the Simon and Schuster episodes, as particular and unusual as they were, has provided clues, at least, as to how getting a book published works. I had no idea that any publisher, let alone one of Robert Gottlieb's stature, even then, would take the time he did to encourage a new writer not yet signed to a contract. His letters are amazing examples of patience, encouragement, warmth, intelligence, and, most important, connectedness. No wonder he is one of the world's premier editors!

It's not necessary to have read "Confederacy of Dunces" to love this biography, but if you buy and read "Ignatius Rising" first, you will for sure be back at the bookstore in a flash to confirm for yourself what the fuss has been about for more than twenty years.

Congratulations to Rene Pol Nevils and Deborah George Hardy! I thought we would never see a book like this; that John Kennedy Toole would be hidden forever.