![]() ![]() ![]() Luckily for posterity, his mother Thelma found the book in 1971. As far as he ever knew, that’s where it stayed. Once he had decided it would never be published, Toole shoved his manuscript on top of an armoire in his bedroom. It’s too simple to ascribe this sick man’s suicide to his failure to find a publisher, but there’s no denying that Toole’s tragedy is compounded by the fact that he never knew how much A Confederacy of Dunces would come to mean to the world. By the time he died aged just 31, Toole had also been unable to hold down his teaching job and had become erratic in his behaviour, as well as increasingly dishevelled and paranoid. The rejected author fell into despair, and began to exhibit signs of severe illness. ![]()
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