Butterfly in the Typewriter

Anyone with ties to New Orleans knows their Confederacy of Dunces, and it’s Swiftian derivation. This new biography of John Kennedy Toole has me retreading it. Looking at the story as a manifestation of paranoid schizophrenia, reframes everything entirely, and refocuses our considerations of the causes of Toole’s suicide. Worth plowing through the first chapter, which with it’s irritating focus on the minutia of the Toole family structure and Toole’s mother’s predilections is difficult to push through. But do it anyway and you’ll come away with new knowledge in what is the first non-fiction biography of Toole. Ignatius Rising was a alternative fiction attempt that was far too determined to push Toole’s life into the boxes of the authors’ own construction.  This is Toole the man, flawed, and not so buried by Toole the author.