John Kennedy Toole - Final Years

Final Years

Toole took the rejection of the book in his intended form as a tremendous personal blow. He eventually ceased work on Dunces and for a time left it atop an armoire in his bedroom. He continued to teach at Dominican where he remained a favorite among the student body with his classes regularly filling up well before official registration. His comedic performances during lectures remained especially popular among students. He attempted to work on another novel which he titled The Conqueror Worm, a reference to death as portrayed in Edgar Allan Poe's poem of the same name, but he found little peace at home. Toole's mother persuaded him to take Dunces to Hodding Carter Jr., who was well known as a reporter and publisher for the Delta Democrat Times in Greenville, Mississippi, and was spending a semester teaching at Tulane. Carter showed little interest in the book, but complimented him on it. The face-to-face rejection Carter dealt Toole drove him further into despair and he became angry with his mother for causing him further embarrassment.

Except for a few trips by car to Madison, Wisconsin to see army pal David Kubach, Toole spent most of the last three years of his life at home only leaving to go to Dominican. In the winter of 1967, Kubach, who had come down to visit Toole, noticed an increased sense of paranoia on Toole's part; once when driving around New Orleans, Toole became convinced they were being followed and attempted to lose the car. The family moved to a larger rental house on Hampson Street, and Toole continued teaching, with his students noticing that his wit had become more acerbic. He continued to drink heavily, and gained a great deal of weight, causing him to have to purchase an entire new wardrobe. Toole began having frequent and intense headaches, and as aspirin was no help, he saw a doctor. The doctor's treatment was also ineffective, and he suggested Toole see a neurologist, an idea which Toole rejected.

Toole tried to maintain a sense of normalcy and enrolled in Tulane in the fall of 1968 with the hopes of acquiring a Ph.D. He took a course studying Theodore Dreiser, on whom he had lectured while at Hunter, and was particularly interested in Dreiser's close relationship with his mother and his anti-Catholic beliefs. The assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 added to his feelings of grief and heightened his paranoia. Several of Toole's longtime friends noticed he had an increasing sense of feelings of personal persecution. Toole went to see his friend Bob Byrne at his home in August 1968, where he again expressed sadness and humiliation that his book would not be published. Toole told Byrne that people were passing his home late in the night and honking their car horns at him, that students whispered about him behind his back, and that people were plotting against him. Byrne had a talk with him, which he felt, for the time being, calmed him down.

In the months before his suicide, Toole, who was usually extremely well groomed, "began to appear in public unshaved and uncombed, wearing unpolished shoes and wrinkled clothes, to the amazement of his friends and students in New Orleans." He also began to exhibit signs of paranoia, including telling friends that a woman who he erroneously thought had worked for Simon & Schuster was plotting to steal his book so that her husband, the novelist George Deaux, could publish it.

Toole became increasingly erratic during his lectures at Dominican, resulting in frequent student complaints, and was given to rants against church and state. Toward the end of the 1968 fall semester, he was forced to take a leave of absence and stopped attending classes at Tulane, resulting in him receiving a grade of incomplete. The Tooles spent Christmas of 1968 in disarray with Toole's father in an increasing state of dementia, and Toole searching the home for electronic mind-reading devices.

When Toole was unable to resume his position at Dominican in January, the school had to hire another professor. This greatly upset his mother and on January 19, 1969 they had a horrible final argument. He stopped by the house the next day to pick up some things and spoke only to his father, as Thelma was out at the grocery store. He left home for the final time and withdrew $1500 from his saving account. After a week she called the police, but without any evidence to his whereabouts, they took a report and waited for him to surface. Thelma became convinced that Toole's friends the Rickels knew where he was and called them repeatedly, even though they denied knowing where he had gone.