John Kennedy Toole - Military Service

Military Service

Toole's studies were interrupted by his being drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961. Toole (who was fluent in Spanish) served two years at Fort Buchanan in San Juan, Puerto Rico, teaching English to Spanish-speaking recruits. He rose quickly in the military ranks. In under a year, he attained the rank of sergeant, and received numerous awards and citations. While serving in Puerto Rico, he frequently traveled throughout the Caribbean, either alone or with members of his company. Toole however, began to dread the frustrations of military life and the oppressive heat of Puerto Rico. He described his work there in a letter to a friend:

The arrival of the trainees in late October has kept me very busy; as the "dean" of the English programs here, I am lost in test scores and averages and in the maze of painfully intricate Army politics and intrigue. I am quite powerful in my own little way and exercise more control over personnel and affairs in general than I had ever suspected I would; over my private telephone I contact headquarters, switching people here and there, waiting, listening, planning. I'm sure I will leave my duty here a completely mad tyrant whose niche in civilian life will be non-existent. In its own lunatic way, this is very entertaining...After a year in Puerto Rico (as of 25 Nov), I find that the positive aspects of that year outweigh the negative. Although this seems like a great cliché, I can say that I have learned a vast amount about humans and their natures—information which I would have enjoyed having earlier. In my own curious way I have risen "meteorically" in the Army without having ever been a decent prospect for military life; but I feel that my very peculiar assignment has been responsible. The insanity and unreality of Puerto Rico itself has been interesting at all times that it was not overwhelming. (great agreement errors in this sentence, I fear). Please write. Ken.

He also engaged in one of the favorite activities of military personnel on the island: alcohol consumption. Both the soldiers and the instructors at the base drank excessively, as alcohol was cheap and plentiful. Toole remarked in another letter to Fletcher, "We are all rotting here at the moment. The decreased draft has meant no trainees since June...the inactivity here, coupled with the remnants of a rainy and enervating summer has (have?) plunged the English instructors into an abyss of drinking and inertia. Occasionally someone will struggle off to the beach or to San Juan, but the maxim here remains, "It's too hot."" When Emilie Griffin paid Toole a visit in December of 1961 she was dismayed at what she saw. Toole was notably depressed and while dining at a local hotel she noted that "the windows on all sides of our table were filled with perfect rainbows. Ken was sitting in a pocket of darkness surrounded by these brilliant colored arches and he never looked at them." Adding to Toole's dismay, his class ring from Tulane went missing and he searched the entire base for it, questioning everyone, until concluding that it had been stolen. Disgusted, he wrote home, "It's a wonder I haven't been stabbed yet or paralyzed by intestinal diseases on this insane little geographical mountain top protruding from the Caribbean. However, under any circumstances the loss of the ring affects me deeply."

In the early portion of Toole's military career one of his primary motivations for advancement was to acquire a private office. Privacy was a significant luxury on the island with some of the men renting rooms in nearby hotels so they could have some solitude. Toole's army buddy David Kubach, also an aspiring writer, lent him a green Swedish-made Halda typewriter for use in his office. The barracks consisted solely of college educated English professors, which gave it a different makeup from usual army companies. In contrast to almost all other army barracks where gays kept their sexual orientation a secret, there was an openly gay contingent which flaunted their homosexuality. The gay men reserved a portion of the barracks for themselves and as they did not proposition any of the straight instructors, they were left alone. However, this particular group of gay men drank significantly more than the rest of the group and eventually began to exhibit a loud, rowdy, and vulgar brand of behavior that made the straight men uncomfortable. Toole's response was to ignore their behavior and it lost him the respect of some of the men in the barracks. The problem came to a head when a gay instructor attempted suicide by overdosing on APC (aspirin, phenacetin, and caffeine) tablets after being spurned by another soldier. When Toole found the man he waited a half hour to call for help, hoping he would awaken on his own. His friend Kubach stated that this was because it would look bad for the soldier and that he would most likely get himself court martialed for a suicide attempt. Some of his fellow soldiers were livid and held a meeting deciding whether to report Toole's negligence. Ultimately, they did not report his behavior and the army never filed any charges but his relationships with many of the men were irrevocably changed.

After this incident, Toole became withdrawn and began spending more and more time in his office typing what would eventually become his master work, A Confederacy of Dunces. It was not a secret that Toole was writing a book. Late at night, his fellow soldiers could often hear the sound of the typewriter keys. Although he was secretive about the novel among the other men, Toole showed the early portions of it to Kubach who gave him positive feedback. Around this time, Kubach was transferred and took his typewriter with him, so Toole was forced to buy his own. He later commented that he began to "talk and act like Ignatius" during this period as he became more and more immersed in the creation of the book. His letter home to his parents of April 10, 1963 shows these similarities:

This afternoon we were visited here by General Bogart (inspected, rather, no one simply "visits" us), the Commander of the Caribbean, the gentleman most vocal in favor of sending us away from Puerto Rico. I sincerely hope that he succeeds...I was surprised to see Charlie Ferguson's by-line on that article about New Orleans; he graduated from the Tulane law school a few years ago. The article, incidentally, was very badly written; some of it was almost painful to read. I thought that he could do better than that. However, the quality of the writing in the Picayune-States combine is uniformly childish and clumsy. They are very poorly edited newspapers.