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The American writer John Kennedy Toole died in 1969 before his comic novel A Confederacy of Dunces was published. His mother, Thelma Toole, spent years seeking a reader for the manuscript; it was eventually published in 1980 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981.

Louisiana State University Press, 1980

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The story behind the card

Toole wrote the novel in the early 1960s, and an editor at Simon & Schuster worked on it with him for about two years before turning it down. After years of depression he died by suicide in 1969, aged thirty-one. His mother, Thelma, then took up the manuscript and pressed it on publishers for years. In 1976 she persuaded the novelist Walker Percy, then teaching in New Orleans, to read it; Percy later wrote that he began hoping it would be bad enough to put down, and could not. Louisiana State University Press published it in 1980 with his foreword. A bronze statue of its hero, Ignatius J. Reilly, now stands on Canal Street in New Orleans. It is one of the few novels to win the Pulitzer after its author's death.

Türkçe oku
Amerikalı yazar John Kennedy Toole 1969'da öldüğünde mizah romanı Alıklar Birliği (A Confederacy of Dunces) henüz yayımlanmamıştı. Annesi Thelma Toole, müsveddeyi okutacak birini yıllarca aradı. Kitap sonunda 1980'de çıktı ve 1981'de Pulitzer Kurgu Ödülü'nü kazandı.
Louisiana State University Press, 1980

Toole romanı 1960'ların başında yazdı. Simon & Schuster yayınevinden bir editör kitap üzerinde onunla yaklaşık iki yıl çalıştı, sonra geri çevirdi. Yıllarca depresyonla boğuşan Toole, 1969'da otuz bir yaşında intihar etti. Bundan sonra müsveddeyi annesi Thelma sahiplendi ve yıllarca yayınevlerinin kapısını çaldı. 1976'da, o sırada New Orleans'ta ders veren romancı Walker Percy'yi kitabı okumaya ikna etti. Percy sonradan, kötü bulup bırakmayı umarak başladığını, ama elinden bırakamadığını yazdı. Louisiana State University Press romanı 1980'de Percy'nin önsözüyle yayımladı. Kahramanı Ignatius J. Reilly'nin bronz heykeli bugün New Orleans'ta, Canal Street'te duruyor. Roman, yazarının ölümünden sonra Pulitzer kazanan az sayıdaki kitaptan biridir.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: A Confederacy of Dunces
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