A Confederacy of Dunces. Foreword by Walker Percy Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.
First edition.
Octavo [xii], [1] - 338, [2, blank] pp. Publisher's light grey cloth, spine lettered in black, first issue dust jacket (with Walker Percy's blurb on the rear panel.) Minor wear to spine edges and corners. Near fine.
The famous story goes that Toole was despondent by the constant rejection from publishers and movie producers for this novel, and in committed suicide in 1969. His mother found the manuscript in his effects, and spent many years trying to get it published, with much the same results. She eventually found author (The Moviegoer, 1961, among others) and teacher Walker Percy, and pestered him to read it, which he reluctantly did. He immediately recognized the brilliance of the work, and engineered its publication. This novel is one of the funniest novels written in the twentieth-century, and is a rich and loving portrayal of New Orleans and the eccentric characters who live there (even erecting a bronze statue of Ignatius J. Reilly, the main character). This book won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1981, twelve years after the author’s suicide.
ID:
3086
$
2,800