A Confederacy of DuncesRead about the other books on the list.
by John Kennedy Toole
Perhaps the lost novel with the saddest back story, the manuscript for this one was discovered by the author’s mother after his suicide at age 31, in 1969. Before that, the novel, about a bombastic, unemployed anti-hero living in New Orleans, made it into the hands of Robert Gottlieb, then at Simon & Schuster, who took interest in the manuscript but eventually shelved it. Toole reportedly took these and other rejections hard. After his suicide in Biloxi, Miss., his mother eventually got the manuscript into the hands of Walker Percy, who convinced the Louisiana State University Press to publish it.
A Confederacy of Dunces is among Hallie Ephron's top ten books for a good laugh, Stephen Kelman's top 10 outsiders' stories, John Mullan's ten best moustaches in literature, Michael Lewis's five favorite books, and Cracked magazine's classic funny novels.
--Marshal Zeringue
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