John Kennedy Toole

I encourage you to watch this short documentary about Toole, The Omega Point. I would put Toole as the most talented novelist of the 20th century, miles ahead of Joyce or Faulkner or Forster or Fitzgerald or Hemingway, and even further ahead of Yids like Proust and Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. (Kafka I would rank for his short stories, the novels were unfinished and are not his best work.) I never understood the whole Proust thing, I thought it must be just because he was a Yid. Yes, they are that narcissistic. 

At any rate, Toole's story is remarkable. You can tell what happened to him, he was a Catholic, though not particularly devout or religious, and he was from New Orleans, and he went to do his master's at Columbia and taught at a girl's school called Hunter College. The chances that he was handled with respect in New York are zero, I can tell you from personal experience. So he wrote a novel with a few satirical Jewish characters in it, and turned it in to Simon & Shyster in New York. He was genius enough to write the book, but he was naive enough to think they would publish it. He must have thought, well this is pretty much damn near a masterpiece, I'm sure they can take a joke. No.

So the editor at Shyster, a fiend in human flesh called Gottlieb (he's still around, he has no shame) gave plot details to another writer, and commissioned a novel, so that other publishers would be less likely to take on Toole's manuscript. Eventually Toole committed suicide, and it was only through the relentless persistence of his insane mother that the book was brought to light. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Novelist is a rare talent, and it's even rarer for circumstances to align for the production of a timely novel. I will mention a recent one I liked, The Circle by Dave Eggers, from what I know of him I'm not too keen on him, but that book was pretty good. I also read his first book back in the day, A Heartbreaking Something or Other... but you can pass on that one.

I will mention by the way, I was briefly in communication with a Jewish novelist called James Kunstler, and voiced my grievances with regard to Toole. "I'm a much better novelist than poor Toole ever was," he said. "I create characters the reader can care about." Isn't that ironic, the Yid playing the sentimentalist over the Catholic. You never know what will happen in this crazy world.