Thelma Toole

New Orleans native John Kennedy Toole’s iconic work “A Confederacy of Dunces” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1981. The story of its publication is worthy of its own book – or, in this case, podcast! This is a rare 1982 interview with Mrs. Thelma Ducoing Toole, the author’s mother. She talks with Dr. Kenneth Holditch, a friend, literary scholar and longtime professor of English at the University of New Orleans. She recounts to him the story of how, after years of trying, she was finally successful in getting her late son’s comic novel published, making it a part of New Orleans’ literary history. Thanks to the University of New Orleans for the use of this archival interview.