John Kennedy Toole was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana.
Toole sent the manuscript of his novel, Confederation of Dunces, to Simon and Schuster in the early 1960s and despite initial enthusiasm about the work, S&S eventually rejected it, commenting that it “isn’t really about anything.”
After Toole’s suicide in 1969, his mother convinced author Walker Percy (then a faculty member at Loyola University New Orleans) to read her son’s manuscript. Percy loved it, and LSU Press did an initial printing of 2500 copies in 1980.
A year later, in 1981, Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The book has now sold more than 1.5 million copies in 18 languages.
Want to find out about other famous author rejections? Visit Writers & Rejections: Don’t Give Up!
Sources:
Survival of Rats by Michael Allen (PDF)
Wikipedia entry
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Hi
That was great for his mother, not so great for him, in my opinion. Like painters being lauded after death. Where were they when it would have mattered to the artist?
Still, I love the Writers & Rejections: Don’t Give Up! link & site.
Thanks for sharing.
Love From Canada
xoxo