Butterfly in the Typewriter (19 page)

Polites probably references Faye's broken hip, not from a fall off stage, but rather from slipping on the bathroom floor in her hotel room. It caused her anguish, but she continued playing, at times using medication for the pain. The accident itself was no joke, but much like Toole, when performing, Faye turned everything into a laughing matter. In June of 1959 the
New York Journal American
reported that Faye opened at the Crescendo, a famed nightclub in Los Angeles, while “still on crutches, but that does not affect her repartee.”

Her banter drew audiences, especially Toole, to her shows as much as her singing did. She was quick witted, an absolute parody of gender roles, and confident beyond measure. While no scarlet beauty or nightingale, she was a masterful satirist. At a time when sexuality and gender remained a cloaked and closeted conversation, she held a mirror up to society and made them all laugh at the reflection of the sexual complexities around them. In one of her most famous songs, “Frances and Her Friends,” she strings rhyming names together, twisting gender roles, and turning relationships into a string of lovers: “I know a guy named Joey / Joey goes with Moey / Moey goes with Jamie / And Jamie goes with Sadie. . . . ” This could go on in limitless variations, each verse ending with, “What a drag, what a drag / I'm not mad / I'm too hip to get mad.” In the gay community, Faye has been celebrated as a pioneer for her openness. But her audacity and fearlessness on stage attracted both gay and straight listeners. As the
Washington Post
reported of her concert on February 18, 1961, “Frances Faye hit the New York scene with the impact of a 10-ton truck smashing through a concrete wall.” Her shows were nonstop adrenaline-infused jazz sessions. She cranked out riffs on the piano, bellowed her lyrics, playfully changing lines here
and there, adding jokes as she went along. It was precisely the kind of humor Toole loved—fast, witty, and unpredictable. And yet critics observed she achieved a balance of intensity and intimacy.
Variety
reports of her March concert in 1961, “She makes the big 750-seater an intimate room, turning the stint into one big house party.” Having started performing on stage when she was fifteen, she knew how to hold masterful control over her audience.

Much like Faye, Toole fostered his talents of quick wit, interpretation, and satire at an early age. He was attracted to this artist that projected her style: bold, raw, and unrefined. Polites observes, “It wasn't necessarily the voice [he] admired, it was the style.” In other words, it wasn't the aesthetic of what she created, as much as how she created it. So impressed with her, Toole once wondered aloud to Fletcher, “Is Frances Faye God?” As Toole lifted Faye on high as a deity of artistic creation, he reflected on his dream of becoming an artist who, like Faye, would burst onto the New York scene.

He began drafting “sketches” of a character he named Humphrey Wildblood, who would eventually become Ignatius Reilly. He left no detail of these sketches, although from what friends remember of his stories, they were likely short narratives, quick comical vignettes, a method of creation similar to his comics at Tulane. Since the earliest reference Toole makes to working on the book is described as “sketches,” it is no surprise that
Confederacy
is a picaresque, a series of episodes, akin to the method of storytelling he preferred. Here were the beginnings of Ignatius, drafted in New York City, the place to which he would send Ignatius at the end of the novel, exiling him from New Orleans.

Unfortunately, all that remains of these “sketches” is the name Humphrey Wildblood, mentioned in a letter. Were the sketches set in New Orleans? Were they set in New York? What did Humphrey Wildblood look like? Nobody seems to know. Perhaps they were sketches only in his mind, narratives crafted from observations and drafted in his imagination to pass the time on the subway between Columbia and Hunter. Whatever the case, his movement away from academics and toward a creative endeavor in the early months of 1961 mirrors the winter season of 1959 when he wrote “The Arbiter,” critiquing the role of the
scholar-critic through poetry. In the winter of his discontent he makes his turn toward becoming a novelist. And New York, the epicenter of publishing, was an appropriate place to do it.

While he had yet to compose something he considered worthy of publication, he now entertained the life of a writer more seriously than the life of a scholar. And perhaps an attraction to the “literary life” in New York offered him some incentive. Along these lines, Polites recalls Toole telling him that he had become friends with the novelist James Purdy in New York. Purdy's novel,
Malcolm
, had been published in 1959 to international acclaim. And Polites remembers Toole being “impressed knowing a published writer.” But Toole also “talked about how strange, almost weird, Purdy seemed to be.”

In 1960 Purdy moved to New York, so their encounter was possible. And Purdy could certainly speak to Toole about the struggle to find one's own voice as a writer and the challenges of getting published. He had worked for years as an aspiring novelist until he sent his privately printed short story collection to poet Dame Edith Sitwell who jump-started his literary career. Undoubtedly, Toole could have learned a great deal from Purdy. But if they had been acquaintances, there is no record of it in the Toole Papers. And he never mentioned Purdy to Fletcher or Rickels. Like his supposed offer from Yul Brynner that he once bragged about to his friend Cary Laird, Toole may have been trying to impress Polites, which he often tried to do. Whatever the case, the story suggests that Toole wanted to see himself in the literary circles of New York. How he saw himself fitting into that scene, if at all, is unclear. He was far too straight-laced for the Beats. Purdy may have been a bit too offbeat for him. One thing became clear, though; he did not see himself traveling the long road to the PhD.

Perhaps that was just as well. As Toole questioned the point of his academic pursuits, the army called his number. With growing tensions in Berlin and Vietnam, Toole could no longer defer the draft. In June he packed his belongings in his apartment. The neighborhood that gave way to the raucous Cold War scenes nine months earlier, offered little excitement as he prepared his departure. Dalferes came to his apartment to see him off. To save money, he told Dalferes, he had sent his belongings on a bus and then would take a flight to New Orleans. He despised
long rides on buses. Dalferes and Toole parted ways in Manhattan, and he quietly left the bustling metropolis behind.

Some people say that New York has a way of breaking people
. The friends closest to Toole sensed that he saw the city as much of a convoluted cultural mélange as his own hometown. But Dalferes noticed he seemed restrained in Manhattan. She knew that he, “Loved to party. But he couldn't do that in New York. He was more formal.” Ultimately, she resolved, “He didn't feel comfortable there,” largely in part due to the cultural abrasiveness he found in the north. While Pat Rickels claims he wanted nothing more than to return to Columbia, Dalferes claims, “He preferred New Orleans. He just wanted the prestige of Columbia.” Perhaps Polites got it right when he concluded, “While New York obviously meant a lot to Ken, I suspect he may have had something of an ambivalent relationship with the city.” In that regard, it paralleled his relationship with New Orleans. From far away, the city glows in myth and memory. Distance reinvigorates the spirit of the place. But once returned, the reality of the city rarely achieves those expectations.

So with the sketches of Humphrey Wildblood either in hand or mind, and perhaps some inspiration for Myrna Minkoff, he returned to New Orleans. He had until August before reporting for basic training at Fort Gordon, Georgia. Early in the summer, Fletcher had invited Toole to come visit him in San Francisco. Toole declined, explaining, “I'm finally getting around to doing the writing I've postponed for so long. Whatever comes of the creative endeavor, I will now at least be able to say I've tried.”

Since his undergraduate days, Toole had pondered the role of the writer in society. But critiquing a story or a poem is quite different from actually writing one. Therein lay the rub. As a master of mimicry with exceptional control over written and spoken language, he still struggled with the development of a narrative sustained over the course of hundreds of pages. When Emilie Dietrich returned to New Orleans for a visit, they spoke about writing. They exchanged some ideas as they tried to crack the code of composition, sharing in their ultimate dream of
becoming fiction writers. After her return to New York, she wrote Toole excitedly, confessing that she had begun a promising writing project. In her letter she offers Toole advice, perhaps alluding to their previous conversations about the writing process. “I think it must be just that you have to be saying something that you really mean . . . not just dredging characters and situations up because they are charming.” She strikes at the heart of his struggles as an aspiring fiction writer. He had a knack to quickly identify the absurd and to mimic it. But how does one bring it all together to form a cohesive story with true meaning? This question would hound Toole for years.

His summer was not nearly as productive as he had hoped. Before long, he was packing his belongings for basic training. After weeks of marching, firing weapons, and learning survival skills, Toole lined up to get his orders. Most of the recruits received the typical assignments—Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Fort Eustis, Virginia; and, least desirable, Berlin, Germany, in the midst of a Cold War crisis. Toole opened his papers: Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico, English Instructor, Company A.

What a mad universe I am in at the moment.
However, the politics and intrigue are
fascinating in their way—and I have intelligent
and very witty friends with whom the evening
can often be spent savoring all of this....

 

 

O
nce again Toole assumed the role of teacher, although he traded in his professorial tweed jacket and slim tie for an army uniform. Considering the other possible assignments he could have received, his orders to teach English in Puerto Rico were fortunate. And his position, which inherently held rank over the students, necessitated an immediate promotion once he arrived at Fort Buchanan. This came with the benefit of access to the officer's club, a privileged gathering spot on base. Furthermore, he had access to beautiful beaches and other tropical islands in the region. While he regretted the draft intruding on his career, he could certainly endure the Caribbean for two years.

And according to David Kubach, his close friend at Fort Buchanan, Toole actually lived a charmed life in the army. He was liked by his students, and he enjoyed remarkable success, earning the rank of sergeant in less than two years. Most importantly, Toole faced challenges and moments of loneliness in Puerto Rico, but he also achieved his long-standing ambition to write the quintessential New Orleans novel. While stationed at Fort Buchanan, he wrote
A Confederacy of Dunces
. Quite
unexpectedly, his experience in the army proved crucial to both his personal and artistic development. As Joel Fletcher explains, “It was the best time of Ken's life, though he didn't know it.”

He arrived in Puerto Rico in late November of 1961, the beginning of the dry season, before the torrential downpours of the summer months. On the grounds of Fort Buchanan, palm trees with whitewashed trunks swayed over well-manicured lawns. Boxwood hedges lined the roads and pathways. And at the far end of the base, Monte de Santa Ana marked the beginning of the mountainous island interior. The barracks were a series of white, single-level, A-frame structures with louvered windows, akin to the shotgun houses of New Orleans, only longer. Inside the building marked Company A, dark green cots with footlockers lined the walls, creating a long, narrow aisle down the length of the room. Small desks and steel wall lockers stood between each cot. And a track of bare lightbulbs ran the length of the ceiling.

As he settled into his new residence, unpacking his books, his uniform, and his favorite gray suit, Toole met his fellow instructors. There was the charismatic socialite Bob Young. There was Joseph Clein, a Harvard graduate from Alabama. Tony Moore hailed from New Jersey and, fondly embracing Puerto Rico, met his wife on the island. Bob Schnobel, with his plastic-rimmed glasses and baby face, seemed unusually young, especially in contrast to older instructors like the blond-haired, slightly balding Jerry Alpaugh. And Bob Morter was a good-humored man who seemed awkward and troubled at times, especially in the culture of the army. He devotedly inserted a picture of a male instructor he admired into a small copy of the
Mona Lisa
on the inside of his locker door. They were a collection of unlikely suspects for the army: recently graduated English majors, intellectuals grounded in the liberal arts, hopeful writers, and aspiring college professors. They all shared an appreciation for literature, music, and film. They discussed books and movies with witty repartee. And each personality added dimension to their social dynamic: dandies and dilettantes, urbane conversationalists and daredevils. Toole described them as “a hilarious group. All college graduates (some with advanced degrees), they exist here in an alien society.”