Butterfly in the Typewriter (29 page)

His salient commentary in his lectures echoed aspects of the novel he labored over at home. Pam Guerin, who was an English major for a short time at Dominican, took many classes with Professor Toole. She recalls that his lectures

Of course, his students at the time were unaware of his novel writing. He kept his two roles as teacher and writer separate. And while he would later comment to his friends about the drudgery of teaching, once he was in the classroom it appeared to his students that he enjoyed it, and they enjoyed him. Perhaps his most lasting devotees to his memory at Dominican are the three Trader sisters. As they recalled, Toole routinely entered class at the last moment. And at times he could take on that supercilious tone so evident in Ignatius Reilly (as well as Toole's mother) that could be entertaining. He “ridiculed
Reader's Digest
” and occasionally spoke of “legitimate theater.” He often commented on “the coming trend of making books into movies.”

Toole left a lasting impression on Joan Trader Bowen, who took courses with him throughout her four years at Dominican. She identified a performance-like quality to his lectures. “He made the class interesting,” she recalls, “how he said it was just as enjoyable as what he said.” And Joan's sister Barbara Trader Howard observed that Toole was “subdued” but had “a spark underneath” it all.

In his courses he assigned authors such as J. D. Salinger and James Joyce, but also as an enthusiast of Southern literature, he often praised works such as
Lanterns on the Levee
—the autobiography of William Alexander Percy—who was the uncle and guardian of novelist Walker Percy. And somehow Toole seamlessly connected these works to life experiences to which his students could relate.

Among students and professors, he earned a reputation as a professor not to be missed. As Guerin confesses,

To this day his students and the Dominican sisters that once ran the college fondly remember Toole as one of the “most respected and well-liked faculty members.”

He enjoyed the praise and attention at Dominican, but much like Hunter College, the job was a means to an end. And while most people had no idea he had written a novel, there were a few people that he trusted. In his first semester at Dominican, a senior named Candace de Russy caught his eye. And his mother, concerned about her son's introverted behavior, encouraged him to invite friends to their home. Whether by chance or design, Toole and de Russy kept running into each other on campus, although it seemed to her that the young professor sought her out. Over lunch or coffee they would talk about literature. He was undeniably smart, but de Russy thought he “projected a kind of loneliness, even timidity,” even though he was always “proper and appropriate.” As their conversations became more frequent de Russy noticed there was a “remoteness” about him, as if he had difficulty sustaining a conversation. He would listen, and he could tell a great story, but engaging in an exchange of ideas became awkward and clumsy for him. For a moment, she thought he might be depressed.

One autumn afternoon Toole invited her back to his house to meet his parents. They strolled down St. Charles Avenue to Audubon Street. Thelma Toole greeted de Russy at the door and eagerly welcomed her into their home. She was introduced to his father, as he sat in a darkened room. He kindly waved but did not join them for tea. Over the course of the afternoon, it seemed to de Russy that Thelma was careful to create a pleasurable experience. It occurred to her that her invitation might have stemmed from Toole's interests in dating her or from a mother's hope for her son “to gain a more normal life.” It must have taken substantial trust on Toole's part for him to invite home a student at the college where he taught. But de Russy, perhaps
through her empathy for him, had gained his confidence, so much so that he talked to her about his novel.

What she previously identified as depression, she now recognized as an astoundingly deep immersion in his manuscript. She noticed that Toole acted as if his mind was split between reality and his book, not as if he couldn't distinguish between the two, but because he had poured his soul into the novel. “The center of his existence had become his book,” she observed. “When he walked on campus, he looked straight forward, not making eye contact, and every once in a while he would kind of chuckle to himself as if something just struck him as absurd.” He discussed characters and scenes with de Russy, but sensing that more lay underneath his plot summaries, she attempted to draw out what troubled him. She gleaned from their conversations that he had “a consuming desire to have the book acknowledged and recognized. He was not egotistical, but it was something deeper. He believed in the exceptionalism of the book, but he had anxiety about it. It had very much to do with his identity and profound sense of self.”

It seemed he had given himself over to his creation, as if the actual people surrounding him were shadows and the truth lie in the pages that he continued to edit. But this was not a thesis or dissertation he had written. It was not a task to display his literary prowess. He was an artist, and he had created something far more alive than an academic argument. And this creation was the pathway to his dreams of authorship.

So Toole continued editing for a few months after his return, until a guillotine that had been rising, slowly and silently for months, finally dropped. Back when Toole was settling into his home, editing his novel, and drinking coffee with Bobby Byrne, another man who was about to make the history books walked about the Crescent City. Another New Orleanian, Lee Harvey Oswald, was living in Uptown in the summer of 1963, two miles away from the Toole home. Oswald spent his days organizing a New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and passing out pro-Castro propaganda along Canal Street. By November of 1963, Oswald had moved to Dallas, Texas, where he worked at the public school book depository. And on a sunny day in Dallas, as John F. Kennedy's motorcade slowly rolled down the street with the
president and First Lady waving to crowds from the back seat of a convertible, two bullets ripped through the president's skull. Oswald was charged with the assassination. Three days later, as he was transported to the county jail, nightclub owner Jack Ruby sent a bullet of his own into Oswald's abdomen. The shots echoed throughout the country. America stood paralyzed, just before hurling itself into the most turbulent decade of the twentieth century. And as Toole watched this tragedy unfold from his home in New Orleans, his months of editing and rewriting came to a halt. His fingers rested still on the keys of his Olivetti-Underwood typewriter, and all was silent. He later confessed, “The book went along until President Kennedy's assassination. Then I couldn't write anything more. Nothing seemed funny to me.”

By the beginning of 1964, Toole decided to submit his novel to a publisher. While most writers and agents would have sent a manuscript to several publishers, he selected one: Simon and Schuster. It was a house undergoing a transformation, in large part due to its star editor Robert Gottlieb. While Simon and Schuster had once focused on nonfiction and self-help books, Gottlieb ushered in fiction titles such as
Catch-22
and the novels of Bruce Jay Friedman. Toole had an especially “intense personal reaction” to Friedman's
Stern
. And when his mother later asked why he submitted the manuscript to only one publisher, Toole explained that Simon and Schuster was reputable and prestigious. He deemed that their books sold, while others collected dust on bookstore shelves. Toole wanted more than publication; he had an intense yearning to reach as many readers as possible.

Today, most large publishing houses acquire works through literary agents. But in the early 1960s Simon and Schuster not only accepted unsolicited manuscripts, it also meticulously documented submissions, considered the work, and then responded to authors. So the novel that carried the weight of Toole's future traveled from the small apartment in New Orleans to New York, and it landed on the desk of Robert Gottlieb. In many ways, Toole could not have been more fortunate. Michael Korda, an editor under Gottlieb who eventually rose to editor-in-chief at Simon and Schuster, recalled Gottlieb's fierce dedication to the art of literature. In
Another Life
Korda explains that Gottlieb approached his role as an editor like a midwife in the creative process—he could see both the big picture of the book and “how intricate changes
might bring out the best in it.” And he was surpassingly industrious. He labored for years over
Catch-22
with Joseph Heller. Even as the advent of the literary agent emerged among trade presses, he avoided schmoozing at martini-filled business lunches in midtown Manhattan restaurants, preferring that anyone interested in having lunch with him bring a sandwich to his office. In fact, the first time Bruce Jay Friedman arrived at Simon and Schuster to have a working lunch with Gottlieb, he was surprised to find the rising star of Midtown offering him a plate of raw vegetables to munch on while they went over the manuscript for
Stern
. And of the voluminous number of manuscripts that flooded Simon and Schuster every week, piling up on Gottlieb's desk, a new humorous writer from New Orleans stood apart from the rest. Gottlieb's assistant, Jean Ann Jollett, loved Toole's manuscript and recommended it to Gottlieb. After he read it, Gottlieb wrote encouragingly to Toole.

In just over a year, Toole had gone from staring at a blank sheet of paper in a borrowed typewriter in Puerto Rico to catching the interests of the most dynamic editor in New York. Things were proceeding according to his plan. Next, editor and writer had to figure out their delicate dance. As Gottlieb knew, every writer is different, and Toole had no experience in publishing a book. Toole had been praised for his writing abilities all his life. When he was sixteen his college professor said he was ready to submit to an academic journal. And his professors at Columbia had little to critique about his writing. But New York publishers did not operate in the realm of grades or degrees. Toole was entering a world of both art and business, subject to market forces, although not driven by that measure alone. However noble the pursuit of publishing literature, at the end of the day it is a business. His novel not only had to be good, it had to sell.

In June of 1964 Toole made arrangements to go to New York and visit with Gottlieb, so author and editor could work together, presumably to address some issues in the manuscript. But Toole could make it only near the end of June when Gottlieb would be in Europe. It was the first misstep in this dance that would become increasingly awkward. Jollett wrote to Toole to warn him of the situation, hoping that he could make his trip earlier in order to meet with Gottlieb. She ended that letter asking Toole, “Is now the time for me to tell you that I laughed, chortled, collapsed my way through
Confederacy
? I did.”

Unfortunately, Toole and Gottlieb could not coordinate their schedules, so Gottlieb sent some of his editorial comments in a letter. His critique was direct. He took issue with Toole's plot structure, particularly at the end of the novel. He admitted that Toole had created brilliant scenes and “wittily tied them together at the end.” But the “threads must be strong and meaningful all the way through.” His comments echoed Emilie Dietrich Griffin's advice when she wrote to Toole in 1961 saying, “You have to be saying something that you really mean . . . not just dredging characters and situations up because they are charming.” Gottlieb reiterates, “There must be a point to everything you have in the book, a real point, not just amusingness forced to figure itself out.” After his criticism, he encourages Toole to keep working on the book, while suggesting some time away from the manuscript might be helpful. But he clearly states, “Please, no matter what, let me see the book again when you have worked on it again.”

Toole still took his trip to New York. Jollett, a Southerner herself, welcomed him. She was eager to see “what the author of the book looked like.” The trip was an opportunity for Toole to gain some insight into the publishing world. But she gave Toole fair warning that she would be unable to offer any more editorial advice. It must have been quite disappointing if Toole earnestly sought clear direction from Gottlieb, as he was navigating a world that was quite foreign to him.

While in New York, Toole visited Joe Hines, an English instructor he had met in Puerto Rico who lived on the West Side of Manhattan. They spoke of Toole's venture into publishing that was now in limbo. Once Toole returned to New Orleans, Hines wrote to him,

Hines spends the rest of the letter discussing a trip to New Orleans to visit Toole, who had told him of the “interesting and unusual” city. Later that summer, Hines had the benefit of having Toole as his New Orleans tour guide. During the visit, they took in the film
Becket
, the story of the thirteenth-century Saint Thomas à Becket, which left Toole questioning the reasons behind the saint's “sudden conversion to goodness, religion, selflessness.” At a time when Toole was urged to think most deliberately about the reasons for his characters and their behaviors, he found the about-face of a famous religious figure puzzling. While the audience liked to see characters transform, rarely do people change so drastically. Toole posed the question to Hines, who responded that it must have been “the grace of God,” a response that Toole likely found unhelpful. Hines provided Toole a break from edits and rewrites, allowing time to talk to a friend and showcase his city.