When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.
I’m reading a great, very funny book called A Confederacy of Dunces, written by John Kennedy Toole in 1963. Unfortunately, Toole could not find anyone willing to publish the book and subsequently killed himself in 1969 at the age of 31.
His mom spent another 10 years circulating the manuscript and finally got the book published in 1980, with the help of author Walker Percy.
In 1981, Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Thanks, Mom!