Louisiana Literature
The Perspectives of Louisiana
as Viewed by
John Kennedy Toole and Shirley Ann Grau
Presented By
Adele George & Kathy Armit
Loyola University
John
Kennedy
Toole
December 17, 1937- March 26, 1969
Career :
Education:
Taught at Hunter College, New York
Tulane University English,1958
University of Southwestern Louisiana
Columbia University, Masters in
St. Mary’s Dominican College, New
Orleans 1959-1968
Military Service: US Army 1962-63
Pulitzer Prize in Fiction 1981
Faulkner Award nomination from P.E.N., 1981
English, 1959
Tulane University, post Graduate
studies, 1965
John Kennedy Toole’s
Cultural Background
• Native born and raised in New Orleans
• Born to eccentric parents John and Thelma Ducoing Toole.
•Father was a Car Salesman
•Mother was a school teacher
•Both of his parents were of Irish descent, however his mother’s
ancestors not only included 19th century Irish settlers but also
included early French settlers of South Louisiana
John Kennedy Toole’s
Publications
Novels
• A Confederacy of Dunces, first edition, published in 1980
• A comedic novel that takes place in 1960’s New Orleans.
• Focuses on the grossly overweight Ignatius Riley who
considers himself a genius and aspires to be a reformer.
John Kennedy Toole
Critical Comments
•
•
Many critics praised Toole for his creativity and ability
to recreate New Orleans with such accuracy.
Others, mainly local to New Orleans, felt that the book
portrays New Orleans in a less than favorable light.
Interesting Facts: Toole
• Highly intelligent – he skipped 2 grades and consistently
ranked first in his classes.
• Awarded a National Merit Scholarship after High School.
• Toole wrote his first book at the age of 16, The Neon Bible.
• Published 1989
• Committed suicide by asphyxiation.
• Contributing factors:
• Dependent parents
• Sexuality was in question
• Rejection of his book by various publishers.
• Only his mother knew the contents of his suicide note.
• The note was destroyed shortly after she read it.
• She never revealed its contents.
Shirley
Ann
Grau
Born :
July 8, 1929 New Orleans, Louisiana
Career:
Novelist and Short Story Writer
Louisiana Creative Writing Teacher
University of New Orleans 1966-1967
Pulitzer Prize Winner 1965
Education:
Tulane UniversityBA with Honors in English
Memberships:
The Company of Great
Southern Short Story Writers
The Authors Guild
Authors League of America
Phi Beta Kappa.
Cultural Background
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Daughter of Adolph (dentist) and Katherine Grau
Raised in Alabama and Louisiana during the 1940’s and
50’s, a period of time that races were segregated by law in
the south
She received most of her childhood education in Alabama
but returned to New Orleans her senior year of high
school
She married in 1955 to James Kern Feibleman and had
four children
Grau and her family spent their winter months in Metairie
and spent summers at Martha’s Vineyard.
Currently lives in New Orleans and continues to write
Shirley
Ann
Grau’s
Publications
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
The Black Prince and Other Stories,
Knopf (New York City), 1955,
The Wind Shifting West, Knopf, 1973.
Nine Women, Knopf, 1985.
Selected Stories, Louisiana State University
Press, 2003
NOVELS
The Hard Blue Sky, Knopf, 1958.
The House on Coliseum Street, Knopf,
1961, reprinted, Avon (New York City),
1986.
The Keepers of the House, Knopf, 1964.
The Condor Passes, Knopf, 1971.
Evidence of Love, Random House (New
York City), 1977.
Roadwalkers, Knopf, 1994.
The Condor Passes, Transaction
Publishers, 2000.
Summaries of Short Story Collections
The Black Prince and Other Stories, This collection details the
struggles of blacks and whites living on the bayous. The
characters try to redefine their gender and racial roles with the
beginnings of new standards and opportunities while being
haunted by remnants of the old south.
The Wind Shifting West, she details the difficult issues of alienation
and miscommunication issues in families and marriages.
Nine Women, describes the struggles of daughters, wives, and
mothers in handling the past, widowhood, aging and death.
Summaries of Novels
Keepers of the House, her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and
masterpiece is of a romantic relationship between a black
housekeeper and a member of aristocratic white family. She
explores the different attitudes on generational sagas and
issues of race.
The Condor Passes explores a racial dynamic in a relationship
between a wealthy employer and his black servant.
In the Evidence of Love, explores an investigation into how several
women strive by attempting to give their personnel identity to
find a place for themselves.
Roadwalkers refers to an orphaned black girl left wandering during
the Depression, growing up in an orphanage and then details
her life of success as an adult and providing her daughter with
a life of privileges (Contemporary Literary Criticism).
Shirley Ann Grau Critical Comments
Critical responses to Grau’s fiction vary, some critics appreciate her ability
in handling social history in a mythic fashion while others see her prose as
superficial, predictable reworking of stereotypes
The evaluation done by Pearson resulted in Grau shortchanging herself
far more than her readers after being hailed in 1955 as one of the most
promising of Southern writers and in 1963 as a potential genius of
O’Connor, Capote, and Styron. . The examination of nature in her work
overall is reflected as Grau having a philosophical view. Lending Grau’s
vision of nature as undeveloped and misleading in most of her
stories.
The review by Flanagan places Grau’s works up there with those by
other thematic and regional writers such as Katherine Ann Porter,
Flannery O’Connor, and Eudora Weltz. Grau’s collection of short stories
is described as being elegant, handpicked and representative of a
traditional subject dear to this Southern writer’s heart. Grau’s techniques
and sensibilities about race, class, power, love, loss and salvation are
effectively understandable in her eighteen tales. Grau’s is praised for her
gift in her ability to capture the atmosphere with her powers of
description and prose, leading her to the top of American short story
stylist.
The review by Bukoski notes that in Ann Grau’s fiction, house expresses
a focus for the psychological and emotional lives of families. He writes
that her fictional houses are alienated because they become the failure of
The family when social and emotional life turns inharmonious inside the
house .
Interesting facts: Grau
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It is noted that most of her novels have some
reference in their titles to some form of
“home”, an interviewer described place as
having an important meaning to her.
A couple of her books had Bible scriptures
written in the epigraph that were reflective of a
theme being emphasized in the book.
Perspectives of New Orleans
These two writers wrote about characters that
reflected what they observed through their eyes.
 Toole saw a medium between what tourist and
locals thought of New Orleans and expressed it
through his characters.
 Grau saw the interactions between black and
whites and captured them as people (not color)
with problems.
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Q
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Source citations
1. Bukoski, Anthony. (1987).The Burden of Home: Shirley Ann Grau’s Fiction.Critique, Summer 87,
Vol. 28, Issue 4,181-193
2. Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2204. <http.//galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC>
jankaulins.com/image…s/thumbnails/193.jpg
3. Flanagan, Margaret. (2203). Selected Stories. Booklist. 9/15/2003, Vol.100, Issue 2, 209.
4. Pearson, Ann. (1975). Shirley Ann Grau: Nature is the Vision. Critique, Vol.17, Issue 2, 47-58.
5. “Shirley Ann Grau.” Contemporary Southern Writers, 1999. Biography Resource
Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomas Gale. 2005
<http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC.>
6. Meanor, Patrick, and Crane, Gwen “Shirley Ann Grau.” Dictionary of Literary
Biography, Volume 218: American Short- Story Writers Since World WarII,
Second Series. 1999: 173-179. Biography Resource Center. Gale Group Databases. Loyola
University New Orleans Library, New Orleans, LA.
<http://www.galenet.galegroup.com.>
7.“Shirley Ann Grau.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Biography Resource Center. Gale Group
Databases. Loyola University New Orleans Library, New Orleans, LA.
<http://www.galenet.galegroup.com.>
8. Jax Brewery photo – Used with permission from Zehnder Communications
9. Holditch, W. Kenneth. “Another Kind of Confederacy: John Kennedy Toole.” Literary
New Orleans in the Modern World. Ed. Richard S. Kennedy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1998, 102-122.
10. Pol Nevils, Rene’, and Deborah George Hardy. Ignatius Rising. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2001.
11. Codrescu, Andrei. “A Confederacy of Dunces, Making the Natives Wince.” Rev. of A Confederacy of
Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Chronicle of Higher Education 46.32. 14 Apr. 2004: B7-8. Academic
Search Preminer. EBSCOHost, Loyola Univ. Lib. New Orleans, LA. 16 Mar. 2005.
http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&an=3069421