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John Kennedy Toole was born December 17, 1937 in New Orleans. He died on March 26, 1969 in Biloxi, Mississippi. Let me do the quick math for you: He was 31 years old. Toole took his own life by running a garden hose from the tailpipe of his car into a window. He was quite accomplished for a man of his years. After graduating from Tulane University, he studied English at Columbia University. He was in the military. He worked on the stage as an actor. He won national merit scholarships. He was absolutely brilliant. If you were to look him up on Wikipedia, you’d find one of the longer biographies there. I didn’t have to go there to learn about this man. I heard his story from a friend of a friend in New Orleans. Mrs. Linda Mintz was the romper room lady for the New Orleans area. She was good friends with Toole’s mother. Mrs. Mintz also became a good friend of mine. The story, as she tells it, was that Toole was one of the most talented men on the planet. There was nothing he couldn’t do. He was a Tennesee Williams of sorts. He was an actor. And most of all, he penned one of my favorite books of all-time, The Confederacy of Dunces. If you’ve never read it, I highly recommend it. I told you that to tell you this. Toole became depressed after he wrote his masterpiece. He couldn’t attract a publisher. He was constantly turned down. His depression led to thoughts of suicide. He just didn’t feel worthy of life. His mother didn’t want to see him die in vain. She shopped his book around. As I think the story goes, she went to a professor at Loyola in New Orleans. He took the book and read it. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. I talk to a lot of young adults who seem to be struggling today. They can’t seem to find work. And when they do, it’s a job at Starbucks (not what they went to college for). The thing that upsets this group the most, and I think it bothers most people in life, is when they see someone with less skills than they have doing better. I once had a coach in college who said “potential is crap.” He hated when people said athletes had great potential. He felt that the spoils should go to the guy or girl who worked the hardest and figured out a way to win. I love going to bike races and marathons. Some people come in well within the three hour mark. Yet others come in at six hours. The funny thing is, when I see the guy coming in at under three hours, I think to myself, “Great job, you did the work, congratulations.” When I see the guy coming in at six hours, hobbling across the line, I get the chills.
