Louisiana Literature

2. Louisiana Literature The Perspectives of Louisiana as Viewed by John Kennedy Toole and Shirley Ann Grau Presented By Adele George & Kathy Armit Loyola University

3. 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 English, 1959 Orleans 1959-1968 Tulane University, post Graduate Military Service: US Army 1962-63 studies, 1965 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction 1981 Faulkner Award nomination from P.E.N., 1981

4. John Kennedy Toole’sCultural 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

5. 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.

6. John Kennedy TooleCritical 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.

7. 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.

8. Shirley Ann Grau Born : Education: July 8, 1929 - Tulane University- New Orleans, Louisiana BA with Honors in English Career: Memberships: Novelist and Short Story Writer The Company of Great Louisiana Creative Writing Teacher Southern Short Story Writers University of New Orleans 1966-1967 The Authors Guild Pulitzer Prize Winner 1965 Authors League of America Phi Beta Kappa.

9. Cultural Background • 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

10. Shirley Ann Grau’sPublications 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.

11. Summaries of Short Story Collections The Black Prince and Other Stories, This collection details the struggles of blacks and whitesliving 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.

12. 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).

13. 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.

14. 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 .

15. Interesting facts: Grau • 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.

16. 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.

17. QuESTIONS?

18. 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