John Kennedy Toole, one of the most famous “failures” in the history of American literature, spent most of his life being good at things. The prized only child of older parents, Toole began high school at twelve and finished at sixteen. He entered Tulane University as an engineering major—predictably, he was a teen-age math whiz—but switched to English after a year. Following Tulane, he attended Columbia and earned his master’s degree with a barely reëdited version of his undergraduate thesis, for which he received high honors. (Toole’s academic specialty was sixteenth-century literature, with a focus on the plays of John Lyly, whose work was formative for Shakespeare.) At twenty-two, Toole became the youngest professor in the history of Hunter College. In 1961, he was drafted by the Army and wound up teaching English in Puerto Rico, where his innovative language classes earned him frequent accolades and promotions. He was also a talented mimic and a surprisingly graceful dancer. As one of his female friends said, “It would be easy to fall in love with a man that could dance like John Kennedy Toole.”
