Ken and Thelma: The Story of A Confederacy of Dunces

Intimate portrait of the Pulitzer Prize winner. John Kennedy Toole’s first novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, which Walker Percy called a “gargantuan tumultuous human tragi-comedy,” became a publishing phenomenon, with almost two million copies in print worldwide in eighteen languages. The book’s outrageous protagonist, Ignatius Reilly, is an icon of contemporary American fiction. Now Ken and Thelma sheds new light on the tragic life story of the author, known as “Ken” to his friends. Drawing on his own journals and personal letters, Joel L. Fletcher re-creates his friendship with Ken in the early 1960s and his long association with Ken’s indomitable mother, Thelma Ducoing Toole, both before and after the book’s publication. Includes personal photographs, many never before published.