[Hegewisch Dupa]

It's odd, as it the story behind it's publishing (as if the history of Confederacy was strange enough).

Turns out Toole wrote a much shorter book as part of a contest. He was 16-18 years old, I forget exactly how old. It has a whole different feel then Dunces. After Toole's death, his mother resisted any attempt to have it published. Legal avenues were persued. I forget who she used to fight off the legal attacks, but who ever it was wrote the foreward to the book and explained how he reluctantly performed his duty to the mother. At the same time, he tried to talk sense into the mother to get her to publish it. She just wouldn't go for it. Maybe if he got her drunk with the wine in the oven...

Anyway, after she died, he figured his service to her was complete. Since he had control of the book, he went ahead and published it. It is a sad tale - the history and the book.

[motexva]

I don't know you might be mixing this up with another story. Walker Percy is the author who got COD published, as I recall in his forward the mother was very enthusiastic about publishing it, and shopped it around for years in an effort to get it published. I seem to remember Percy writing he felt he may have been one of the only ones to read it, because anyone who did would have recognized the book's brilliance.