SIX

Reporter Bill Greeley stood with the wind on his back, staring at the ocean, questioning his decision. He had made it hastily. Maybe he should have considered his options more carefully. He had felt stifled in Minneapolis, as if his purpose lay elsewhere. He was single, only thirty-five years old, and ready for adventure. The East Coast was expensive and the freelance competition fierce. There was always someone else willing to fight for a good story. The ideal of journalistic integrity was absent from a lot of writers. He closed his eyes and let the sounds and smells of the beach calm him. The temperature continued to drop and he hugged his jacket, wishing he had brought at least one sweater along on this assignment. It was unusually cold for June even for Nantucket. The reporter’s mind drifted. While Horace Greeley had said “Go West Young Man,” his distant relative saw the future in the opposite direction. A childhood and education in Minnesota lead Bill Greeley to a job on the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. A three-part, much-admired article on the town Sinclair Lewis immortalized brought an opportunity to freelance in New York, a roving commission to cover and report on the arts, which for this reporter meant music and movies.

And so it was not surprising to find Bill Greeley in New England at one of the most popular and anticipated American film festivals, looking for a story he could sell. Only he had no idea what the story would be. He was on his own dime at the Nantucket Film Festival, having finagled a press pass from the entertainment editor at the New York Post. The deal was simple. If the Post liked the story, they’d pay him and pick up his expenses. If not, he might find a restful few days in the fresh air.

The year is 2003. The average price of a new home is a quarter of a million dollars. Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected governor of California, Saddam Hussein is captured by U.S. forces, and Apple launches iTunes.

The damp, chilly weather was beginning to seep into his bones but Greeley loved the ocean, her grace and power, the way her waves kept returning to the shore, curling into the sand like thick wild tresses she was letting down as she greeted him. He started walking briskly along the beach back to the cozy seaside inn where he was staying. He smiled for maybe the first time since he’d moved out East. He wondered if other writers and dreamers had discovered their courage on this very beach and if they’d accomplished those dreams. He didn’t know that four decades earlier, one of them, twenty-three-year old Kenny Toole, had left his footprints there.

When Greeley returned to his room, there was a package waiting for him. It included a press kit for the film festival and a list of screenings and events. He decided to review the contents over a drink in the hotel bar. As he made his way down to the lobby, he stopped to look at a collage of photos on the wall depicting the inn over the years. The proprietor noticed him admiring the photos and asked if there was anything about the inn he’d like to know. Greeley was struck by the woman’s natural beauty. She was older than he, in her forties he guessed, but one of those women who looked younger than her years, her skin freshened by ocean air. She was wearing no makeup except for a bit of lip gloss and her cheeks were rosy, as if she’d just been outside. She explained that the inn was built in the early 1800s and was originally the private home of a whaling captain and his family. Her grandparents bought it in 1932 and turned it into an inn.

“My fondest memories are here,” she said. “There was a time I thought about selling it but something kept me from going through with it. This place is just so full of history.” Greeley invited her to join him for a drink. For the next hour, she amused him with stories about the inn and some of the famous guests that had stayed there. She talked about her grandmother and how after her grandfather passed, she stayed on and ran the inn.

“Nana was a real trouper. She preferred the island during the off-season and kept the inn open all winter. She always said that the travelers who visited in the coldest months were the most interesting folks she got.”

Then she told Greeley about one guest in particular who stayed over Thanksgiving weekend 1960 that her grandmother remembered. “Nana said she’d never forget that Thanksgiving because it was the day that Wilt Chamberlain got fifty-five rebounds in a game against the Boston Celtics.”

Greeley was captivated.

“Nana didn’t mention this guest’s name but there was something about him that never left her, he was just this sweet kid in his early twenties, yet in his eyes she could see a thousand untold stories. And he spoke with a Southern accent that Nana said made her want to hear all those stories.”

“Do you have any idea who it might have been?” Greeley asked.

“No, but Nana said what struck her the most, the thing that she couldn’t understand, was how such a gifted boy with so much life ahead of him seemed so burdened. He told her he hated his job teaching at some big university in New York, that all he wanted was to be a writer, and that he’d made a secret promise to himself. The way he said it made her sad.”

“Did he tell her what that promise was?” Greeley asked.

“No, and she always wondered what happened to him, if he kept that promise. You’re actually staying in the same room that he did.”

Greeley began ticking off the names of famous Southern writers from that era: Reynolds Price, Peter Taylor, they would have been in their early twenties back then, Greeley thought, or maybe William Styron, when was he born? Flannery O’Connor! No, that was a woman. Greeley kept running through the possibilities, trying to figure out the identity of the stranger. Greeley must have seemed miles away to the gracious proprietor, who politely mentioned that it was getting late and that she had to be up early. Greeley thanked her for a lovely evening. When he got back to his room, he sat at the desk and began going through the press kit for the film festival. He opened the drawer, looking for a pen or pencil, when he noticed something. Someone had carved their initials. It read, I.R., NOVEMBER, 1960. Greeley could think of no famous writer with those initials.

He turned back to the task at hand: finding a story to cover at the film festival. Everything listed was standard fare, nothing that every other writer wouldn’t be covering, and probably scoring more interviews because they had been attending the festival since its inception. Then he saw that Steven Soderbergh was doing a staged reading of A Confederacy of Dunces at Nantucket High School. He had tried to read that book in college but couldn’t get past the first twenty pages. It seemed to go on and on, like War and Peace. Admittedly he wasn’t a connoisseur of literary fiction, finding it pretentious. Long-winded tomes didn’t interest him. Still, this event could have potential. He’d heard about previous attempts to turn the book into a film and how some people believed there was a curse on the project. He vaguely recalled an article from a few years back about how many of the actors who’d been considered for the lead role had died before they could do the film.

As Greeley went to bed that night, he thought about the memorable guest at the inn and wondered if the initials he found in the desk could have been his. The next morning, he asked the proprietor if there was a way to learn who had stayed there that long-ago Thanksgiving.

“Nana kept guest logs. If you don’t mind a little dust, I have them in the storage room.”

Within an hour, they found the log for 1960. Greeley felt like a kid on a scavenger hunt. They turned to November 24. It read: “John Kennedy Toole, New York, New York.”

“I’ve seen that name somewhere,” the proprietor said. She walked over to the library located off the lobby, searching the shelves. She pulled out a copy of A Confederacy of Dunces.

“This has been part of our collection for years. Books left by visitors.”

She opened it. Inside was an inscription from 1981, “To the next guest at this lovely inn, I hope you get as much joy from this wonderful book as I did.”

Greeley thanked her, walked out to his rental car, and drove to the high school. As he arrived, it hit him. “I.R., Ignatius Reilly!” The future author of A Confederacy of Dunces had carved his protagonist’s initials into the desk. Greeley was envisioning his article when the house lights dimmed and the actors took the stage. The program listed Will Ferrell as Ignatius. Greeley had never been a fan of Will Ferrell, thinking his acting style too broad. Though he’d enjoyed his work on Saturday Night Live, Ferrell simply wasn’t someone Greeley thought about. Until now. Ferrell’s only prop was Ignatius’s signature green hunting cap. Greeley watched in disbelief as the tall, curly-haired actor with long, slender hands and an angular face transformed into a fat, bloated blowhard waving his paws in indignation at the world. Ferrell’s entrance was nothing less than inspired. He emerged from the back of the theater shouting insults at the other actors as the narrator introduced them. For a moment, Greeley was reminded of his childhood idol Andy Kaufman, whose infamous alter ego, Tony Clifton, with the same mop of hair and curmudgeonly disposition, would hurl invectives like grenades. Ferrell’s Ignatius convinced Greeley that maybe he hadn’t given the book a chance. Yes, he thought, tonight I have a date with John Kennedy Toole. He decided that his article would bring to life the tale of a film project. He was hoping to talk with Will Ferrell, but missed him. He chatted with Paul Rudd, Anne Meara, Mos Def, and even got a quote from Soderbergh.

What struck Greeley most was everyone’s reverence for Toole. There was an unspoken sadness that the author wasn’t there to share in the excitement. Greeley didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t see or touch. He was raised by a crusty old pragmatist, his father, a veteran newspaper man, and his mother, a no-nonsense school teacher. He was a throwback to another era, an old-fashioned journalist who felt responsible for the truth and preferred a legal pad for taking notes instead of a laptop. To Greeley, half the people who called themselves reporters nowadays were as full of shit as a Minnesota Christmas turkey. Yes, Greeley was a cynic, but he couldn’t help but think that Toole’s spirit might have been present at that reading, that everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours smacked of more than coincidence. “Shake it off, Greeley,” he told himself.

That night, Greeley began reading the inn’s copy of the novel. He started as soon as he returned to his room and at 3:00 A.M., he was still awake, unable to stop. Though he wouldn’t admit this to anyone, he still found himself skipping past the long parts. He felt guilty, but every time Ignatius erupted into one of his rambling soliloquies against the establishment, the reporter who had been trained that less was more and who’d refused to read Updike in college on principle simply couldn’t understand why the publisher never edited the damn thing. In fact, as he started the research for his article, there was a lot he didn’t understand. Yes, it was heartbreaking that Toole didn’t live to see his masterpiece published, but would this book have had the same appeal if the author had gone on a multicity tour, humming happily to himself at his first book signing, convivial and effusive, eager to connect with the fans who had lined up for hours awaiting his arrival? Would a publisher even consider a tour in the first place? Did all the drama and mystery behind this book contribute more to its success than was politic to admit? Tragedy has legs, thought Greeley. What if Ignatius Reilly stormed America in the mid-sixties when Toole was still here and the world wasn’t ready for him? What if this book had been a flop, an obscure title destined for the remainder tables? How do we know it would have been the phenomenon it became if events had unfolded differently?

Greeley double-checked the date of original publication against the author’s obituary. It wasn’t published until eleven years after Toole died. What was going on? Was there an agent? Was the manuscript sent to New York publishers? Did they all turn it down? And if they had published it eleven years earlier, would it have found an audience? Greeley wondered if the decade delay may have been the making of the novel’s popularity.

When he returned to New York, Greeley met with a favorite professor from college, Dr. Bell, who had recently joined the faculty at the NYU School of Journalism. An award-winning reporter who had a few close calls chasing stories in war-torn Third World countries, he shifted to academics when his daughter was born. She’d recently married and moved to New Jersey, so when the serendipitous offer came from NYU, he and his wife moved to Manhattan to be nearer to their only child. Rotund and affable, the man was always available. Greeley couldn’t remember him ever coming to class in a bad mood. Though he didn’t speak much about his years in the field, Greeley suspected that something happened out there that left him grateful just to be alive. He never worried about the little things and taught his students that above all else, they must, as journalists, always be guided by truth and integrity. It was the last one, he’d often say, that many of his colleagues struggled with, and for him, it was never about ethics, which was too philosophical a discussion, it was about how you treated people. Greeley was eager to discuss with him how best to approach his article. Though the professor’s journalistic expertise would be helpful, it was his hobby that Greeley wanted to tap into. Professor Bell was a movie buff. He also had contacts in Hollywood that he’d cultivated over the years. Professor Bell suggested they meet for a drink at the Knickerbocker on University Place.

A bustling restaurant near NYU’s Washington Square campus, the Knickerbocker was reminiscent of a 1920s Paris bistro with an American jazz influence. Its regulars well represented Greenwich Village. When Greeley arrived, he saw his mentor sitting at the bar reading the New York Times. The two men greeted each other and ordered lunch along with a sturdy Côte du Rhône. It wasn’t until Greeley looked at his watch that he realized nearly two hours had passed. As the bartender cleared their plates and brought out two glasses of Sauternes on the house, Greeley addressed the reason he wanted to meet.

Professor Bell listened as Greeley recounted what he’d learned, the author’s tragic death eleven years before the book was published, the long list of directors and producers who’d attempted a film version, and how no one could get the damn thing out of development hell, all the actors that kept dropping dead after their names came up to play the lead, a murder-suicide, a hurricane, and God knows what else, Greeley said, that almost made him think there might be a curse.

The professor became curious. He’d read A Confederacy of Dunces years before, and recalled the New York Times had not reviewed the book in hardcover. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, who missed his opportunity when it first came out, reviewed it when it was released in paperback a year later, justifying his omission by suggesting the novel was anti-Semitic, a view that Bell considered an unfortunate excuse.

“I read it in 1981, and the author had been dead over a decade by then. Why did it take so long to get published?” asked Bell.

“Well, for one thing, it sat in an editor’s office at Simon & Schuster for almost three years.”

“Wasn’t there another novel from Simon & Schuster that was similar to Toole’s, but not nearly as good?”

“Someone mentioned that to me in Nantucket, I’ll have to look,” Greeley said.

“The title was awful, almost put me off on reading the damn thing,” Professor Bell said. “Came out years before A Confederacy of Dunces. I was still in grad school. Only reason I remember is because I was doing book reviews at the time for the university paper and someone had given me a copy. I wish I could recall the name of it. When was Toole’s manuscript with Simon & Schuster?”

Greeley recognized that look right away. Greeley and Bell understood each other. They loved putting together the pieces of something scattered long ago that begged to be assembled, the remnants of something that should have been told, a narrative waiting to be woven. Yes, Greeley had a good reputation and so did his mentor, but they were driven by something larger, the satisfaction of seeing a story where no one else did. Greeley suspected he was onto something when he found those initials carved in that desk in Nantucket. Now he was certain. This story was just stirring to life.

Greeley was so lost in thought that Professor Bell had to repeat the question.

“Sorry, Professor. Based on what I could find out so far, Toole first sent his manuscript to Simon & Schuster around 1964.”

“Is the editor still alive?”

“Yes, his name is Robert Gottlieb.”

“I’ve met him,” Bell said. “At Lincoln Center, some fundraiser for the ballet. It was a while ago. We chatted about Balanchine. I liked him. Very impressive man.”

“Do you think it was possible he was the editor of that similar book you mentioned?”

“It’s worth finding out. If so, it gives you another avenue for your story.”

Greeley’s mind was whirling. The more he sat there, the more he felt a story moving within him. “Do you know anything about Barney Rosset and Grove Press?”

“He was a big deal back in the day. He was the first publisher to take on censorship in America and win. I interviewed him once. Struck me as a very different fellow than the S&S editor.”

“How so?”

“Both are men of letters, intelligent, committed to good writers, but Rosset is another animal entirely. He’s all intuition and repressed sexuality, the smartest sixteen-year-old you’d ever want to meet. Didn’t Grove Press publish A Confederacy of Dunces?”

“Louisiana State University published it first, but they only planned on printing a few hundred copies until Grove got a hold of the paperback rights. A young editor there fought for the book, got everyone who was anyone to review it.”

“It did seem like that book appeared out of nowhere,” Professor Bell observed. “All of a sudden, you couldn’t turn around without seeing someone reading it.”

“What did you think?”

“There are certain books that when you recall reading them, you remember exactly what was happening at the time. I was in Poland covering the Solidarity movement when I read Dunces. The situation there was dangerous for journalists, especially from the U.S. I was traveling with a group. Everyone was on edge. One night I was reading to try to fall asleep and started laughing. My colleagues insisted on knowing what was so funny, so I started reading out loud. It was the first time since we arrived that we felt relaxed, just a bunch of ink-stained wretches laughing their asses off at something truly hilarious. Ignatius’s mishaps reminded us of the absurdity of it all. The next day, soldiers seized control of the country and martial law went into effect.”

Greeley wondered how many other stories were out there about this book and if Toole was aware that his work would leave an imprint like a tattoo on its readers.

“You may need to go back to the beginning,” Professor Bell said. “Why that book took so long to get published. Who was responsible or not. And why a small university press, when Simon & Schuster had been interested? Why didn’t another New York publisher grab it? You may find things that will surprise you.”

As Greeley listened to Bell, he thought more about John Kennedy Toole. They would have been about the same age had Toole survived. Though Greeley didn’t know Professor Bell as a younger man, he imagined he was a person you’d want as a friend, someone who was not only loyal but intuitive. Greeley remembered this one classmate. He wore his shirts starched, his jeans with a crease, and he had a pair of white Nike high-tops that always looked like new. One morning, he came to class with his shoelaces missing. It was odd but no one thought much of it, except the professor. Years later at an alumni event, Greeley spoke with the classmate. He told Greeley he was missing shoelaces that day because he’d tried to hang himself but realized rope would probably work better. He never got to the hardware store because Professor Bell asked him to stay after class and kept him there until he’d admitted he was struggling and needed help. Were there any warning signs on the day of John Kennedy Toole’s death? Would someone have noticed a missing shoelace? Would it have mattered? Research for Greeley meant not only unearthing facts, but finding the human element behind them. It wouldn’t be easy chasing down leads decades old. He would follow this story wherever it took him.

“Walk me through again what you’ve got on the movie,” Professor Bell said.

Greeley took out his notes and began enumerating the high points, starting with Scott Kramer, the young production assistant at Fox who bought the film rights for ten thousand dollars back in 1980, how he convinced Johnny Carson to greenlight the project and John Belushi to play the lead. “But two nights before Belushi is scheduled to meet with Kramer, he dies of an overdose. Then, the head of the Louisiana State Film Commission, another key player, is killed by her husband in a murder-suicide.”

Professor Bell leaned back and listened.

“Carson bails after that and then some Texas oil tycoon and his girlfriend buy the rights for a quarter of a million. She bumps into John Candy in the waiting room at a weight-loss clinic and while they’re sitting there, gets him interested in playing Ignatius. It doesn’t work out. Then Candy dies, too.”

Professor Bell ordered another round.

“The Texans run out of money. They try to get investors but can’t find any takers, except maybe Toole’s mother, had she been asked but she wasn’t, and boy was she angry.”

“Can’t blame her,” Professor Bell said.

“She’s another story. By the way, did I mention the tycoon and his girlfriend were working out of some funeral home in New Orleans?”

This is the stuff of a Beckett play, Greeley thought. It was as if John Kennedy were orchestrating all of it from the grave. Taking a sip of wine, he envisioned a mischievous-eyed Toole, now a gamer with a remote control in his hands, sitting in front of a giant movie screen connected to some weird cosmic PlayStation, laughing as he manipulated his avatars. If Greeley knew Toole, and he felt as if he was getting to know him better every day, this was just the beginning.

“Next, Orion Pictures gets involved, convinces Harold Ramis to direct, but they want a svelte, buff Ignatius. Ramis is appalled.”

Professor Bell shook his head. “It wouldn’t be the first time a brilliant book almost got mangled beyond recognition. I once met Mickey Rooney in Chicago. We started to chat and he told me that he never understood being cast as Chinese, but he took the job because he adored Audrey Hepburn and he needed the money.”

“You’re talking about Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

“And some books had it even worse when Hollywood got their fingers on them. Lucky Jim was one unlucky bastard.”

Greeley smiled. He missed this man.

“What about Love Story! Heavens to Christ, it’s a good thing I saw that nonsense on an empty stomach. If they were making the Melville novel now, I could only imagine the talk around the production table. ‘Does anyone remember, was Moby-Dick the sailor or the whale?’ ”

Between the good French wine and spirited conversation, both men lost track of time, until the early happy hour crowd started arriving.

“How much time has gone by at this point?” asked the professor.

“Almost a decade. Fast forward to 1992. Ramis is out. The Texan is back in. He hires a real producer. She goes to Cannes, pitches the project to New Line, and gets this confused look. They tell her that Scott Kramer and Steven Soderbergh already pitched them. And miraculously enough, everyone was willing to play nice together in the sandbox. Enter network television veteran Brandon Tartikoff wanting to join in. He suggests Chris Farley for the lead. That doesn’t work out, and then both of them die.”

“If Thomas Hardy were alive, he’d be taking notes.”

Greeley realized that he didn’t know much about any of these people.

“I can see why Soderbergh suspects a curse,” Bell said. “What’s happened since?”

“Soderbergh wants to move on, but Kramer won’t let go. He finds a director, gets Miramax to put up one and a half million. That brings us to the reading at the Nantucket Film Festival.”

“It’s 2003. Surely this thing will be made,” Professor Bell opined. “Two more years and it will have been a quarter century since Kramer first optioned the rights.”

“The book was a huge success when it was finally published, and now it’s considered a classic. Maybe the universe has a similar timetable for the movie.”

“Toole, like many brilliant creatives, may have tapped into something earlier than the rest of us, but I have to wonder, if he had lived, would the film have happened any faster?”

Greeley hadn’t thought about that. He considered all the magnificent books that were turned into films long after the authors had died: Little Women, Treasure Island, A Christmas Carol, the list was endless. What about those that were never made? The first one that came to mind was The Catcher in the Rye. Maybe that’s the category where A Confederacy of Dunces should reside. Maybe it really wasn’t meant to be made into a movie.

As the two men said their goodbyes, promising to meet again soon, Greeley decided to postpone the article for the New York Post. He needed to immerse himself in the research. Something was tugging at him. It felt as if John Kennedy Toole himself was reaching out, wanting him to tell the true story.

“Okay, Kenny, where do you want me to look first?”