This is the story of A Confederacy of Dunces. At first, we planned to write a biography of John Kennedy Toole, informed by the memories of the New York publisher who championed his work. However, during our research in New Orleans, speaking to those who knew him, reading the many letters sent to him from an important publisher, we discovered only slices of information about his life—especially his personal life, which he kept from his closest friends, a source of frustration for any would-be biographer. Kenny was not a famous man when he died. Documentation that might have provided the information we needed had either been lost or destroyed, and many of his acquaintances had passed away. What we did discover were the extraordinary circumstances under which the novel was finally published and became a surprise best seller and Pulitzer Prize winner. As for the rest, we used what our research did reveal, filling in these gaps as John Kennedy Toole himself might have if he were telling the story.