Butterfly in the Typewriter

Once again Toole assumed the role of teacher, although he traded in his professorial tweed jacket and slim tie for an army uniform. Considering the other possible assignments he could have received, his orders to teach English in Puerto Rico were fortunate. And his position, which inherently held rank over the students, necessitated an immediate promotion once he arrived at Fort Buchanan. This came with the benefit of access to the officer’s club, a privileged gathering spot on base. Furthermore, he had access to beautiful beaches and other tropical islands in the region. While he regretted the draft intruding on his career, he could certainly endure the Caribbean for two years.

And according to David Kubach, his close friend at Fort Buchanan, Toole actually lived a charmed life in the army. He was liked by his students, and he enjoyed remarkable success, earning the rank of sergeant in less than two years. Most importantly, Toole faced challenges and moments of loneliness in Puerto Rico, but he also achieved his long-standing ambition to write the quintessential New Orleans novel. While stationed at Fort Buchanan, he wrote A Confederacy of Dunces. Quite unexpectedly, his experience in the army proved crucial to both his personal and artistic development. As Joel Fletcher explains, “It was the best time of Ken’s life, though he didn’t know it.”

He arrived in Puerto Rico in late November of 1961, the beginning of the dry season, before the torrential downpours of the summer months. On the grounds of Fort Buchanan, palm trees with whitewashed trunks swayed over well-manicured lawns. Boxwood hedges lined the roads and pathways. And at the far end of the base, Monte de Santa Ana marked the beginning of the mountainous island interior. The barracks were a series of white, single-level, A-frame structures with louvered windows, akin to the shotgun houses of New Orleans, only longer. Inside the building marked Company A, dark green cots with footlockers lined the walls, creating a long, narrow aisle down the length of the room. Small desks and steel wall lockers stood between each cot. And a track of bare lightbulbs ran the length of the ceiling.

As he settled into his new residence, unpacking his books, his uniform, and his favorite gray suit, Toole met his fellow instructors. There was the charismatic socialite Bob Young. There was Joseph Clein, a Harvard graduate from Alabama. Tony Moore hailed from New Jersey and, fondly embracing Puerto Rico, met his wife on the island. Bob Schnobel, with his plastic-rimmed glasses and baby face, seemed unusually young, especially in contrast to older instructors like the blond-haired, slightly balding Jerry Alpaugh. And Bob Morter was a good-humored man who seemed awkward and troubled at times, especially in the culture of the army. He devotedly inserted a picture of a male instructor he admired into a small copy of the Mona Lisa on the inside of his locker door. They were a collection of unlikely suspects for the army: recently graduated English majors, intellectuals grounded in the liberal arts, hopeful writers, and aspiring college professors. They all shared an appreciation for literature, music, and film. They discussed books and movies with witty repartee. And each personality added dimension to their social dynamic: dandies and dilettantes, urbane conversationalists and daredevils. Toole described them as “a hilarious group. All college graduates (some with advanced degrees), they exist here in an alien society.”

Introducing himself as John (reserving Ken for his Louisiana friends), Toole took his place among the personalities of the group. As typical, he kept a certain distance from the social center. He participated in the impromptu soirees of Company A, but he rarely craved an audience like some of the other more loquacious instructors. Candid pictures from the time depict him socializing at parties and dinners but never as the center of attention. In one picture he stands and smiles contemplatively, tapping his cigarette over an ashtray, as the other instructors, drinking at small, circular tables, cheer the arrival of a new guest. In another picture taken at the Officer’s Club Christmas dinner a few weeks after his arrival, Toole holds back laughter as he looks at Bob Young, who appears to have just made an amusing comment. A momentary enthusiasm shines in Toole’s eyes. He appears on the verge of offering some hilarity to complement Young’s joke. He likely interjected with his trademark wit, the guests probably laughed, and Young would once again take center stage of the dinner conversation.

The poise that Toole maintained offered him that slight distance he preferred to keep. From that distance, he observed, critiqued, and offered hilarious commentary, the same process Fletcher had witnessed as they watched a mother whack her child over the head that hot summer day in New Orleans in 1960. It was this approach that characterized Toole’s first interaction with David Kubach. Soon after Toole arrived, Kubach came down with tonsillitis. One night as the instructors slept in the Company A barracks, Kubach, overcome with the pain in his throat, periodically called out in raspy agony, “Oh my God!” Toole heard the suffering but remained silent. The next morning Toole asked what was wrong. When Kubach told him he had a sore throat, Toole appeared disappointed. “Oh, I thought you might be having a dark night of the soul.” They both laughed heartily.

Toole and Kubach discovered that they shared an appreciation for satirical humor, a talent Toole had mastered at least in conversation. And Kubach appreciated Toole’s talent for delivering acerbic one-liners. As Kubach remembers, “It seemed his range of satire had no limit.” Tony Moore, a self-described third wheel to the Toole-Kubach relationship, made similar observations of Toole. “His satiric gifts were enormous . . . and he could be amazing in his observations.” Moore recalls one evening after watching a Sofia Loren film and noticing her glistening plump lips, Toole commented, “She looked like she had been smacked in the mouth with a ripe tomato.” It struck Moore as a unique way to express what he observed. On another occasion, Toole parodied a recently televised White House tour, impersonating Jacqueline Kennedy as if she were giving a tour of one of the Puerto Rican barracks. Pointing to grotesque graffiti of the male anatomy and using Puerto Rican slang, Toole said in the soft and dignified voice of the First Lady, “And here we see a picture of a bicho.” He went on to describe the artistic merit of the image, much to the enjoyment of Company A.

Like his friends in Lafayette, his fellow instructors in Puerto Rico soon learned that his humor usually came at the expense of others in their circle. As Kubach remembers, “Everything was funny to John. We made fun of a lot of people.... He had a take-no-prisoners attitude when it came to humor.” The other instructors recognized his uncanny ability to observe and comment on human behavior. But like several of his acquaintances in Louisiana, some instructors found his sharp wit worrisome; it seemed anyone could land in his crosshairs. Moore recalls Toole “wanted to poke fun at everybody.” In retrospect, Toole reminded Moore of Thersites in Troilus and Cressida. Much like Thersites who mocks demi-god warriors and damns homosexuality, Toole’s witticisms could sting, embarrass, and hurt. But his fellow instructors also recognized him as brilliantly perceptive and often considerate. He defended the instructors when they came under scrutiny, gaining their respect. Despite his tendency to make insensitive comments, they acknowledged his intelligence, his self-discipline and ability to mediate between them and Puerto Rican officers.

He humorously illustrates the maddening effects of the dull Fort Buchanan teaching method in a letter to his parents:

As I was looking out of the office a few minutes ago, I saw an ambulance drive up to one of the Co. B classrooms. The instructor of the class, whom I know, is a very passive, scholarly Yale graduate, and I suspected that he had finally passed out from asking, “What is this?”; “Who are you?” “Do you like to eat fried chicken?”

Much to the frustration of the highly educated instructors, the program offered no intellectual challenge. But the program was not developed around a liberal arts value of cultivating ideas or refining thought processes. It aimed at successful test scores. With tensions rising in Cuba and Vietnam, the U.S. Army wanted the recruits ready for the frontline. They needed to know how to follow orders on the battlefield, not weigh the ethics of war. But they first needed to pass the exam. Companies A, B, and C at Fort Buchanan efficiently achieved this goal. In March of 1962 an article in the San Juan Star describes the program: “Fort Buchanan crams 189 hours of English into an extensive seven-week instruction . . . that has no parallel elsewhere in the Army.” The leadership at Fort Buchanan was quite proud of the program, as is evident when Toole’s superior Captain Gil de LaMadrid, writes, “The English Language Program of the U.S. Army Training Center, Caribbean is the only program of its type in the worldwide scope of Army operations.” But however unique or cutting edge they made it appear, at times it was despairingly oppressive for the instructors and the students. While several instructors, including Toole, could speak Spanish, which is likely one of the reasons they were assigned to Puerto Rico, they were not permitted to use that language in the classroom, although many of them did in secret. As the San Juan Star article describes,

English instructors . . . do not teach English by comparing the language with Spanish . . . The use of English is so stressed in Training Company “A” that no Spanish language magazines or newspapers are available for the recruits . . . And “Think in English” signs have been conspicuously placed throughout the company buildings.

While Toole had felt elevated from Lafayette upon returning to Columbia and teaching at Hunter, he now taught in a situation that seemed far below his level, although present-day institutions would label what they were doing as teaching English as a second language, and would carry out instruction with far more cultural sensitivity. For Toole the whole experience must have taken some painful adjustment. And perhaps that is what Emilie Griffin saw troubling him when she came to Puerto Rico in January of 1962 and spent a day with Toole. They walked on the beach, ate lunch, and visited El Morro, where the waves of the Atlantic crashed below the walls of the old colonial fortress. She recalls seeing a “dark streak” that was “persistent” and “disabling” in her friend. It was the last time she ever saw him.

Eventually Toole found some degree of pleasure in his efforts at Fort Buchanan. Despite the intellectual sterility of his duties, he thrived as a teacher in Puerto Rico, as he did everyplace else he taught. In a commendation letter to Toole, Captain Gil de La Madrid writes, “Shortly after your assignment to this unit in November 1961 as an English Instructor, I observed that you would become one of the most outstanding men ever to serve in this program. This proved to be true.” The San Juan Star article features a photograph of Toole in the classroom. He smiles as he paces with the gait of a lecturer, punctuating his annunciation with his baton; the students appear attentive and entertained. The caption reads, “Cpl. Toole’s class is a top one at Ft. Buchanan.” Somehow, Toole made the repetition of elementary English phrases engaging and innovative. His superiors took notice. They often exhibited Toole’s classroom as an exemplar of the training program.

Unhampered by the shortcomings of the immersion-style instruction, Toole remained dedicated to his classes for the first six months of 1962. In one of several of his commendations, his superior observes that Toole exhibited “sincere and personal interest in the welfare and education of the Trainees.” Toole always felt responsible for the success of his students. And occasionally he recognized the conditions from which they came and the adversity they faced. On May 22, 1962, he describes his students in a letter to his parents:

We are in the middle (almost) of a cycle now. Fortunately, my current group of recruits is as pleasant as the others were. As I perhaps wrote before, these recruits are almost all volunteers, victims of unemployment in the mountains.

But as the rainy season took hold, Toole grew discontent. The cool sea breezes stilled, heat and humidity saturated the air, and “the red clay of the island . . . turned to paste.” So, too, his classes became sluggish, and as a teacher he became tired of life on the island. On June 24 he writes home:

Of the three cycles in which I have taught, this last was the most burdensome, for the recruits were almost all very young mountaineers with very limited education and backgrounds—generally—of almost abject poverty. I wonder whether they have absorbed any English; we certainly wrestled with that language six hours a day for seven weeks. After the last class, a recruit said to me of another, “El se va tan bruts como vino” (“He goes away as brutish as he came.”).

With a tinge of humor, Toole begins to question the success of his classes. A few months later, after another cycle of recruits, he expresses utter exhaustion with teaching at Fort Buchanan. “I don’t feel even vaguely like launching into teaching so soon again.... At the moment I don’t think I could ask a class ‘What is this?’ and hear ‘Ees a weendow!’ without falling on my face. Dios Mio!” After four cycles of trainees, he had reached the end of his wits.

Fortunately, the summer months offered him a break from teaching. With the decline of incoming trainees, most of Company A, including Toole’s close friend Kubach, was temporarily assigned to help prepare Salinas, a national guard training area on the southern coast. The remaining instructors taught under Company B. But having impressed his superior officers, Toole secured a clerical job within the Co. A office. Thus, he was free from the classroom, and he avoided the drudgery of clearing brush and living in tents during the summer months.

Initially, he considered himself lucky. His pursuit to excel secured him a privileged seat. He spent his days in the Company A office, performing the miscellany of office work, sometimes enjoying the luxury of cold grape juice with ice cubes. While never enduring the physical trials of Salinas, he missed the casual atmosphere of convivial evenings drinking rum and gin under the stars. Eventually, loneliness crept into his quiet office and a sadness cast its shadow over his days.

He had time and a typewriter at his disposal, so he turned to writing his parents more frequently. They replied with dire reports from New Orleans; once again the Tooles were in financial straits. As had happened throughout his life, lack of money loomed, and Thelma confided her anxieties to her son. Penury was a consistent specter; and while never destitute, the threat of such a condition darkened Toole’s demeanor.

Had he been in New Orleans, he would have helped. In Puerto Rico, he had few options. Initially, his inability to aid his parents exempted him from his typical sense of obligation. He encouraged his mother’s attempts to earn extra income. On June 24 he writes, “I hope that ‘Operation Alert’ at home is working. During the summer, I know one must be more alert to search for ways and means.” As an independent elocutionist, piano teacher, and pageant director, Thelma’s work tended to slow in the summer months. The schools were out of session, and many of her clients took holidays, fleeing the heat of the city. This dearth in employment coupled with her husband’s wavering car sales apparently made the summer of 1962 especially difficult. “Operation Alert” was a call for “all hands on deck.” In his absence, he offers her optimism and reassurance.

By July, the situation had worsened. With the memory of having to leave their home on Webster Street still fresh in their minds, his parents questioned the viability of staying in 390 Audubon Street—the apartment he had found and helped furnish. Still, Toole responds to his mother in platitudes. “Whatever its drawback, 390 is a ‘good deal,’” he writes. “There’s little sense in anticipating crises. ‘We do the best we can.’” He offers one final consolation, “High hopes that ‘peace and prosperity’ exist for you during the summer,” then abruptly shifts to personal hygiene. “The Thermodent seems to have no noticeable effects, but I use it regularly and realize that it is doing good for my dientes.” He may have wanted to quell his mother’s concerns. She could overdramatize at times. His own financial struggles had plagued him enough in New York, let alone the concerns of his parents’ finances. And as an army private one thousand miles away from home, he must have felt helpless, perhaps fortunately so.

Ultimately, the desperate reports from home compelled him to take action. On July 13 Toole spoke to his mother on the phone and told her of his plan. He would claim his parents as dependents and establish an allotment, essentially garnishing his paycheck to support them. Their situation must have been so desperate that he felt the need to compensate them for the cost of the phone call during which he explained his plan:

Whatever the long distance call last night cost you I hope to make up for it if my current plans for getting an allotment go through. When I spoke to the Personnel Center last week, they explained to me that I pay monthly $40 out of my $99/mo. salary; the government puts up $70 to make a total of $110 which you receive. I also understand that the government will pay more if the conditions seem to make greater payment necessary. . . . If I understand correctly, an Army investigator will call on you for an interview of some sort. I suggest that you make the case as financially clear as possible, for you should try to receive the maximum monthly payment. The payments depend (and this is important) on individual need, living conditions in the area. In your case, make the amount of recent monthly income clear.

Toole’s concern reflects his mother’s two faces in regards to finances. She confided her financial woes to her son. But with friends and strangers, she did her best to convey a sense of financial security. After all, her Creole lineage—the aristocratic roots of New Orleans—influenced her sensibility of money and lifestyle. She was far too proud and too private to appear in need. Such behavior was not unusual, especially in Uptown New Orleans. But it puts in relief the discrepancy between their means and their persistence in living in Uptown, which created a recurring burden on Toole, both financially and psychologically. Toole pursued his own life goals, but his mother rang the fiscal alarm, and he felt compelled to aid his parents. And to an army investigator sent to verify income and living condition to determine government subsidy, their Uptown neighborhood would appear far from desperate. His mother would have to discard the mask of prosperity and be as honest with the investigator as she was with her son.

Whatever his parents received, it was much more than what Toole pocketed in Puerto Rico. And Thelma always delighted in windfall income. In an undated letter to her son, written sometime in the summer, Thelma exclaims, “Your check arrived and awaits you and me! Ah, delightful and sustainable income! Ah, boost to my economic status!” Such comments illustrate the emphasis, and thereby pressure on Toole to help the ailing family household. But for the time being, his contribution sustained them for another summer season. And while it took some maneuvering, it left him with enough money for his immediate needs in Puerto Rico. In the midst of this lonely summer, he may have seen the likely future now more clearly. This is the first documented instance where Toole, then only twenty-four years old, sent money home to help his parents who were well into their sixties.

Through a combination of factors—the weather, loneliness, and the financial struggles of his parents—his perception of Puerto Rico changed. He consistently offered despairing views on the people and culture of Puerto Rico, but in his letters from the summer of 1962, he becomes harshly critical and bigoted. He declared Puerto Ricans too salacious and too boisterous. Of course, these same characteristics intrigued him in the personalities of downtown New Orleanians. But Toole’s heightened antipathy toward Puerto Rico in the summer of 1962 seems symptomatic of his loneliness. In a letter to his parents on July 5, he tells of his Independence Day celebration, one that highlights his deplorable characterization of Puerto Ricans, along with his own sense of alienation:

Yesterday, the Fourth of July, I went to the beach.

Because it was a holiday, all the Puerto Ricans were out, creating the wild, motley appearance that they do en masse. On the beach they scream, chatter, and giggle continually, pushing each other in the water, throwing sand at friends. And, as always, there are several fully dressed people bobbing about in the surf. For a people who allegedly suffer from nutritional deficiencies, these [sic] are amazingly active . . . and the shouted, marathon conversations that they maintain are admirable. What do they have to talk about continually? Are they never afraid of being overheard? I imagine that all the Latin countries are this frenzied, volatile, and undisciplined.

Toole overlooks the beauty of the sea or the ease of a day at the beach. Instead, he spends his time recounting the Puerto Ricans he deemed unsophisticated and uncouth. Indeed, his sense of superiority could lead him to some lamentable judgments. But tellingly, Toole mentions no friends, no beach companion. It appears he is alone on the Fourth of July, in a foreign place, watching families talking and playing with one another as they enjoy their holiday. His disdain for them cloaks his loneliness. From the perspective of the Puerto Ricans, Toole must have seemed the odd character on the beach that day.

It might be easier to forgive Toole for his deplorable statements if they came in an isolated incident. But throughout his letters in the summer of 1962, he consistently depicts Puerto Ricans as unintelligent and uncivilized. Offering his parents “insight” into Puerto Rican life he writes,

In Puerto Rican pueblos, the usual number of stonings, incendiary suicides, and machete slayings are taking place. The police are shooting innocent bystanders, and the bleachers in the ball park collapsed Sunday. ¡Caray! ¡Que muchos accidentes hay! [Geez! There are so many accidents!]

By all accounts, Toole was courteous toward the people of Puerto Rico. In fact, he appears sympathetic to their plight when he writes in April of 1963 that the excessive money spent at Fort Buchanan would be better appropriated to “welfare programs here on the island.” He also cared deeply for his students, who were all Puerto Rican. In his letter of commendation in February of 1963, his Puerto Rican commander writes, “Your success was due . . . to the interest which you took in individual students, the understanding and patience which you exercised.” Such a description of Toole personally invested in the well being of the Puerto Rican trainees contradicts the supercilious posture he strikes in his letters.

Thus, his comments about Puerto Ricans seem less like intimate confidences to his parents and friends, and more like written performances. Toole adopts a narrative voice in the letters to his parents, not necessarily representative of his behavior or expression, but rather in the spirit of crafting an entertaining letter. He may have derived such a voice from his favorite writer Evelyn Waugh, who made famously racist remarks in his travel writings, which served as the workshop for his novels. In Waugh in Abyssinia, Waugh comments, “The essence of the offence was that the Abyssinians, in spite of being by any possible standard an inferior race, persisted in behaving as superiors.” Replace “Abyssinians” with “Puerto Ricans” and the same statement would fit into any number of Toole’s letters. Toole most likely encountered Waugh’s sentiments on the native in the novel Black Mischief. Therein, a white Englishman aids the king of the small African nation of Azania. But he finds that the corrupt native conduct precludes them from any hope of progression. As he attempts to uplift the native race, the white “savior” is reduced to cannibalism. Similarly, Toole adopts the voice of a European colonizer, sometimes weary of “native nonsense” and sometimes amused by “native ways.”

He reiterates this colonial perspective in late July when he took a three-day trip to Aruba. He won the all-expense paid trip with his recognition as Antilles Command Soldier of the Month, his first official honor in his military service. His superiors had noticed his remarkable talents as an instructor. Staying at Fort Buchanan and taking on an administrative role displayed his versatility. His superiors uplifted him, and continued to do so until his discharge.

While in Aruba, Toole explored the island, absorbed the culture, and enjoyed his air-conditioned room. He found it a Caribbean utopia. He writes, “Aruba’s bone-white sands . . . and atmosphere of prosperity, cleanliness, and efficiency were a great contrast to Puerto Rico. . . . Every home sparkles; the native population is quiet, well-behaved, courteous, and likable.” Recognizing Aruba as a well-managed Dutch colony, he seems to lament that Puerto Rico lacks an Anglo-hierarchy. After three days, he returned to Fort Buchanan.

And shortly after his return he received news that shocked him. In early August he wandered into the library base and there he saw the headline of a local newspaper: Muere Actriz Marilyn Monroe. Ever since high school, Toole had been captivated by Monroe, much like many men and women in the 1950s and early ’60s. Before the age of countless sex symbols strewn about cable networks and reality television, she embodied a goddess-like status, garnering the affections and desires of her audiences. Toole’s infatuation went far beyond an appreciation. “There was a time, I think, when my interest in her had reached the stage of obsession,” he admits. “I don’t imagine that anyone could understand my preoccupation with her.” She was a figure that hypnotized many people, and because, as Toole explains, “Monroe and death are such incongruous partners,” her suicide shook him to the core. He immediately wrote a letter to his parents, discarding wit and sarcasm, and expressing utmost sincerity. He is compelled, in essence, to write her a eulogy:

On the screen she created the strangest and perhaps the most fascinating species of human being we will ever see. Her musical numbers had an entertainment value that few things in the world can equal. Will anyone ever be able to describe with justice—to a generation which will not know her—exactly what Marilyn Monroe was like in movies?

Her life itself was a gruesome Evelyn Waugh view of American life. The illegitimate child of the strange Southern California society. An orphan in the Depression. A defense plant worker during the war. A movie star whose effect upon the public was phenomenal even by Hollywood’s standards. The wife of an Italian baseball hero and a Jewish intellectual. A suicide who could find no bearings in the society which had formed her. Her life and death are both very sobering—and even frightening.

In my own way I loved Marilyn Monroe very much. Isn’t it too bad that she never knew this.

Toole was not alone in his frightened reaction to her death. It appeared to the rest of the world she had everything one could ever want. She had achieved a dream life, so it seemed, far beyond what most people could imagine for themselves. To learn she took her own life didn’t make sense to people at the time, which led many people, including her former husband Joe DiMaggio, to suspect she was actually murdered. By the end of the letter Toole appears to have reverted to his adolescent obsession. He usually signed his letters “Love, Ken”; this letter ends, “Love, Kenny.”

In a rare moment where Toole gushes with heartfelt grief, it is tempting to overindulge in psychoanalysis. Perhaps Marilyn Monroe represented the voluptuous feminine tenderness absent from his mother’s affections. Or perhaps he celebrated Monroe as an outlet for his inner femininity—as she is now recognized as an icon of the gay community. Perhaps her alleged suicide frightened him because he, too, entertained self-destruction. Or perhaps, she was only a boyhood fascination, an ideal that he had never overcome, until news of her untimely death forced him to do so. These are all possibilities, but Toole offers no answers. This letter is best understood within the context of his summer. It emerges from the malaise of June and July. It seems one of those personal moments when the trace comforts of adolescence wither under the sobering reality of adulthood and one’s own mortality. He, too, was in his prime, yet found himself in stultifying circumstances: his parents were in need of support, and he was bound to an island he began to find repressive.

At last, mid-August brought relief. While the heat and humidity offered no pardon, the instructors returned from Salinas, enlivening the barracks once again. Toole was promoted to acting Sergeant and Head of Company A, which came with a salary increase of $20 a month and, more importantly, a private room, which he described as “bright, comfortable, airy.” He shook off the melancholy of his summer and took pride in his promotion. He immediately writes to his parents, detailing his success. Now responsible for ensuring the English instructors passed regular inspections, he had the common frustration of middle management in that he now bridged two worlds, with one foot in Company A and the other foot in the world of his superior officers. While caught in the middle, he seemed uniquely adept to the challenges of this role. Company A saw him as competent and fair, someone who worked in their best interests. And his superior officers considered him an effective leader in motivating and coordinating the instructors.

This position also offered Toole a new perspective on Company A and its place in Fort Buchanan. He had regular interaction with his immediate superior Sergeant Jose Ortiz. A native of Puerto Rico, Ortiz had climbed the ranks of the army and showed devotion to his duties. He also displayed contempt for the English instructors. While Toole remained gracious to Ortiz in person, he could not resist detailing the eccentricities of Ortiz in letters to his parents, casting him as the most perverse personality at Fort Buchanan. He writes,

Our First Sergeant is unpredictable and more temperamental than a prima donna. Now that my role in the company is principally disciplinary and supervisory, I have constant contact with him. Basically, he thinks a great deal of me (“You hahve eentelligence ahnd leadarsheep), but there are his transitory whims to contend with. And what strange ideas develop in his mind! Ideas that must be changed tactfully and carefully. His paranoiac suspicion of humanity is overwhelming.

Ortiz became the singular object of Toole’s observations over the course of the next few months. And through these letters, he reconstructs Ortiz as a character who never failed to surprise Toole. When high-level inspections came in from the Antilles Command, many of the sergeants became nervous and unpredictable. When another Puerto Rican sergeant performed a pre-inspection, Toole tells, he “went into a hysterical fit ... and began to throw tables around.” Expecting a similar reaction from Sgt. Ortiz, Toole was amused by his surprisingly calm manner:

Yesterday, when this First Sergeant came to inspect our barracks for the first time, I was expecting to see a few tables begin to fly in here. My room is furnished with two tables, a bookcase, an easy chair, and several plants—left by the previous occupant. I was sure that these would have to be discarded, for the appearance is not particularly barracks-like. Sgt. Ortiz looked at the chair, and said, “Ah, I see you hahve zees chari een here!” (Pause) “Well, poot a leetle vahrneesh oan eet.” Then he noticed the plants—which I really don’t care about particularly but would like to keep on principle—and said, “Tole (my name is pronounced by P.R.’s so that it rhymes with sole—they do not understand the oo sound in English), ahv you wahtering zees plahnts?” If you knew of the small world here you would comprehend the real humor of this situation.

At any rate, our barracks in the inspection was far superior to the sergeants’—for the first time in Co. A history. Sgt. Ortiz was pleased in his curious way—and the English instructors (all of whom are terrified of him) were very excited in a remarkably juvenile way—for people who are all college products. Then Ortiz went off to harass the sergeants about their poor display, waving his swagger stick about like a demon. He even carries the swagger stick with him when he goes to the toilet.

While Toole reverts to his broad generalizations of the Puerto Rican disposition, he writes with interest, no longer snobbish disdain. Unlike his sharp jabs at Puerto Ricans in his July 5 letter, his descriptions take on a caricature quality. Ortiz wields his authority, but simultaneously exhibits his insecurities through the lengths he takes to please his superiors. In the letters he becomes a clown, reacting to situations with elaborate absurdity. On September 14 Toole writes,

Sgt. Jose Ortiz, our ramrod-proud, swagger stick erect First Sergeant, whom I’ve described previously is intent upon beautifying our Co. A area. Huge urns filled with ferns and painted in the spectrum of colors line our road. Between the urns there is a heavy connecting chain painted yellow. Now there is a big blue sign in our parking lot that says “FIRST SARGEANT.” Last week Ortiz sprayed all the leaves in front of the office silver . . . and they fell off and died the next day.

The closed mess hall was opened and our very confused mess sergeant cooked hundreds of doughnuts and cookies for Kefauver. The doughnuts would be taken to the orderly room for Sgt. Ortiz to sample them (“Thees doughnuts ahr too brown!”); then, when the perfect result was achieved they were set out on beautifully set tables on great trays. At noon it became clear that Kefauver was not going to show; Capt. Gil de la Madrid and Sgt. Ortiz sat disconsolately, viewing the piles of cookies and doughnuts as the mess Sgt. munched on the fruits of his labor. Finally Ortiz said to me, “Take thees to your people!”

Sgt. Ortiz captured Toole’s interest as a uniquely conflicted character. Much like Ignatius Reilly with his plastic cutlass, Ortiz wields his swagger-stick authority to a futile end, where, despite his desperate attempts, he gains neither respect nor reward. In fact, Ortiz may be the most unsung hero of Toole’s advent as a novelist. After his dealings with Ortiz, Toole’s letters spark with narrative sensibility. He begins to focus on character development and situational humor. And while he did not begin to draft Confederacy until 1963, he clearly reveled in describing his commanding officer. Like Bobby Byrne, Ortiz was a bold literary character in the flesh, providing Toole with much material.

Ortiz also provided the pathway for Toole’s shift in perception of Puerto Rico. With his promotion and his entertaining interactions with Ortiz, Toole looks about Puerto Rico and finds it charged with eccentricity, much like New Orleans:

What a mad universe I am in at the moment. However, the politics and intrigue are fascinating in their way—and I have intelligent and very witty friends with whom the evening can often be spent savoring all of this.

Throughout September, he continued to document the hilarity of conflicts between Company A and the Puerto Rican officers:

Our immediate superiors, all of whom are Puerto Rican, are wild and excitable and unpredictable and the combination of English instructors and Puerto Rican cadre is an uneasy alliance full of sound and fury and improbably funny happenings. The incident of the missing lawn mower wheel was magnified so greatly that it almost split Co. A asunder.

Indeed, Company A seemed to actualize the farces found in sitcoms like Hogan’s Heroes or Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. The instructors followed peculiar orders from Puerto Rican officers concerned about the appearance of the base. They sanded the paint off the wood handles of trench tools and then repainted them light brown. They erected makeshift scaffolding to paint the ceilings of barracks. And when the instructors could not find a place to hide their contraband during high-level inspections, they filled army trucks with their bottles of liquor and highball glasses and drove them around base. But perhaps the most ridiculous of moments came during the somber procession of burial detail, when four soldiers would escort the deceased to the grave. Upon command, they were to turn right and shoot their rifles into the air. As Anthony Moore tells, “We botched up these routines so badly.” On one occasion, one of the soldiers heard the command to turn right and, instead, turned left and knocked the rifle out of another soldier’s hands. On another burial detail, an instructor from Company A accidentally knocked the helmet off the soldier next to him with his rifle as they turned. But these foibles pale in comparison to the time four soldiers, standing stoically over the fallen soldier, watched as a Puerto Rican wife, overcome with grief, jumped into her husband’s grave and was then awkwardly pulled out from the earthen tomb.

Recognizing the wealth of comical situations, Toole used his letters as a narrative workshop, refining his comic timing and style in short accounts of life at Fort Buchanan. In one such story, Toole tells of a dance party organized for visiting sailors and airmen. Earlier that day, Toole had led the visiting officers on a tour of the base and San Juan. In the evening they attended a dance. Much like the episodic events in Confederacy , Toole’s rendition of the story focuses on situational humor and escalating tensions between social classes:

Friday night there was a dance for the guests at the pavilion of the Army-Navy beach—and toward the end of the dance a great wave crashed into the pavilion drenching everyone. Several people climbed trees when they saw the wave coming—and, as it washed back out to sea, it carried with it several shoes and caps. The girls for the dance were recruited from the San Juan YWCA—and a motley crowd they were. Several of the “girls” were near forty and some were extremely chocolate in “colour.” Needless to say, the airmen and sailors were somewhat dismayed and many of them stayed in the men’s room throughout the “dance.” In addition to this, it seemed obvious that a few of the YWCA girls were rather identifiably prostitutes. After the wave struck, the outraged YWCA girls began to scream volubly—and somewhat dangerously, I thought—in Spanish, calling down the wrath of God upon the Army for bringing them to this dance. It took almost 15 minutes for our Puerto Rican bus driver to get them quiet, but not before one of the YWCA girls had tried to strike him. The San Juan YWCA must be a very special branch of that organization. At any rate it was an evening that continually verged on the brink of hilarity.

Other glimmers of Ignatius also shine through some of his 1962 letters. When Toole informs his parents that he lost his Tulane ring, he confides that his attachment to this token of his past affects him both emotionally and physically. But instead of recognizing the lost ring as misfortune, he points an Ignatian finger at Puerto Rico as a place of violence and disease that threatens his bowels and his life. “Actually, it’s a wonder I haven’t been stabbed yet or paralyzed by intestinal diseases on this insane little geological mountain top protruding from the Caribbean.” Of course, Ignatius would have never ended a letter as Toole ended this one. “I love you both and miss you a great, great deal,” he wrote. Then again, Ignatius had never been so far away from New Orleans.

In the fall of 1962, Toole settled into his role as head of Company A and became content with his place in the army. Markedly distinct from his summer correspondence, in September he nonchalantly ends a letter with, “I have no complaints.” At the end of September, he writes to Fletcher, who had gone to Florence, Italy, to run an English language school. Toole still complains about the heat, but explains how the shared boredom he and the instructors suffer bonds them closer together. Like a band of fraternity brothers, they plotted to disrupt a production of Macbeth at El Morro in San Juan, in which one of the instructors was performing. “We are to begin with cocktails early in the afternoon,” he writes, “and much later to proceed to the fort in a fleet of air-conditioned taxis. And so, with such plans, we pass the time. . . . ” He later reports to his parents that he rather enjoyed the play. And for the first time since he arrived in Puerto Rico, the end of his service was in view.

He ends his letter to Fletcher expressing his hopes of leaving the army by the summer of 1963. But he also acknowledges that Fidel Castro, quite literally, loomed in the distance. Having recently toured the missile facilities armed with nuclear warheads at Ramey Air Force Base, Toole found the “terrifying” weapons and the “disquietingly spirited manner of the proprietors of the missiles and jet bombers gave him pause,” even to his “desensitized tropical psyche.” Assuming the country would not be throttled into nuclear war and “barring a complete paranoid breakdown on the part of Fidel Castro,” he would be home in one year.

With his thoughts turned toward home he requested that his parents write him more frequently. He wrote letters to friends in Lafayette and New York. And as he felt the pangs of longing for New Orleans, he received word that his father was ill with shingles. In another rare moment of sentimentality, he writes home,

Dear Dad,

Mother wrote me that you are suffering from shingles, an infection which I know is extremely painful. Because you always enjoy such good health, I was especially surprised to hear of this. The illness is obviously the result of too much work, anxiety, and too little food and rest. Please take care of yourself for the sake of mother and me.

Mother, I know, will nurse you excellently. She seems quite distressed over the illness—as well she should be. I am only sorry that I am separated from you at so great a distance.

Please rest. In your next letter I will hope to hear of some recovery.

I love you very much, Dad, and I hope and pray that this painful infection passes. You have always been so good, so kind to me that it hurts me to know that you are in pain.

Most of his letters from Puerto Rico are addressed to both of his parents. This is the only letter in the Toole Papers addressed solely to his father. He clearly pitied him to the point of his own pain, as he states. The letter is touching and sincere but remarkably incongruent with the impressions he gave of his family and what others observed of them. He imagines a breadwinning father tragically fallen ill with his devoted wife tenderly caring for his every need. Thelma took care of her husband for many years. But Toole’s heartwarming domestic image shares a closer semblance to the family dynamic of his friends from Lafayette, the Rickelses. Distance and longing has a strange ability to reconstruct the real into an ideal. In late October 1962, Toole decided he wanted to go home for Christmas.

In November his leave request was approved. And by then his parents had gained financial stability, whereas Toole lacked enough money for airfare. He repeatedly requested that they send money for the plane ticket, which after some delay, they eventually did. Once his tickets were booked, the cool weather approached, and he frequented the beach. This time he viewed his surroundings in a positive light, enjoying the clear water and interacting with fellow beach-goers. Perhaps calmed by the ideas of returning to New Orleans or the comforts of his home, he patiently waited for his leave.

In good spirits he writes to Fletcher on November 29, 1962, humorously depicting himself in the way that he so often characterized Sgt. Ortiz:

Over my private telephone I contact headquarters, switching people here and there, waiting, listening, planning. I’m sure I will leave my duty here a completely mad tyrant whose niche in civilian life will be non-existant. In its own lunatic way, this is very entertaining. I also enjoy posting edicts on bulletin boards; the last paragraph of my most recent proclamation reads:

“Further action will be taken against habitual violators of these regulations.”

But joking aside, he ends his letter with a sincere assessment of his accomplishments in the army:

After a year in Puerto Rico (as of 25 Nov), I find that the positive aspects of that year outweigh the negative. Although this seems a great cliché, I can say that I have learned a vast amount about humans and their nature—information which I would have enjoyed having earlier. In my own curious way I have risen “meteorically” in the Army without having ever been a decent prospect for the military life; but I feel that my very peculiar assignment has been responsible. The insanity and unreality of Puerto Rico itself has been interesting at all times that it was not overwhelming.

He would soon be back in New Orleans. It had been one year since he arrived at Fort Buchanan. Within that time he continually grappled with the “madness” of Puerto Rico. In the summer he found the island loathsome, as he endured pangs of loneliness and reports of his parents’ financial woes. By the end of the year, he was confident in his place within the army. He observed and commented on Puerto Rico with less deplorable damnation, appreciating the characters and stories unfolding every day at Fort Buchanan. And at the end of 1962, he beamed with pride as he returned home. He had left New Orleans a draftee, unknown to anyone at Fort Buchanan. He returned, twelve months later, Sergeant John Toole, U.S. Army.

Toole arrived in New Orleans on Saturday, December 22. The Christmas holiday was in full swing; carols played on the radio, families hung tinsel on their Christmas trees, and shoppers strolled along Canal Street marveling at the displays. But unlike the snowy scenes in the department store windows, New Orleans was no winter wonderland. As was typical for the winter months in southern Louisiana, cold rains drenched the city throughout the holiday season of 1962. But Toole had so yearned for his return home that even the winter rains may have signaled to him welcomed relief from army life.

For most of his vacation, he relaxed in his parents’ apartment on Audubon Street, content with homemade meals and a comfortable bed. He received several invitations from friends in Lafayette, but, as he confessed to Fletcher, “Nothing would lodge me from the comforts of home.” On a few occasions he ventured out to reconnect with his beloved city. Wandering about his hometown, reminiscing the past, and pleased with his year in the service, he likely grappled with a looming dilemma. In eight months he would be discharged. But the future was uncertain. He could teach or continue graduate studies, each option a worthy pursuit, although neither one closer to his dream of becoming a fiction writer. In the past his responsibilities of work and school, along with his own insecurities had stifled his muse. Since the age of sixteen when his novella The Neon Bible lost the writing contest, he mostly kept his attempts at fiction and poetry to himself, sharing occasionally with his mother. But his winter trip home may have reminded him of his ambition to write a true New Orleans novel. He was always intrigued by the stories taking place every day in New Orleans, with its panoply of characters much like the city: proud and desperate, opulent and decomposing, all at once. But no writer had yet captured its essence, at least not the New Orleans that he knew.

The few surviving letters that document his winter visit to New Orleans indicate an introspective journey, where Toole would once again find that spark of inspiration he’d found stargazing in Mississippi in 1954. He had never really recaptured that energetic spirit, despite his attempts at writing. This time his eye would turn toward his hometown in all its conflicted complexity. The accounts of his interactions with the few friends he visited suggest something was shifting in Toole. In a letter to Fletcher that recounts his visit home, Toole exhibits the sensibilities of a fiction writer, one who not only narrates an intriguing moment, but also explores the composition of the moment, such as characters and plot. His observations in this single letter indicate traces of material found in Confederacy.

Toole details a visit he made to Bobby Byrne, his unforgettable colleague from Southwestern Louisiana Institute, which was now University of Southwestern Louisiana. Welcoming Toole into his New Orleans home, Byrne stood dignified and sloppy, refined in elocution, and ridiculously dressed. Toole writes to Fletcher,

I also paid the ritualistic visits to the Byrne home (coffee, Aunt May, Mama et al) where, of course, little has changed but the pot of fresh coffee and chicory. Bobby’s worldview weathers humanity’s derision and apathy. He does, however, begin to appear old. Both he and his brother received holiday visitors in long nightshirts and slippers with rather haughty formality, and Bobby was, as always good for a dogma or two.

Toole must have recalled this moment when he wrote the first chapter of Confederacy. Dressed in his “monstrous flannel nightshirt,” Ignatius greets Patrolman Mancuso as he and Mrs. Reilly converse over coffee and chicory. Like Byrne, Ignatius prefers the comforts of his nightshirt, disregarding decorum in the presence of company. Ignatius also has a worldview that “weathers humanity’s derision and apathy.” And throughout the novel he offers countless dogmas, as he revolts against the Modern Age. While Toole had spent nearly a year observing Byrne at SLI, Toole’s return to New Orleans may have reminded him of Byrne’s potential to be made into a character for his novel.

Continuing his rounds of SLI faculty in New Orleans, he spent an afternoon with Nick Polites, who was home from Chicago to see his family. His aunt, the librarian at SLI, Mario Mamalakis, was also visiting for the holidays. In Toole’s account of the visit, he observed the unique chemistry between the Polites family members:

Polites is still spreading his own peculiar brand of fatalistic gloom as he continues to thrust upon the thorns of life and continues to bleed quite articulately. Although I saw him only briefly during the holidays, he quickly and efficiently categorized the horrors of Chicago, New Orleans, and life. The robust positivism of Mario and of his mother are hilarious counterparts to his breathy futility and negativism. And I was fortunate to visit with all three one Sunday afternoon.

Toole recognized the way in which the opposing personalities created humorous tension. He applied this rule of opposites to Confederacy as well. Every negative character has a positive counterpart, and while the negative characters (Lana Lee, Mrs. Levy, Ignatius Reilly) appear to be atop the wheel, even when they do not see themselves as such, by the end of the novel the positive characters (Burma Jones, Darlene, Miss Trixie, Mr. Levy, Irene Reilly) have ascended. And the tension between the character personalities generates the movement of the plot—just as it stirred the conversation in the Polites home, much to Toole’s amusement.

Toole also reports to Fletcher a meeting he had with several other friends from SLI. In early January, he met with professors J. C. Broussard and Lottie Ziegler, along with Polites and a couple visiting from the Netherlands, whom he referred to as the Dutch Couple. The group gathered at the Sazerac Bar in the Roosevelt Hotel, the same establishment Huey Long favored for his favorite cocktail, Ramos Gin Fizz. They conversed over drinks as they sat under the vibrant Paul Ninas murals that adorned the walls, scenes of New Orleans life, depicting black laborers working fields of cotton and unloading cargo at the docks, while white proprietors watch and affluent tourists mill about Jackson Square.

Toole, Broussard, and Polites all wrote letters to Fletcher about the evening. Fletcher received the letters on the same day at his apartment in Florence, Italy. He refers to them as the Roosevelt Hotel Triptych—three varied depictions of the same event. In Toole’s letter, he surveys the group and dishes slight jabs to both Broussard and Polites. He writes,

I spent a few hours with [J. C. Broussard and Lottie Ziegler] and “the Dutch couple” at the Roosevelt. The Dutch were quite pleasant, wise, and politic in the face of J. C.’s enthusiasms and Lottie’s twitching. Also present was N[ick] Polites who contributed a few of the extravagances for which he is famous and which effectively silence tables for a few minutes while everyone stares at the floor. We must have appeared a dubious group in the bar, and I’m afraid that I made my departure rather rapidly . . . before the house detective took us all away.

Toole walked away from the evening, shrugging off Broussard and Polites with indifference. From all three letters it seems the old friends from Lafayette found little cheer in the reunion. But Broussard and Polites provide the other two pictures in this triptych, offering an insightful account of Toole’s behavior that evening. Broussard describes Toole as

so enwrapped in his own ego, [he] responds and vibrates to one string which an acquaintance must pluck continually—his almost pathetic desire for being admired, his only conversation being his award for “best soldier of the month,” the letters that Wieler from Hunter writes him imploring his return there, and the response I wrung from him by telling of former colleagues’ desires to see him.

Granted, Broussard tended to exaggerate. In his letters to Fletcher, everything from meals to personalities was either the best or the worst he had ever experienced. Unsurprisingly, a negative impression quickly escalated to an indictment. But Broussard’s comments still hold significance. Toole often mentioned his achievements with a nonchalance that lacked humility, especially around Polites, whom he always seemed eager to impress. His inflated ego and nonchalant manner may have caused some eyes to roll; however, in the early days of 1963, it likely served as a veneer to his anxieties over the future. While he exhibited pride in his success in the army, he took little stock in it, as he had no intention of becoming a career soldier. Someone probably asked him about his plans after the army: the inevitable question that hung like fire over his head. If he gave the impression that Wieler begged for him to return to Hunter, then, like Broussard, he embellished the truth. Wieler eagerly offered Toole a position, but his letters do not suggest he was “imploring his return.” In fact, it appears from Wieler’s responses that Toole sent inquires to him about returning to Hunter. Here again, Toole distorted the truth for his own self-aggrandizement. Like any young man making his way into his unsure future, perhaps unnerved by the unknown, recognition, praise, and a sense of being desired soothed those anxieties.

Unlike Broussard, Polites was accustomed to Toole’s occasional arrogance. In his letter to Fletcher, Polites observes, “The army is spoiling him, as all people and all institutions spoil him by flattery.” From Tulane to SLI, Polites had watched institutions dole out accolades to his friend. However, Polites suspected Toole’s swagger belied a less confident state of mind. He writes, “Ken looked healthy and tanned, but perhaps beneath the bronzed surface he is dissipated. I really don’t know, except that perhaps he may be impervious to alcohol.” While Polites detected the psychological toll of hedonism underneath Toole’s exterior, he may have seen a man performing to his own social expectations, as an exemplar of accomplishment, but secretly struggling over the uncertainty of his future, what Toole would vaguely term months later in a letter to his parents, “the situation.”

While on leave, Toole also intended to visit the Rickelses in Lafayette, but spent all his time in New Orleans instead. Once he was back in Puerto Rico, he felt compelled to write, especially after Byrne told him that Milton Rickels, whom Toole called Rick, had an accident, a particularly threatening event for his frail body. Toole writes to his surrogate Lafayette family,

Dear Pat, Rick and Gordon,

Unfortunately I did not see you during the holidays—although I doubt whether this greatly affected your Christmas either way. I had no access to an automobile. The prospect of traveling via Greyhound stopped me in the planning stage.

I am writing especially because Bobby Byrne told me of Rick’s accident—and I send my sincere hopes for a quick and comfortable recuperation. The three of you were extremely good to me during my year in Lafayette; the thought of misfortune involving any one of you is something that I would feel very personally.

Rick, I hope that all goes well for you, that the new year brings about a rapid convalescence. In a faculty composed of “fiends and madmen,” your presence—as a stabilizing agent—is very necessary.

Sincerely,

Ken

In a self-conscious moment, he appears to believe the Rickelses might be indifferent to his visits. Patricia maintained they always loved his company, and they let him know it. Contrary to his performance at the Sazerac Bar, this letter offers another rare moment of Toole with his mask off, similar to the sincere letter to his father when he suffered from shingles. He expresses concern for his friend with no need for wit or reports of his accomplishments. Had he gone to Lafayette, he may have been momentarily relieved from his compulsion toward an elevated status of success, perhaps reminded of what he saw in the Rickelses that gave him such comfort during his days at SLI. But he seemed to be transfixed by a contemplation of what he would make of his future. His friend Nick Polites made an astute, albeit cynical, observation of Toole during this winter holiday. Reporting to Fletcher, Polites suggests that Toole was “developing his tendency toward inertia to a point of absolute self-realization.” Indeed, the burgeoning author sat in stillness on the verge of becoming a novelist.