John Kennedy Toole Book order (chronological)

Alive with jazz and tropical flowers, its streets an intoxicating 24-hour party, New Orleans exerts a hypnotic effect on virtually every visitor and resident, but perhaps none have been more susceptible to its exotic charm than the writers who have lived there. From Mark Twain to William Faulkner to Anne Rice; from Kate Chopin to Zora Neale Hurston to Ellen Gilchrist; from Tennessee Williams to Truman Capote to Walker Percy, the authors in this remarkable collection celebrate the city that stirs their imaginations as no other can. Third in our best-selling series of anthologies centered around America's great cities, New Orleans Stories includes not only "literature," but also interviews, ghost stories, and voodoo charms. Perfect for first-time visitors as well as longtime residents, it re-creates the heady, mesmerizing atmosphere of New Orleans itself.

The Neon Bible tells the story of David, a young boy growing up in a small Southern town in the 1940s. David's voice is perfectly calibrated, disarmingly funny, sad, shrewd, gathering force from page to page with an emotional directness that never lapses into sentimentality. Through it we share his awkward, painful, universally recognizable encounter with first love, we participate in boy evangelist Bobbie Lee Taylor's revival, we meet the pious, bigoted townspeople. From the opening lines of The Neon Bible, David is fully alive, naive yet sharply observant, drawing us into his world through the sure artistry of John Kennedy Toole.John Kennedy Toole, who won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for his best-selling comic masterpiece A Confederacy of Dunces, wrote The Neon Bible for a literary contest at the age of sixteen. The manuscript languished in a drawer and became the subject of a legal battle among Toole's heirs. It was only in 1989, thirty-five years after it was written and twenty years after Toole's suicide at thirty-one, that this amazingly accomplished and evocative novel was freed for publication.

Released by Louisiana State University Press in 1980, this book is a publishing phenomenon. After being rejected by numerous publishers and submitted by the author's mother following his suicide, it won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. With nearly two million copies in print worldwide in eighteen languages, it is now available in a large print edition for the first time. The novel introduces one of the most memorable characters in American literature, Ignatius Reilly, described by Walker Percy as "slob extraordinaire, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one." Set in New Orleans, the narrative outswifts Swift, whose essay inspired the title. The vibrant characters, including Ignatius and his mother, Miss Trixie, Patrolman Mancuso, Darlene the Bourbon Street stripper, and Jones the jivecat, leave an indelible mark on the region and literature. This edition features an introduction by writer and New Orleans resident Andrei Codrescu, composed for the book's twentieth anniversary. The oversized type enhances readability, making it a delight for both first-time readers and longtime fans eager to revisit this modern classic.