Butterfly in the Typewriter (26 page)

 

One of the posed shots taken during the time Toole performed with youth theater troupes. (LaRC, Tulane University)

 

The director at work. In addition to piano and elocution lessons, Thelma put together pageants and variety shows at local schools. In the late 1940s, she started a youth theater troupe that featured her son. Occasionally, she wrote parts specifically for him to perform. (LaRC, Tulane University)

 

In McComb, Mississippi, Toole works the gears of a tractor while his high school friend Cary Laird smiles for the camera. Toole and Laird were the best of friends in high school. At the age of sixteen, he visited Laird's extended family in Mississippi. Toole was so inspired by this trip that he wrote his first novel,
The Neon Bible
, shortly after his return to New Orleans. (Personal collection of Myrna Swyers)

 

In 1955, Toole hit the road with his friend Stephen Andry. In a Bel-Air convertible, they drove from New York City to New Orleans before the start of the fall semester at Tulane. (LaRC, Tulane University)

 

The Hullabaloo
, October 5, 1956. Toole was well aware of the politics of his age but usually searched for the absurdities in any situation. Here he depicts the tension between equally oblivious sides of academia and supporters of communism. (LaRC, Tulane University)

 

The Hullabaloo
, November 9, 1956. This was part of a series of comics by Toole, inspired by the 1956 film
Bus Stop
, starring Marilyn Monroe. Toole was infatuated with Monroe and was devastated by her death in 1962. (LaRC, Tulane University)

 

A satire of the staff of
Carnival
, a student-run literary magazine at Tulane. In 1956, Toole contributed art and served as nonfiction editor. In this full-page comic, Toole depicts himself in the back, wearing sunglasses and holding a beer bottle. (LaRC, Tulane University)

 

The Hullabaloo
, February 22, 1957. Toole was an avid moviegoer. He shows humorous irreverence in this comic inspired by the 1956 epic film
The Ten Commandments
. (LaRC, Tulane University)

 

In the summer of 1958 before leaving for graduate school, Toole visited the beaches on the Gulf of Mexico just outside New Orleans. Throughout his life, he retreated to the Gulf Coast. In 1969 he returned to one of his favorite spots off the coast and committed suicide. (LaRC, Tulane University)

 

The view from Toole's dorm room on the top floor of Furnald Hall at Columbia University. Overlooking Broadway, the dorms for Barnard College are under construction and the bell tower of Riverside Church rises in the distance. (LaRC, Tulane University)

 

From Manhattan high-rises to Louisiana low-rises, Toole left New York and went to work at Southwestern Louisiana Institute in the capital of Cajun country—Lafayette, Louisiana. English classes were taught in “Little Abbeville,” a group of old, termite-ridden buildings at the very back of the college. They were originally built as temporary structures by the U.S. Army to train troops during World War II. (University Archives, University of Louisiana at Lafayette)