text:
John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole (December 17, 1937 – March 26, 1969) was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, whose posthumously published novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981; he also wrote The Neon Bible. Although several people in the literary world felt his writing skills were praiseworthy, Toole's novels were rejected during his lifetime. Due in part to these failures, he suffered from paranoia and depression, dying by suicide at the age of 31.

Toole was born to a middle-class family in New Orleans. From a young age, his mother, Thelma, taught him an appreciation of culture. She was thoroughly involved in his affairs for most of his life, and at times they had a difficult relationship. With his mother's encouragement, Toole became a stage performer at the age of 10 doing comic impressions and acting. At 16 he wrote his first novel, The Neon Bible, which he later dismissed as "adolescent".

Toole received an academic scholarship to Tulane University in New Orleans. After graduating from Tulane, he studied English Literature at Columbia University in New York while teaching simultaneously at Hunter College. He also taught at various Louisiana colleges, and during his early career as an academic he was valued on the faculty party circuit for his wit and gift for mimicry. His studies were interrupted when he was drafted into the army, where he taught English to Spanish-speaking recruits in San Juan, Puerto Rico. After receiving a promotion, he used his private office to begin writing A Confederacy of Dunces, which he finished at his parents' home after his discharge.

Toole submitted Dunces to publisher Simon & Schuster, where it reached editor Robert Gottlieb. Gottlieb considered Toole talented but felt his comic novel was essentially pointless. Despite several revisions, Gottlieb remained unsatisfied, and after the book was rejected by another literary figure, Hodding Carter Jr., Toole shelved the novel. Suffering from depression and feelings of persecution, Toole left home on a journey around the country. He stopped in Biloxi, Mississippi, ending his life by running a garden hose in from the exhaust of his car to the cabin. Some years later, his mother brought the manuscript of Dunces to the attention of novelist Walker Percy, who ushered the book into print. In 1981, Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Early life
Toole was born to John Dewey Toole, Jr. and Thelma Ducoing Toole. Kennedy was the name of Thelma's grandmother. The first of the Creole Ducoing family arrived in Louisiana from France in the early 19th century, and the Tooles immigrated to America from Ireland during the Great Famine of the 1840s. Toole's father worked as a car salesman, and his mother, forced to give up her teaching job when she married (as was the custom), gave private lessons in music, speech, and dramatic expression. Toole was known to friends and family as "Ken" until the final few months of his life, when he insisted on being called John. As a child, Toole had an intense affection for his black nursemaid Beulah Matthews, who cared for him when his parents were both working.

Toole's highly cultured mother was a controlling woman, especially with her son. His father was less involved and sometimes complained of his lack of influence in their child's upbringing. Despite this, he and his father bonded through a mutual interest in baseball and cars. Toole's mother chose the friends he could associate with, and felt his cousins on his father's side were too common for him to be around. Toole received high marks in elementary school and, from a young age, expressed a desire to excel academically. He skipped ahead a grade, from first to second, after taking an IQ test at the age of six, and would also eventually skip the fourth grade.

When Toole was ten, his mother gathered a group of child stage entertainers she named the Junior Variety Performers. The troupe, with Toole as its star, consisted of 50 children of varying skills and ages. It was well-received, and he also engaged in other entertainment ventures, such as playing the lead in three productions of the Children's Workshop Theatre of New Orleans, emceeing a radio show called Telekids, modeling for newspaper ads, and developing a solo show of comic impersonations entitled Great Lovers of the World.

Although an excellent student, Toole curtailed his stage work when he entered high school (Alcée Fortier High), to concentrate on his academic work. He wrote for the school newspaper Silver and Blue, worked on the yearbook The Tarpon, and won several essay contests on subjects such as the Louisiana Purchase and the American Merchant Marine. He took up debating, a skill his father had used to win the state debate championship when he was in high school. Toole spoke at gatherings of civic organizations such as Kiwanis and Rotary Clubs. Toole's father bought him an Oldsmobile, in which Toole was delivering newspapers at the age of 13, even though the legal driving age was 15. In high school, Toole spent a lot of time at the home of classmate Larry McGee, and dated McGee's sister, Jane. Jane later said that Toole never wanted to go home and would purposely spend almost all of his free time at the McGees'. With the McGees, Toole would engage in mischievous pranks and go on double dates with Larry and his girlfriend, Buzz. The couples spent their free time at the local pool or cruising in Toole's car.

As a teenager in 1954, Toole made his first trip out of Louisiana to Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington, D.C., on a field trip. He especially enjoyed New York and filled a cherished scrapbook with pictures from his visit (which included trips on the New York City Subway System, an excursion on a boat in the New York Harbor, visits to the Statue of Liberty, Chinatown, Times Square) and with the program from a performance of The Rockettes he had seen.

Toole became the editor of the news section of the school newspaper, and maintained high marks throughout high school. He received many accolades, including winning a National Merit Scholarship, selection to the National Honor Society, and being named the Most Intelligent Senior Boy by the student body. He was one of two New Orleanians voted outstanding citizen at the Pelican (now Louisiana) Boys State convention and he was invited back to serve the following year as a counsellor. He also took part in the Newman Club, a Catholic organization for teenagers, where he won an award for outstanding student in the group. He received a full scholarship to Tulane University at age 17.

During his senior year, Toole wrote The Neon Bible, a short novel of Southern Gothic fiction that has been compared in style to Flannery O'Connor, a favorite author of Toole. The book's protagonist, David, had lived with his family in a "little white house in town that had a real roof you could sleep under when it rained," before his father lost his job forcing them into a small shoddily built home. Set in 1940s Mississippi, the backwoods Baptist community setting is similar to a location to which Toole had traveled with a high-school friend for a literary contest. The novel's sudden outburst of violence at the end has been described as incongruous with what preceded it.

Toole later described the novel in correspondence with an editor, "In 1954, when I was 16, I wrote a book called The Neon Bible, a grim, adolescent, sociological attack upon the hatreds caused by the various Calvinist religions in the South—and the fundamentalist mentality is one of the roots of what was happening in Alabama, etc. The book, of course, was bad, but I sent it off a couple of times anyway." Neon Bible failed to attract interest from publishers and did not appear in print until after Toole's death.

College studies and professorships
In high school, Toole, as editor of the school newspaper, had written, under a pseudonym, a column of gossip and wit, Fish Tales, and while at Tulane he worked on the college newspaper, the Hullabaloo, writing articles, reviewing books, and drawing cartoons. The cartoons were noted for their subtlety and sophistication. At Tulane he first majored in engineering on the recommendation of his father; however, after a few weeks, he changed his major to English, stating "I'm losing my culture" to his mother in explanation. Around this time, Toole began associating with a local blues band that performed at high schools, in the French Quarter, and in the Irish Channel. Toole's classmates and family looked down on the French Quarter as being for tourists and the Irish Channel as being a place for lowlifes, so Toole kept his trips there a secret. His closest friend was guitarist Don Stevens, nicknamed "Steve Cha-Cha", with whom he bonded over their shared love of blues music and Beat poets. Stevens also had a side job pushing a hot tamale cart around town and, on days when he was unavailable for work, Toole would fill in for him. According to Stevens' bandmate Sidney Snow, Toole loved eating the tamales. Toole later used these experiences as material for his novel A Confederacy of Dunces, whose protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly pushes a hot dog cart around town, usually eating most of the profits. Also, like Reilly, Toole later worked at a family business that manufactured men's clothing, Haspel Brothers. He worked for J.B. Tonkel, who married one of the Haspel daughters. "Ken watched the Haspels' business dealings with great interest, absorbing and remembering their troubles and intrigues," and he later constructed the similar Levy Pants Company in Dunces, with Gus Levy and his wife becoming significant supporting characters in the novel. In 1958, Toole graduated from Tulane with honors. He enrolled in Columbia University in New York on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to study English literature. He took on a heavy workload so that he could earn his master's degree in a single year. In his free time he dated Ruth Kathmann, another student from Tulane, who was studying journalism at Columbia. The couple would go dancing at the Roseland Ballroom, as the $2.00 entrance fee allowed them to dance all night and suited their limited budget. Toole was noted to be a talented dancer. There is some question as to whether they were engaged, with friends claiming they were but Kathmann saying only that Toole asked her to marry him, but she declined. After he returned to New Orleans they rarely saw each other, and she married another man. Toole wrote his master's essay on the Elizabethan poet John Lyly, which was made easier by the fact that he had also written his honors thesis at Tulane on Lyly.

Toole returned home in 1959 to spend a year as assistant professor of English at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (USL), since renamed the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Joel L. Fletcher, a close friend, noted, "Ken has a real gift for mimicry and a refined sense of the absurd ... the English faculty at USL, which is divided into several camps of war, both fear and court Ken because of his biting comic talent." This year is generally considered one of the happiest of his life. While at USL he rented a dilapidated apartment from an elderly and eccentric widow on Convent Street. Toole described the apartment as a "Conradian metaphor" to friends.

Toole was in constant demand and went to all the parties where it was said "he was encouraged and sometimes forced to perform, Ken would enter a room armed with quiver full of sharp stories and barbed one-liners. He would zing these out until his audience was weak with laughter, though he hadn't cracked a smile." Because he was saving for a return to Columbia to get his Ph.D., Toole was a notorious skinflint during his year at USL. His friends noticed this and forced him to pay for and throw a party at his home. The party was a success and generally considered the best party thrown that year. In contrast to this image of an outgoing, lively young man, when Toole's mother came to visit, friends noticed that he became sullen and withdrawn. His friend Pat Rickels commented that Thelma "was absolutely convinced that he was without flaw and that all the hopes of the world lay in him. It was an extreme form of maternalism, where all your pride and all your hopes are in one person. He had to grow up with that burden. She was a very ostentatious, shrill, loud-voiced, bossy, bragging woman." It was at USL that Toole met Bob Byrne, an eccentric English professor who is considered one of the primary inspirations for the character of Ignatius J. Reilly. Byrne specialized in the medieval period, and he and Toole frequently discussed the philosopher Boethius and the wheel of Fortuna, as described in Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy. Boethius was the favorite philosopher of Ignatius J. Reilly, who frequently referred to Fortuna and Consolation of Philosophy. Like Ignatius, Byrne was a self-admitted devoted slob who played the lute, and also wore a deerstalker hunting cap, which Toole frequently chided him about.

When he was not studying or on the faculty party circuit, Toole frequented country bars and drank beer. He would usually listen to singer Frances Faye, whom he had once heard perform in New York. On several occasions while listening to her music with friends he enigmatically remarked, "Is Frances Faye God?" He was also an avid Marilyn Monroe fan who was devastated by her death and once described his interest in her as having "reached the stage of obsession".

In May 1960, Toole accepted a three-year fellowship to study for a Ph.D. in Renaissance literature at the University of Washington at Seattle. However, when he was offered a teaching position at Hunter College in New York, which suited his desire to study at Columbia, he chose to go there instead. At 22, he became the youngest professor in Hunter's history. Although he pursued a doctorate at Columbia, he became unhappy with his Ph.D. However, he wrote to Fletcher that he still liked Hunter, "principally because the aggressive, pseudo-intellectual, 'liberal' girl students are continuously amusing." Fletcher surmised that from these girls the character of Myrna Minkoff from Dunces was born. Toole, although generally only a "Christmas-and-Easter churchgoer", had some apprehension about the anti-Catholic intellectualism of some of his students, and about them seeming ever watchful for a cause they could throw their liberal zeal behind. "Every time the elevator door opens at Hunter, you are confronted by 20 pairs of burning eyes, 20 sets of bangs and everyone waiting for someone to push a Negro" he is reported to have said. When he first arrived back in New York, Toole dated Emilie Dietrich Griffin, another Louisiana transplant, with whom he had worked on the Hullabaloo staff, and later he dated another Louisianan, Clayelle Dalferes, of whom he had learned through Fletcher. The couple loved the cinema and movie-going was a constant staple of their dates. Both women said their relationships with Toole never progressed beyond the level of a good night kiss.

Military service
Toole's studies were interrupted by his being drafted into the United States Army in 1961. Toole (who was fluent in Spanish) served two years at Fort Buchanan in Puerto Rico, teaching English to Spanish-speaking recruits. He rose quickly in the military ranks. In under a year, he attained the rank of sergeant, and received numerous awards and citations. While serving in Puerto Rico, he frequently traveled throughout the Caribbean, either alone or with members of his company. Toole, however, began to dread the frustrations of military life and the oppressive heat of Puerto Rico. He described his work there in a letter to a friend:

"The arrival of the trainees in late October has kept me very busy; as the 'dean' of the English programs here, I am lost in test scores and averages and in the maze of painfully intricate Army politics and intrigue. I am quite powerful in my own little way and exercise more control over personnel and affairs in general than I had ever suspected I would; 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-existent. In its own lunatic way, this is very entertaining ... 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 like a great cliché, I can say that I have learned a vast amount about humans and their natures—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 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. (great agreement errors in this sentence, I fear). Please write. Ken."

He also engaged in one of the favorite activities of military personnel on the island: alcohol consumption. Both the soldiers and the instructors at the base drank excessively, as alcohol was cheap and plentiful. Toole remarked in another letter to Fletcher, "We are all rotting here at the moment. The decreased draft has meant no trainees since June ... the inactivity here, coupled with the remnants of a rainy and enervating summer has (have?) plunged the English instructors into an abyss of drinking and inertia. Occasionally someone will struggle off to the beach or to San Juan, but the maxim here remains, 'It's too hot. When Emilie Griffin paid Toole a visit in December 1961 she was dismayed at what she saw. Toole was notably depressed and while dining at a local hotel she noted that "the windows on all sides of our table were filled with perfect rainbows. Ken was sitting in a pocket of darkness surrounded by these brilliant colored arches and he never looked at them." Adding to Toole's dismay, his class ring from Tulane went missing and he searched the entire base for it, questioning everyone, until concluding that it had been stolen. Disgusted, he wrote home, "It's a wonder I haven't been stabbed yet or paralyzed by intestinal diseases on this insane little geographical mountain top protruding from the Caribbean. However, under any circumstances the loss of the ring affects me deeply."

In the early portion of Toole's military career one of his primary motivations for advancement was to acquire a private office. Privacy was a significant luxury on the island with some of the men renting rooms in nearby hotels so they could have some solitude. Toole's army buddy David Kubach, also an aspiring writer, lent him a green Swedish-made Halda typewriter for use in his office. The barracks consisted solely of college educated English professors, which gave it a different makeup from usual army companies. In contrast to almost all other army barracks where gays kept their sexual orientation a secret, this barracks had a contingent of men who were open about their homosexuality. The gay men reserved a portion of the barracks for themselves and, as they did not proposition any of the straight instructors, they were left alone. However, this particular group of gay men drank significantly more than the rest of the group and eventually began to exhibit a loud, rowdy, and vulgar brand of behavior that made the straight men uncomfortable. Toole's response was to ignore their behavior and it lost him the respect of some of the men in the barracks. The problem came to a head when a gay instructor attempted suicide by overdosing on APC (aspirin, phenacetin, and caffeine) tablets after being spurned by another soldier. When Toole found the man he waited a half-hour to call for help, hoping he would awaken on his own. His friend Kubach stated that this was because it would look bad for the soldier and that he would most likely get himself court martialed for a suicide attempt. Some of his fellow soldiers were livid and held a meeting deciding whether to report Toole's negligence. Ultimately, they did not report his behavior and the army never filed any charges but his relationships with many of the men were irrevocably changed.

After this incident, Toole became withdrawn and began spending more and more time in his office typing what would eventually become his master work, A Confederacy of Dunces. It was not a secret that Toole was writing a book. Late at night, his fellow soldiers could often hear the sound of the typewriter keys. Although he was secretive about the novel among the other men, Toole showed the early portions of it to Kubach who gave him positive feedback. Around this time, Kubach was transferred and took his typewriter with him, so Toole was forced to buy his own. He later commented that he began to "talk and act like Ignatius" during this period as he became more and more immersed in the creation of the book. His letter home to his parents of April 10, 1963, shows these similarities:

"This afternoon we were visited here by General Bogart (inspected, rather, no one simply 'visits' us), the Commander of the Caribbean, the gentleman most vocal in favor of sending us away from Puerto Rico. I sincerely hope that he succeeds ... I was surprised to see Charlie Ferguson's [a high school classmate of Toole's] by-line on that article about New Orleans; he graduated from the Tulane law school a few years ago. The article, incidentally, was very badly written; some of it was almost painful to read. I thought that he could do better than that. However, the quality of the writing in the Picayune-States combine is uniformly childish and clumsy. They are very poorly edited newspapers."

Return home and completion of Dunces
Toole received a hardship discharge as his parents were having difficult economic times, his father struggling with deafness and an increasing incidence of irrational fear and paranoia. Toole looked forward to coming home and spending time talking with his mother. Toole turned down an offer to return to his post at Hunter, and arrived home to a teaching position at Dominican College, a Catholic all-female school. He initially liked the position as it allowed him to teach for only 10.5 hours a week and afforded him the same leisure time he had during his less active periods in the service. The nuns on the faculty were enamored of Toole from the start, considering him well mannered, genteel, and charming. He used his free time to work on his novel, and to spend some time with his musician friend Sidney Snow at Snow's home in the Irish Channel and at various night clubs where he would watch Snow and his bandmates perform, among other things, covers of songs by The Beatles. The November 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy caused Toole to fall into severe depression. He stopped writing and drank heavily. In February 1964 he resumed writing, at which point he added an ending and sent the manuscript to Simon & Schuster.

Dunces has been described as a "grand comic fugue" and is considered one of the seminal works of twentieth century Southern literature. It has received praise for its accurate use of various New Orleans dialects, including the Yat dialect. It concerns protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly, a slothful, obese, self-styled philosopher who lives with his mother. After an early financial setback for the Reilly family, caused by Ignatius, he is forced by his mother to seek employment in a variety of menial jobs to help the household financially, for which he is continually resentful of her. He subsequently takes revenge on several businesses for perceived slights. He incites black workers to insurrection at Levy Pants Company, eats more hot dogs than he sells, and attempts to break up a strip club. Along the way he runs into a divergent cast of characters, including Myrna Minkoff, a rebellious socialist intellectual with whom he conducts an ongoing literary correspondence. Although Reilly is partially modeled after Toole's eccentric friend Bob Byrne, Byrne and others have stated that much of Reilly is actually based on Toole himself:

"Ken Toole was a strange person. He was extroverted and private. And that's very difficult. He had a strong ... desire to be recognized. ... but also a strong sense of alienation. That's what you have in Ignatius Reilly."

The book eventually reached senior editor Robert Gottlieb, who had talked the then-unknown Joseph Heller into completing the classic comic novel Catch-22. Gottlieb and Toole began a two-year correspondence and dialogue over the novel which would ultimately result in bitter disappointment on both sides. While Gottlieb felt Toole was undoubtedly talented, he was unhappy with the book in its original form. He felt that it had one basic flaw which he expressed to Toole in an early letter:

"It seems that you understand the problem—the major problem—involved, but think that the conclusion can solve it. More is required, though. Not only do the various threads need resolving; they can always be tied together conveniently. What must happen is that they must be strong and meaningful all the way through—not merely episodic and then wittily pulled together to make everything look as if it's come out right. In other words, there must be a point to everything you have in the book, a real point, not just amusingness that's forced to figure itself out."

Initially, although Toole was disappointed that the novel could not be published as is, he was exuberant that a major publisher was interested in it. He entered his second year of teaching at Dominican as one of the favorite new professors on staff. Students marveled at his wit, and Toole would make entire classes burst into laughter while hardly showing any expression. He never retold a story or joke, and had many repeat students. Shortly before Christmas break in 1964, Toole received a letter from Gottlieb. In it Gottlieb remarked that he had shown the novel to Candida Donadio, a literary agent whose clients included Joseph Heller and Thomas Pynchon. Gottlieb told Toole they felt he was "... wildly funny often, funnier than almost anyone around". Also they liked the same portions and characters of the book and disliked the same parts as well. Gottlieb gave a list of things he did not like concluding with:

"But that, all this aside, there is another problem: that with all its wonderfulnesses, the book—even better plotted (and still better plotable)—does not have a reason; it's a brilliant exercise in invention, but unlike CATCH [22] and MOTHER KISSES and V and the others, it isn't really about anything. And that's something no one can do anything about."

Later on in the letter, Gottlieb stated that he still had faith in Toole as a writer and that he wished to hold onto the manuscript in case he or Toole would be able to see a way around his objections. Toole decided that it would be best for Gottlieb to return the manuscript, saying "Aside from a few deletions, I don't think I could really do much to the book now—and of course even with revisions you might not be satisfied." Toole made a trip to New York to see Gottlieb in person; however, he was out of town and Toole came back disappointed. He felt that he had embarrassed himself by giving a rambling, uncomfortable speech explaining his situation to one of Gottlieb's office staff. He returned home having left a note for Gottlieb to call him, and they later talked for an hour on the phone. In this conversation Gottlieb re-iterated that he would not accept the novel without further revision. He suggested that Toole move on to writing something else, an idea which Toole ultimately rejected.

In a long, partially autobiographical letter he sent to Gottlieb in March 1965, Toole explained that he could not give up on the book since he wrote the novel largely from personal observation and because the characters were based on real people he had seen in his life.

"I don't want to throw these characters away. In other words, I'm going to work on the book again. I haven't been able to look at the manuscript since I got it back, but since something of my soul is in the thing, I can't let it rot without trying."

Gottlieb wrote him an encouraging letter, in which he stated again that he felt Toole was very talented (even more so than himself ) and that if Toole were to re-submit the manuscript he would continue to "read, reread, edit, perhaps publish, generally cope, until you are fed up with me. What more can I say?" In early 1966, Toole wrote Gottlieb one final letter, which has never been located. Gottlieb wrote back to him on January 17, 1966, re-iterating his feelings on the book and stating that he wanted to read it again when Toole created another revision.

Final years
Toole took the rejection of the book in his intended form as a tremendous personal blow. He eventually ceased work on Dunces and for a time left it atop an armoire in his bedroom. He continued to teach at Dominican where he remained a favorite among the student body with his classes regularly filling up well before official registration. His comedic performances during lectures remained especially popular. He attempted to work on another novel which he titled The Conqueror Worm, a reference to death as portrayed in Edgar Allan Poe's poem of the same name, but he found little peace at home. Toole's mother persuaded him to take Dunces to Hodding Carter Jr., who was well known as a reporter and publisher for the Delta Democrat Times in Greenville, Mississippi, and was spending a semester teaching at Tulane. Carter showed little interest in the book but complimented him on it. This face-to-face rejection drove Toole further into despair, and he became angry with his mother for causing him further embarrassment.

Except for a few trips by car to Madison, Wisconsin to see army pal David Kubach, Toole spent most of the last three years of his life at home or at Dominican. In the winter of 1967, Kubach, who had come down to visit Toole, noticed an increased sense of paranoia on Toole's part; once when driving around New Orleans, Toole became convinced they were being followed and attempted to lose the car. The family moved to a larger rental house on Hampson Street, and Toole continued teaching, with his students noticing that his wit had become more acerbic. He continued to drink heavily and gained a great deal of weight, causing him to have to purchase an entire new wardrobe. Toole began having frequent and intense headaches; because aspirin was no help, he saw a doctor. The doctor's treatment was ineffective, and he suggested that Toole see a neurologist, an idea Toole rejected.

Toole tried to maintain a sense of normality and enrolled in Tulane in the fall of 1968 with the hopes of acquiring a Ph.D. He took a course studying Theodore Dreiser, on whom he had lectured while at Hunter, and was particularly interested in Dreiser's close relationship with his mother and his anti-Catholic beliefs. The assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 added to his feelings of grief and heightened his paranoia. Several of Toole's longtime friends noticed he had an increasing sense of feelings of personal persecution. Toole went to see his friend Bob Byrne at his home in August 1968, where he again expressed sadness and humiliation that his book would not be published. Toole told Byrne that people were passing his home late in the night and honking their car horns at him, that students whispered about him behind his back, and that people were plotting against him. Byrne had a talk with him, which he felt, for the time being, calmed him down.

In the months before his suicide, Toole, who was usually extremely well groomed, "began to appear in public unshaved and uncombed, wearing unpolished shoes and wrinkled clothes, to the amazement of his friends and students in New Orleans." He also began to exhibit signs of paranoia, including telling friends that a woman who he erroneously thought had worked for Simon & Schuster was plotting to steal his book so that her husband, the novelist George Deaux, could publish it.

Toole became increasingly erratic during his lectures at Dominican, resulting in frequent student complaints, and was given to rants against church and state. Toward the end of the 1968 fall semester, he was forced to take a leave of absence and stopped attending classes at Tulane, resulting in his receiving a grade of incomplete. The Tooles spent Christmas of 1968 in disarray with Toole's father in an increasing state of dementia, and Toole searching the home for electronic mind-reading devices.

Death
When Toole was unable to resume his position at Dominican in January 1969, the school had to hire another professor. This upset his mother and on January 19, 1969, they had an argument. He stopped by the house the next day to pick up some things and spoke only to his father, as Thelma was out at the grocery store. He left home for the final time and withdrew $1,500 (equivalent to $12,500 in 2022) from his savings account. After a week she called the police, but, without any evidence as to his whereabouts, they took a report and waited for him to surface. Thelma became convinced that Toole's friends the Rickels knew where he was and called them repeatedly, even though they denied knowing where he had gone.

Items found in Toole's car show that he drove to California where he visited Hearst Castle and then to Milledgeville, Georgia. Here he most likely attempted to visit Andalusia, the home of deceased writer Flannery O'Connor, although her house was not open to the public. This was succeeded by a drive toward New Orleans. It was during this trip that he stopped outside Biloxi, Mississippi, and died by suicide by running a garden hose from the exhaust pipe in through the window of his car on March 26, 1969. His car and person were clean, and the police officers who found him reported that his face showed no signs of distress. An envelope discovered in the car was marked "to my parents". The suicide note inside the envelope was destroyed by his mother, who later gave varying vague accounts of its details. In one instance she said it expressed his "concerned feeling for her" and later she told a Times-Picayune interviewer that the letter was "bizarre and preposterous. Violent. Ill-fated. Nothing. Insane ravings." He was buried at Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans. A few years earlier, Toole had driven his army buddy David Kubach to the exact spot where he would later die by suicide. As the location was unremarkable, Kubach did not understand why Toole had taken him there. He left his parents a $2,000 life-insurance policy (equivalent to $ in ), several thousand dollars in savings, and his car. Toole's funeral service was private and attended only by his parents and his childhood nursemaid Beulah Matthews. The students and faculty at Dominican College were grief-stricken over Toole's death, and the school held a memorial service for him in the college courtyard. The head of Dominican gave a brief eulogy which, because of the institution's religious beliefs, did not mention the suicide.

Posthumous publications
After Toole's death, Thelma Toole suffered from depression for two years, and the manuscript for Dunces remained atop an armoire in his former room. She then determined to find a publisher, believing it would be an opportunity to prove her son's talent. Over a five-year period, she sent it to seven publishers, but all rejected it. "Each time it came back, I died a little," she said. However, in 1976 she became aware that author Walker Percy was joining the faculty of Loyola University New Orleans. To get Percy to read the manuscript, Thelma began a campaign of phone calls and letters. Percy complained to his wife about a peculiar old woman's attempts to contact him. With time running out on Percy's term as professor, Thelma pushed her way into his office and demanded he read the manuscript. Initially hesitant, Percy agreed to read the book to stop her badgering. He admitted to hoping it would be so bad that he could discard it after reading a few pages. Ultimately, he loved the book, commenting in disbelief:

"In this case I read on. And on. First with the sinking feeling that it was not bad enough to quit, then with a prickle of interest, then a growing excitement, and finally an incredulity; surely it was not possible that it was so good."

Despite Percy's great admiration for the book, the road to publication was difficult. Acceptance took more than three years; he attempted to get several parties interested in it. A Confederacy of Dunces was published by Louisiana State University Press in 1980, and Percy provided the foreword. At his recommendation, Toole's first draft of the book was published with minimal copy-editing, and no significant revisions. The first printing was only 2,500 copies, and a number of these were sent to Scott Kramer, an executive at 20th Century Fox, to pitch around Hollywood, but the book initially generated little interest. However, the novel attracted much attention in the literary world. A year later, in 1981, Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The book eventually sold more than 1.5 million copies, in 18 languages. In 2019, the PBS show The Great American Read ranked Dunces the 58th (out of 100) most loved book in America.

Toole's only other novel, The Neon Bible, was published in 1989. It was adapted into a feature film in 1995, directed by Terence Davies, that fared poorly at the box office and received a mixed critical reception.

In 2015, debuting on November 11 and running through December 13, Nick Offerman, star of the TV series Parks and Recreation, starred in a theatrical performance of A Confederacy of Dunces, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher and directed by David Esbjornson. The play was staged at the Huntington Theatre in Boston.

In 2016, the play Mr. Toole by Vivian Neuwirth, inspired by the events of Toole's life, death, and subsequent publication of A Confederacy of Dunces, debuted at the Midtown International Theatre Festival in New York City.

Thelma Toole's tenacity in attempting to publish A Confederacy of Dunces is such that many manuscripts were circulated, thus making it difficult to determine which is the "original." The Loyola University New Orleans and Tulane University archives retain early versions of the manuscript.

title: John Kennedy Toole


text:
J. J. Johnson

J. J. Johnson (January 22, 1924 – February 4, 2001), born James Louis Johnson and also known as Jay Jay Johnson, was an American jazz trombonist, composer and arranger.

Johnson was one of the earliest trombonists to embrace bebop.

Big bands
After studying the piano beginning at age 9, Johnson decided to play trombone at the age of 14. In 1941, he began his professional career with Clarence Love, and then played with Snookum Russell in 1942. In Russell's band, he met the trumpeter Fats Navarro, who influenced him to play in the style of the tenor saxophonist Lester Young. Johnson played in Benny Carter's orchestra between 1942 and 1945, and made his first recordings in 1943 under Carter's leadership, recording his first solo (on "Love for Sale") in October 1943. In 1944, he took part in the first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert, presented in Los Angeles and organized by Norman Granz. In 1945, he joined the big band of Count Basie, touring and recording with him until 1946.

Bebop
While the trombone was featured prominently in dixieland and swing music, it fell out of favor among bebop musicians, largely because instruments with valves and keys (trumpet, saxophone) were believed to be more suited to bebop's often rapid tempos and demand for technical mastery. In 1946, bebop co-inventor Dizzy Gillespie encouraged the young trombonist's development: "I've always known that the trombone could be played different, that somebody'd catch on one of these days. Man, you're elected."

After leaving Basie in 1946 to play in small bebop bands in New York clubs, Johnson toured in 1947 with Illinois Jacquet. During this period, he also began recording as a leader of small groups featuring Max Roach, Sonny Stitt and Bud Powell. He performed with Charlie Parker at the 17 December 1947 Dial Records session, following Parker's release from Camarillo State Mental Hospital.

In 1951, with bassist Oscar Pettiford and trumpeter Howard McGhee, Johnson toured the military camps of Japan and Korea, before returning to the United States and taking a day job as a blueprint inspector. Johnson admitted later he was still thinking of nothing but music during that time, and indeed, his Blue Note recordings as both a leader and with Miles Davis date from this period. Johnson's compositions "Enigma" and "Kelo" were recorded by Davis for Blue Note, and Johnson was part of the Davis studio session band that recorded the jazz standard "Walkin'" in 1954 (the title track of a Davis album issued by Prestige).

Jay and Kai
In 1954, producer Ozzie Cadena, then with Savoy Records, convinced Johnson to set up a combo with trombonist Kai Winding: the "Jay and Kai Quintet". The trombone styles and personalities of the two musicians, although very different, blended so well that the pairing, which lasted until August 1956, was a success both musically and commercially. They toured U.S. nightclubs and recorded numerous albums. The duo reunited again in 1958 for a tour of the UK, an Impulse! studio album in 1960 and, in 1968–1969, (two albums for CTI/A&M Records). In January 1967, Johnson and Winding were in an all-star line-up (alongside the likes of Clark Terry, Charlie Shavers and Joe Newman) backing Sarah Vaughan on her last sessions for Mercury Records, released as the album Sassy Swings Again, with three of the cuts, including Billy Strayhorn's "Take the "A" Train", being arranged by Johnson himself. The duo also made some jazz festival appearances in Japan in the early 1980s, the last shortly before Winding died in May 1983.

Solo career
Following the mid-1950s collaboration with Winding, J. J. Johnson began leading his own touring small groups for about three years, covering the United States, United Kingdom and Scandinavia. These groups (ranging from quartets to sextets) included tenor saxophonists Bobby Jaspar and Clifford Jordan, cornetist Nat Adderley, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, pianists Tommy Flanagan and Cedar Walton, and drummers Elvin Jones, Albert "Tootie" Heath, and Roach. In 1957, he recorded the quartet albums First Place and Blue Trombone, with Flanagan, Paul Chambers and Roach. He also toured with the Jazz at the Philharmonic show in 1957 and 1960, the first tour yielding a live album, featuring Johnson and tenor saxophonist Stan Getz. In 1958–59, Johnson was one of three plaintiffs in a court case which hastened the abolition of the cabaret card system.

This period overlaps with the beginnings of Johnson's serious forays into Third Stream music (see below). Periods of writing and recording his music would alternate with tours demanding attention to his playing.

Following the six months he spent writing Perceptions (see below), Johnson entered the studio for a date with André Previn's trio (adding Johnson as the only horn). They recorded an entire album of the music of Kurt Weill, released as Andre Previn and J. J. Johnson Play 'Mack The Knife' and Other Kurt Weill Songs. In 1962, Johnson toured for a number of months with Davis' sextet of that year, which went unrecorded.

Johnson's 1963 album J. J.'s Broadway is an example of both his mature trombone style and sound, and his arranging abilities. Johnson's album Proof Positive (1964) was the last recording of his working band for over 20 years. Beginning in 1965, Johnson recorded a number of large group studio albums under his name, featuring many of his own compositions and arrangements. The late 1960s saw a radical downturn in the fortunes of many jazz musicians, and Johnson was consequently heard almost exclusively on big band-style studio records, usually backing a single soloist.

Composer
From the mid-1950s, but especially the early 1960s on, Johnson dedicated more and more time to composition. He became an active contributor to the Third Stream movement in jazz, (which included such other musicians as Gunther Schuller and John Lewis), and wrote large-scale works which incorporated elements of both classical music and jazz. He contributed his "Poem for Brass" to a Third Stream compilation titled Music for Brass in 1957, and composed a number of original works which were performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1961, he composed a suite in six movements, titled Perceptions, with Gillespie as soloist. The First International Jazz Festival, held in Washington, D.C. in 1962, featured another extended work. In 1965, he spent time in Vienna to perform and record his Euro Suite with a jazz-classical fusion orchestra led by Friedrich Gulda. In 1968, a Johnson work titled "Diversions" was commissioned by the American Wind Symphony and performed.

Hollywood
Johnson moved to California to compose for cinema and television. During this period, he played almost no concerts, except in 1977 and 1982 in Japan, and in 1984 in Europe. Despite the low profile, he did record six albums as a leader between 1977 and 1984 (including a 1984 trombone duo album with Al Grey) and a few albums as a sideman, two with Basie, and on The Sting II soundtrack. During the California period he also played in the Cocoanut Grove orchestra of Sammy Davis, Jr. and the TV orchestra of Carol Burnett.

Return to performing
Johnson returned to performing and recording in November 1987, with an engagement at the Village Vanguard in New York City. Tours of the United States, Europe and Japan followed as well as a return engagement to the Vanguard in July 1988 which yielded two albums worth of material.

While touring Japan in December 1988, Johnson learned that his wife Vivian had suffered a bad stroke, which incapacitated her for the remaining three and a half years of her life. During this period Johnson cancelled all work, devoting his energy to caring for his ailing wife. After her death in 1991, he dedicated an album to her on Concord.

In 1992, Johnson married his second wife, Carolyn Reid, and he began actively performing once again. Following this second comeback in 1992, Johnson's contracts with a variety of record labels, including Verve and Antilles, resulted in five albums as a leader, from small groups to separate brass orchestra and string orchestra recordings, as well as sideman appearances with his leading disciple, trombonist Steve Turre, and the vocalist Abbey Lincoln. He earned several Grammy nominations during this period. He retired from active performing and touring in late 1996, after having performed his last concert at William Paterson College on November 10, 1996, then choosing to stay at his home in Indianapolis where he could indulge his passion of composing and arranging music with computers and MIDI.

Later diagnosed with prostate cancer, Johnson maintained a positive outlook and underwent treatment. He wrote a book of original exercises and études for jazz musicians, published later by Hal Leonard. A biography, titled The Musical World of J. J. Johnson, was published in 2000.

On February 4, 2001, he died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His funeral in Indianapolis drew jazz musicians, friends and family from around the country.

Influence
Johnson's work in the 1940s and 1950s demonstrated that the slide trombone could be played in the bebop style; as trombonist Steve Turre has summarized, "J. J. did for the trombone what Charlie Parker did for the saxophone. And all of us that are playing today wouldn't be playing the way we're playing if it wasn't for what he did. And not only, of course, is he the master of the trombone—the definitive master of this century—but, as a composer and arranger, he is in the top shelf as well."

Several of Johnson's compositions, including "Wee Dot", "Lament", and "Enigma" have become jazz standards.

From the mid-1950s onwards, Johnson was a perennial polling favorite in jazz circles, even winning "Trombonist of the Year" in DownBeat magazine during years he was not active. He was voted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1995.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: J. J. Johnson


text:
Bog body

A bog body is a human cadaver that has been naturally mummified in a peat bog. Such bodies, sometimes known as bog people, are both geographically and chronologically widespread, having been dated to between and the Second World War. The unifying factor of the bog bodies is that they have been found in peat and are partially preserved; however, the actual levels of preservation vary widely from perfectly preserved to mere skeletons.

Unlike most ancient human remains, bog bodies often retain their skin and internal organs due to the unusual conditions of the surrounding area. Combined, highly acidic water, low temperature, and a lack of oxygen preserve but severely tan their skin. While the skin is well-preserved, the bones are generally not, due to the dissolution of the calcium phosphate of bone by the peat's acidity. The acidic conditions of these bogs allow for the preservation of materials such as skin, hair, nails, wool and leather which all contain the protein keratin.

The oldest known bog body is the skeleton of Koelbjerg Man from Denmark, which has been dated to 8000 BCE, during the Mesolithic period. The oldest fleshed bog body is that of Cashel Man, which dates to 2000 BC during the Bronze Age. The overwhelming majority of bog bodies – including examples such as Tollund Man, Grauballe Man and Lindow Man – date to the Iron Age and have been found in northwest Europe, particularly Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Sweden, Poland, and Ireland. Such Iron Age bog bodies typically show a number of similarities, such as violent deaths and a lack of clothing, which has led archaeologists to believe that they were killed and deposited in the bogs as a part of a widespread cultural tradition of human sacrifice or executed as criminals. Bogs could have indeed been seen as liminal places positively connected to another world, which might welcome contaminating items otherwise dangerous to the living. More recent theories postulate that bog people were perceived as social outcasts or "witches", as legal hostages killed in anger over broken treaty arrangements, or as victims of an unusual death eventually buried in bogs according to traditional customs.

The German scientist Alfred Dieck published a catalogue of more than 1,850 bog bodies that he had counted between 1939 and 1986, but most were unverified by documents or archaeological finds; and a 2002 analysis of Dieck's work by German archaeologists concluded that much of his work was unreliable. Countering Dieck's findings of more than 1400 bog body discoveries, it seems that after a more recent study the number of bog body finds is closer to 122. The most recent bog bodies are those of soldiers killed in the wetlands of the Soviet Union during the Second World War.

Bog chemistry
The preservation of bog bodies in peat bogs is a natural phenomenon and not the result of human mummification processes. It is caused by the unique physical and biochemical composition of the bogs. Different types of bogs can affect the mummification process differently: raised bogs best preserve the corpses, whereas fens and transitional bogs tend to preserve harder tissues such as the skeleton rather than the soft tissue.

A limited number of bogs have the correct conditions for preservation of mammalian tissue. Most of these are located in colder climates near bodies of salt water. For example, in the area of Denmark where the Haraldskær Woman was recovered, salty air from the North Sea blows across the Jutland wetlands and provides an ideal environment for the growth of peat. As new peat replaces the old peat, the older material underneath rots and releases humic acid, also known as bog acid. The bog acids, with pH levels similar to vinegar, preserve human bodies in the same way as fruit is preserved by pickling. In addition, peat bogs form in areas lacking drainage and hence are characterized by almost completely anaerobic conditions. This environment, highly acidic and devoid of oxygen, denies the prevalent subsurface aerobic organisms any opportunity to initiate decomposition. Researchers discovered that preservation also requires that the body is placed in the bog during the winter or early spring when the water temperature is cold – i.e., less than 4 C. This allows bog acids to saturate the tissues before decay can begin. Bacteria are unable to grow rapidly enough for decomposition at temperatures under 4 °C.

The bog chemical environment involves a completely saturated acidic environment, where considerable concentrations of organic acids, which contribute most to the low pH of bog waters, and aldehydes are present. Layers of sphagnum, which are compacted layers of irregular mosses and other peat debris, and peat assist in preserving the cadavers by enveloping the tissue in a cold immobilizing matrix, impeding water circulation and any oxygenation. An additional feature of anaerobic preservation by acidic bogs is the ability to conserve hair, clothing and leather items. Modern experimenters have been able to mimic bog conditions in the laboratory and successfully demonstrated the preservation process, albeit over shorter time frames than the 2,500 years that Haraldskær Woman's body has survived. Most of the bog bodies discovered showed some aspects of decay or else were not properly conserved. When such specimens are exposed to the normal atmosphere, they may begin to decompose rapidly. As a result, many specimens have been effectively destroyed. As of 1979, the number of specimens that have been preserved following discovery was 53.

Mesolithic to Bronze Age
The oldest bog body that has been identified is the Koelbjerg Man from Denmark, which has been dated to 8000 BCE, during the Mesolithic period.

Around 3900 BCE, agriculture was introduced to Denmark, either through cultural exchange or by migrating farmers, marking the beginning of the Neolithic in the region. It was during the early part of this Neolithic period that a number of human corpses that were interred in the area's peat bogs left evidence that there had been resistance to its introduction. A disproportionate number of the Early Neolithic bodies found in Danish bogs were aged between 16 and 20 at the time of their death and deposition, and suggestions have been put forward that they were either human sacrifices or criminals executed for their socially deviant behaviour. An example of a Bronze Age bog body is Cashel Man, from 2000 BCE.

Iron Age
The vast majority of the bog bodies that have been discovered date from the Iron Age, a period of time when peat bogs covered a much larger area of northern Europe. Many of these Iron Age bodies bear a number of similarities, indicating a known cultural tradition of killing and depositing these people in a certain manner. These Pre-Roman Iron Age people lived in sedentary communities, built villages and their society was hierarchical. They were agriculturalists, raising animals in captivity as well as growing crops. In some parts of northern Europe, they also fished. Although independent of the Roman Empire, which dominated southern Europe at this time, the inhabitants traded with the Romans.

For these people, the bogs held some sort of liminal significance, and indeed, they placed into them votive offerings intended for the Otherworld, often of neck-rings, wristlets or ankle-rings made of bronze or more rarely gold. The archaeologist P.V. Glob believed that these were "offerings to the gods of fertility and good fortune." It is therefore widely speculated that the Iron Age bog bodies were thrown into the bog for similar reasons and that they were therefore examples of human sacrifice to the gods. Explicit reference to the practice of drowning slaves who had washed the cult image of Nerthus and were subsequently ritually drowned in Tacitus' Germania, suggesting that the bog bodies were sacrificial victims may be contrasted with a separate account (Germania XII), in which victims of punitive execution were pinned in bogs using hurdles.

Many bog bodies show signs of being stabbed, bludgeoned, hanged or strangled, or a combination of these methods. In some cases, the individual had been beheaded. In the case of the Osterby Man found at Kohlmoor, near Osterby, Germany in 1948, the head had been deposited in the bog without its body.

Usually, the corpses were naked, sometimes with some items of clothing with them, particularly headgear. The clothing is believed to have decomposed while in the bog for so long. In a number of cases, twigs, sticks or stones were placed on top of the body, sometimes in a cross formation, and at other times, forked sticks had been driven into the peat to hold the corpse down. According to the archaeologist P.V. Glob, "this probably indicates the wish to pin the dead man firmly into the bog". Some bodies show signs of torture, such as Old Croghan Man, who had deep cuts beneath his nipples.

Some bog bodies, such as Tollund Man from Denmark, have been found with the rope used to strangle them still around their necks. Similarly to Tollund Man, Yde Girl, who was found in the Netherlands and was approximately 16 years old at her time of death, has a woollen rope with a sliding knot still tied around her neck. Yde Girl's remains showed evidence indicating that she had sustained trauma prior to her death. Aside from the rope preserved around her neck indicating strangulation, near her left clavicle there are marks indicating that she was also subjected to sharp force trauma. Yde Girl, and other bog bodies in Ireland, had the hair on one side of their heads closely cropped, although this could be due to one side of their head being exposed to oxygen for a longer period of time than the other. Some of the bog bodies seem consistently to have been members of the upper class: their fingernails are manicured, and tests on hair protein routinely record good nutrition. Strabo records that the Celts practised auguries on the entrails of human victims: on some bog bodies, such as the Weerdinge Men found in the northern Netherlands, the entrails have been partly drawn out through incisions.

Modern techniques of forensic analysis now suggest that some injuries, such as broken bones and crushed skulls, were not the result of torture, but rather due to the weight of the bog. For example, the fractured skull of Grauballe Man was at one time thought to have been caused by a blow to the head. However, a CT scan of Grauballe Man by Danish scientists determined his skull was fractured due to pressure from the bog long after his death.

North America
A number of skeletons found in Florida have been called "bog people". These skeletons are the remains of people buried in peat between 5,000 and 8,000 years ago, during the Early and Middle Archaic period in the Americas. The peat at the Florida sites is loosely consolidated and much wetter than in European bogs. As a result, the skeletons are well preserved, but skin and most internal organs have not been preserved. An exception is that preserved brains have been found in nearly 100 skulls at Windover Archaeological Site and in one of several burials at Little Salt Spring. Textiles were also preserved with some of the burials, the oldest known textiles in Florida. A 7,000-year-old presumed peat pond burial site, the Manasota Key Offshore archaeological site, has been found under 21 ft of water near Sarasota. Archaeologists believe that early Archaic Native Americans buried the bodies in a freshwater pond when the sea level was much lower. The peat in the ponds helped preserve the skeletons.

Discovery and archaeological investigation

Ever since the Iron Age, humans have used the bogs to harvest peat, a common fuel source. On various occasions throughout history, peat diggers have come across bog bodies. Records of such finds go back as far as the 17th century, and in 1640 a bog body was discovered at Schalkholz Fen in Holstein, Germany. This was possibly the first-ever such discovery recorded. The first more fully documented account of the discovery of a bog body was at a peat bog on Drumkeragh Mountain in County Down, Ireland; it was published by Elizabeth Rawdon, Countess of Moira, the wife of the local landowner. Such reports continued into the 18th century: for instance, a body was reportedly found on the Danish island of Fyn in 1773, whilst the Kibbelgaarn body was discovered in the Netherlands in 1791. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, when such bodies were discovered, they were often removed from the bogs and given a Christian burial on consecrated church grounds in keeping with the religious beliefs of the community who found them, who often assumed that they were relatively modern.

With the rise of antiquarianism in the 19th century, some people began to speculate that many of the bog bodies were not recent murder victims but were ancient in origin. In 1843, at Corselitze on Falster in Denmark, a bog body unusually buried with ornaments (seven glass beads and a bronze pin) was unearthed and subsequently given a Christian burial. By order of the Crown Prince Frederick, who was an antiquarian, the body was dug up again and sent to the National Museum of Denmark. According to the archaeologist P.V. Glob, it was "he, more than anyone else, [who] helped to arouse the wide interest in Danish antiquities" such as the bog bodies.

After the Haraldskær Woman was unearthed in Denmark, she was exhibited as having been the legendary Queen Gunhild of the Early Mediaeval period. This view was disputed by the archaeologist J. J. A. Worsaae, who argued that the body was Iron Age in origin, like most bog bodies, and predated any historical persons by at least 500 years. The first bog body that was photographed was the Iron Age Rendswühren Man, discovered in 1871, at the Heidmoor Fen, near Kiel in Germany. His body was subsequently smoked as an early attempt at conservation and put on display in a museum. With the rise of modern archaeology in the early 20th century, archaeologists began to excavate and investigate bog bodies more carefully and thoroughly.

Archaeological techniques
Until the mid-20th century, it was not readily apparent at the time of discovery whether a body had been buried in a bog for years, decades, or centuries. However, modern forensic and medical technologies (such as radiocarbon dating) have been developed that allow researchers to more closely determine the age of the burial, the person's age at death, and other details. Scientists have been able to study the skin of the bog bodies, reconstruct their appearance and even determine what their last meal was from their stomach contents since peat marsh preserves soft internal tissue. Radiocarbon dating is also common as it accurately gives the date of the find, most usually from the Iron Age. For example, Tollund man of Denmark, whose remains were recovered in 1950, has undergone radiocarbon analyses that place his death date to around the 3rd or 4th century.

More modern analyses using stable isotope measurements have allowed scientists to study bone collagen collected from Tollund Man to determine his diet as being terrestrial-based. Their teeth also indicate their age at death and what type of food they ate throughout their lifetime. Dental caries, which are cavities within teeth, can direct archaeologist toward a person's diet prior to their death. Unlike erosion that the teeth may undergo due to decay, dental caries are typically sharp and well-defined cavities that have a larger diameter than erosion that occurs after death. Significant rates of dental caries point to diets that are rich in carbohydrates and can lead archaeologists to differentiate between plant-based diets and protein-based diets (animal protein is non-cariogenic). Dental enamel defects known as hypoplasias can also be seen in the analysis of teeth and can point towards malnutrition as well as diseases. Ground-penetrating radar can be used in archaeological investigation to map features beneath the ground to reconstruct 3D visualizations. For bog bodies, ground-penetrating radar can be used to detect bodies and artefacts beneath the bog surface before cutting into the peat.

Forensic facial reconstruction is one technique used in studying the bog bodies. Originally designed for identifying modern faces in crime investigations, this technique is a way of working out the facial features of a person by the shape of their skull. The face of one bog body, Yde Girl, was reconstructed in 1992 by forensic pathologist Richard Neave of Manchester University using CT scans of her head. Yde Girl and her modern reconstruction are displayed at the Drents Museum in Assen. Such reconstructions have also been made of the heads of Lindow Man (British Museum, London, United Kingdom), Grauballe Man, Girl of the Uchter Moor, Clonycavan Man, Roter Franz and Windeby I.

Notable bog bodies
Hundreds of bog bodies have been recovered and studied. The bodies have been most commonly found in the Northern European countries of Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Ireland. In 1965, the German scientist Alfred Dieck catalogued more than 1,850 bog bodies, but later scholarship revealed that much of Dieck's work was erroneous, and the exact number of discovered bodies is unknown.

Several bog bodies are notable for the high quality of their preservation and the substantial research by archaeologists and forensic scientists.
 * Cashel Man, from 2000 BCE, discovered in 2011 in County Laois, Ireland. It is the oldest fleshed bog body in the world.
 * Cladh Hallan mummies, from 1600 to 1300 BCE, found on the island of South Uist, Scotland
 * Girl of the Uchter Moor, from between 764 and 515 BCE, found in 2000 in Uchte, Germany
 * Haraldskær Woman, from 490 BCE, found in 1835 in Jutland, Denmark
 * Gallagh Man (470–120 BCE), County Galway, Ireland, in 1821
 * Tollund Man, from 400 BCE, found in 1950 in Jutland, Denmark
 * Borremose Bodies, from 700 to 400 BCE, found in the 1940s in Himmerland, Denmark
 * Clonycavan Man, from 392 to 201 BCE, found in 2003 in County Meath, Ireland
 * Old Croghan Man, from 362 to 175 BCE, found in 2003 County Offaly, Ireland.
 * Yde Girl, 170 BCE – 230 CE, found in 1897 near Yde, Netherlands
 * Weerdinge Men, from 160 to 220 BCE, found in 1904 in Drenthe, Netherlands
 * Windeby I, from 41 BCE and 118 CE, found in 1952 in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
 * Lindow Man, from 2 BCE – 119 CE, found in 1984 in Cheshire, England
 * Bocksten Man, from 1290 to 1430 CE, found in 1936 in Varberg, Sweden

title: Bog body


text:
Talk:500 (card game)

Incorrect usage of "Bower"
I'm going to swap terms "left bower" and "right bower" - the original author had them confused. I checked three websites to make sure my understanding wasn't just parochial. The "right" is the jack of the trump suit, the "left" is the jack of the other suit of the same colour. -- Tim Starling
 * Note although the German playing card decks have a "B" on the jack or knave card, it actually stands for "Bube" not "Bauer". Group29 (talk) 18:02, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Rule Variations
I always thought the standard rules for four handed 500 had the black 4s removed not the red. I've never seen it played the other way. Is it an error in the article? - Tobin Richard I've always played by removing the 4 of spades and the 4 of diamonds. Then, the 4 of diamonds or 4 of spades is considered trump, if hearts or clubs are trump, respectively. This rule makes sense, because it ensures that there are always 13 trump, and counting trump cards is an integral part of strategy. We would similarly play a two person game with 23 cards, including two 7s. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.92.96.23 (talk) 03:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I've only seen removing the black cards from the deck and keeping both the red and black cards in the blind and the winning bidder disposing of 5 cards before play began. Also "slamming the match" needs to note that there also needs to be no nullo/misere in play to win the 250 points James Mauro

I find issue with some sentences in the 'Score Keeping for 500' section. First,

'Whether or not the bid winning team achieves its bid, the losing bidders receive 10 points for each trick they take.'

This might be considered usual but a common variant is that points are awarded to the losing bid-team only when the bid-winning team do not make their bid. In misere and open misere, the bid-losing team get 10 points for each trick that the bid-winner takes.

I think the sentence

'A team wins the game by scoring at least 500 points through winning bids, which means that any team surpassing 500 points solely with tricks has not yet won the game.'

is confusing. Not all 500 points need to be won through winning bids (as opposed to accumulating points through odd tricks won as the losing-bid team). The variant that I know of says you can only get up to 460 or 490 with odd tricks - any odd tricks you take after that simply do not count. To win the game, you must cross over 500 by winning (and making) a bid.

'A team whose score dips below -500 points loses the game only if the other team is not in the negative.'

I have never heard of this. If you go out the back door, you lose, even if the other team is on -490.

Also, the table of bids and their point values includes a row for 'slams', though what a slam is is not discussed elsewhere in the text. A slam occurs when the winning bidder takes all ten tricks, regardless of what they bid. Slams can (in some variants) be rewarded with an additional 100 points over the winning bid amount. For example, if the original bid was 7 hearts and all ten tricks were taken, the score would be 200 (7 hearts) + 100 (for slamming) = 300. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.242.194.223 (talk) 08:08, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Could a section be added with regional terms? For example, I have never heard it called "misere" in the Midwest, where it is called "Noola." Taking all ten tricks is called a "sweep" instead of a "slam." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.177.212.114 (talk) 04:51, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Formatting
I reformatted the page to be easier on the eyes and to give it sections. I used the Euchre page for 'inspiration' and borrowed some of their wording where I think it was clearer. I believe I kept all the original content. Anything missing? - grubber 20:08, 2005 Jun 15 (UTC)

Needless deletions
I've been skimming through the history and have noticed that there have been many needless deletions of accurate material on the game. For instance, the article version I came across today made no mention of the American term "nullo," nor did it mention the 43-card version of the game, nor did it mention that "kitty" and "blind" are alternative names for the "widow." All of these details were present in earlier incarnations of the article, but were stripped in later edits. I suspect that the motive for such deletions is that the author(s) wished to present the "correct" or "standard" version of the game in the article (that is, the version that they play). This might be a much more satisfying and less confusing approach for someone authoring a rule book, but it is not the right approach for an encyclopedia article, which must neutrally and fairly represent all pertinent details on a subject, even when those details vary from each other. There is no world-wide standardized version of 500, so details on the many variations should be incorporated into the article. In future edits, I ask that all authors preserve unique information on the variations. To do otherwise hampers the article, and disrespects the contributions of others who have enjoyed one species or another of this still-evolving game. (unsigned by Rohirok)
 * I agree with you, as it's hard to represent every way this game is played. 500 is a staple of family get-togethers and we play with slight variations. The only solution I can think of is to use sub-pages. Is that proper in the Wiki-world. This would let everyone have their own way without needlessly complicating & cluttering up the main article. - grubber 2005 July 8 09:15 (UTC)
 * My primary concern here is that all accurate material is retained. Simply deleting information that does not conform to the "standard" rules will not do.  Reorganization for the sake of clear presentation, however, is a good approach.  I don't think each variation needs a separate page, since this will result in a lot of very brief pages (or else longer pages that repeat a lot of the information from the main article).  How about this: the game seems most popular in Australia these days.  How about if we designate the Australian version as the standard one and give it its own section at the beginning of the article.  All rules and terminology will refer to the Australian version in this section, without muddying the waters with a lot of information on other versions.  Next we could have a section on the original U.S. version, along with notes on how it is usually played today.  Finally, notes on other variations not covered in the first sections can be collected into their own section.  The 500 article linked at the bottom of the page provides a good source for information on variations, and its organizational style might prove a good example for the Wikipedia article. Rohirok 19:58, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

 * It's possible people were deleting out of verifiability concerns. Retaining all accurate material is an admirable goal, but how do we know what's accurate?  That being said, this article is about a card game, so I don't see that it needs to conform to standards as strict as what's expected at some other articles.  Friday (talk) 20:26, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

 * Possibly some deletions were as you say, though certainly not all. Any Google search of Euchre-style games would confirm all of the common alternative names for the blind/kitty/widow, yet some of this terminology was inexplicibly excised from the article.  Obviously, documenting every last house rule for the game shouldn't be an objective for this article.  However, documenting regional variants (in rules and terminology) ought to be (Australian rules, U.S. rules, New Zealand, etc.), and this sort of thing is verifiable to some extent through rough consensus of players in those regions who watch, talk about, and contribute to the article.  Knowledge can also be drawn from other sources written by people who have done straw polls of other players around the world, such as the author of the article currently linked at the bottom of the article.  Patterns emerge, and mere house rules can be sifted away from regional trends.  As for the standards, I think all the "standard" standards ought to apply to every Wikipedia article, regardless of its presumed triviality.  Accuracy, pertinence and completeness are the goals for an encyclopedia. Rohirok 01:47, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I'm not sure what the best solution is. 500 is a religion in our family and the way the article is written now describes the way I've always played the game. There does need to be a "base" set of rules and then a set of "variations" on the game to describe the variants. I'm not convinced the Australian version should be the base however. - grubber 15:40, 2005 September 10 (UTC)

 * My reason for suggesting that was that 500 is the national card game of Australia, and more popular in that country than anywhere else. If you look up the game on Google, the majority of sites dedicated to the game will be Australian.  Of course, even in Australia, there are variations, so a section devoted to "Australian rules" won't be without its caveats.  What do you think about using the U.S. rules (as written by the company that introduced the game) as a base, and expanding from there?  What other base might you suggest? Rohirok 00:32, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I like the above suggestion. We may find that the original US Playing Card company rules are one of the few that are verifiable without "original research".  But I see no reason not to include regional variations to whatever extent is feasible.  Hopefully we'll find that the major variations are documented in books somewhere. Friday (talk) 03:46, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Time to rework this page?
Someone back there said that 500 is a staple of family get togethers; I agree, but this entry does little to facilitate growth in that area. Only a few sentences in, on the "Rules" or "How to play" section (which is for some reason called "Setup" in this article) the reader is confronted by a variation in the number of cards that should be used in a game. Personally I would start losing interest around there.

Now I know that the primary point of an encyclopedia entry is to be informative, but structuring this article such that it can be used to easily learn how to play the game need not detract from that.

I propose opening with a brief history and description followed by, as the backbone of the article, a definitive set of rules. Variations should follow (original rules, New Zealand rules, Martian rules, etc) with each giving some kind of reckoning of it's popularity and also it's caveats. The definitive set of rules that heads up the article should be the most popular version in play today; I believe that's the Australian rules. In my personal experience the Australian rules place an emphasis on highlighting what is different about Euchre and 500 and makes the element of risk involved with the bidding as great as possible (no partner communication is tolerated unless it is in the form of a legitimate 6+ bid). I think if people think the bidding needs to be made easier because it's just to stressy for them, then they should be playing Euchre, but we'll include the variations to keep them happy. While I'm on a roll, other ways in which variations of 500 can be found wanting is allowing a Misére bid before bidding has reached 7 no trumps; once players realise how easy it is to complete such a bid, this can ruin gameplay. Joker play during a no trumps bid can also foul things up.

The article should trail off with a more comprehensive history, along with other snippets, anecdotes and trivia.

John McLeod's page does a pretty good job (http://www.pagat.com/euchre/500.html) has he been invited to contribute?

Thoughts? ...
 * John is maintaining his own site which predates Wikipedia. If he opens up his site to allow the text to be copyrighted, he may lose a significant source of revenue. Much of the material in this article clearly has been lifted from his web site (Nullo rules and Granola for example). He would be well within his rights to declare copyright violations. Also, Wikipedia is not a "How to" (see GAMEGUIDE ). Note that the US Playing card company created the rules, which may or may not be copyrighted themselves. The game rules have been published also in a number of "Hoyle" guides. I would guess that in Australia, the Australian rules are the most popular variant. Perhaps the article should just describe the game and link to John's site. Group29 (talk) 17:58, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Unsigned Question
there is no tactical reason for a misire calls before any 7 call... can a player call open misere imediatly after a 'closed' misere call?

 * Since you only get one bid, if you have a Nello hand (what we call misere), that's what you bid, even if you're the first player. On your second question, subsequent players can bid anything they want as long as the bid is higher (except double nello and double exposed nello, which can be bid only if your partner bids nello or exposed nello, respectively). So, one player can bid Nello and the next Exposed Nello. - grubber 15:21, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Quaint "Australian" remarks
Those remarks in the article about the Joker being called "the bird" here in Australia seem a bit ridiculous. Never heard it called anything of the sort. And the note about sometimes the Joker card having a picture of a kookaburra - well, I suppose there might be some decks with kookaburras. There'd also be decks with landmarks, cars, naked women and so on. Hardly worth noting in the Wikipedia entry for 500, though, I'd have thought.

I reckon those remarks should either be supported as being particularly true of Australia (which I don't think they are) or should go. MrLefty 02:04, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I have to admit, i'd been playing 500 for about five years in and around Sydney until one day I played it with someone from QLD who called it "the bird" and I was confused at first as to what he was referring to. However, yes, I did work out that he was referring to the Joker so I have to agree with the comment about "the bird". I say, keep it in. Sits69 13:29, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I vote to delete the reference to "the bird". It is not in anyway specific to the game 500. Does this mean that in any card game on Wikipedia this should be mentioned because some Australian players use that word for the joker? (I am Australian and have never heard the term used before, or played with a deck with a kookaburra). If it is relevant on any page, move it to the page for "The joker" if there is one. 211.28.40.32 05:20, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I have to agree with removing it, I'm also from Australia and I've never heard of the joker being called the bird, nor have I ever seen a deck with jokers being birds. I'm sure there are decks like that somewhere but unless there's evidence that it's widespread I don't think it should stay. And in either case it doesn't belong on this page. 121.45.63.200 17:11, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

 * On that subject, is there any source for 500 being the "national" card game of Australia? I know some enthusiastic players, but I've also had to teach almost everyone I know because hardly anybody knows it. There are a lot of card games that are better known here. And I'm sure that 500-specific decks exist, but again, they aren't widespread - all the play I've seen of 500 has been on a regular deck with cards removed. 203.217.150.68 (talk) 03:38, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Reed's "Queen's Slipper" card decks (especially 500 decks the additional cards for six handed play) feature a Kookaburra on the Joker and are quite common - examples of both old and current versions can be seen on this site: http://www.wopc.co.uk/australia/reed-paper-and-packaging.html. I grew up calling the Joker the Bird. Neb-Maat-Re (talk) 03:03, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

 * Coles supermarket sells Queen's Slipper French Decks and 500 decks. 124.170.206.205 (talk) 06:44, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

French Canadian version?
Is there more than one person playing the French Canadian version of 500? How else could someone make the assertion that the game is mainly played at family reunions? 75.32.164.201 02:09, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, is there any reason at all to include the French-Canadian Version? Especially in its current state, where it somehow deserves its own section and table, and is written in an entirely unencyclopedic tone. Nik-renshaw (talk) 21:37, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Group variants and list at end (recommendation)
There are far too many WP articles bloated and made confusing by authors’ felt need to cover every variant and exception. As others have noted here, this might be OK for the aficionado, but the novice (and this is who we are catering for) gets confused and bored. There are exceptions and variants to EVERYTHING. The best way to deal with them is to note this at the outset, then present the common, standard case (in this case, the game as played by a majority of players), and briefly detail the variants at the end. If more writers followed this commonsense rule, there would be a lot more vigorous, clean and useful articles in WP. Myles325a 02:14, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Gender Neutrality
I'm wondering if anyone happens to know about Wikipedia preference of gender in single-person pronouns. This article makes a lot of use of "he" to refer to a player, and I'm aways hesitant to overuse such terminology. Anyone know if there is a preference against this, or of a way to alter the usage? Nik-renshaw (talk) 22:56, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * See the Gender-neutral language section linked from the Manual of Style. Maybe read this discussion if you want: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive (gender-neutral pronouns). Gender neutral is preferred. Thanks Group29 (talk) 18:09, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Italics / Style
Does anyone happen to know if the titles of marketed games should be italicized? I have a feeling like they should, but I've done some limited searching and uncovered no mention of it. I've found that specifics of style are always more difficult to find on the internet than in comprehensive scholastic volumes, which I happen to be sorely lacking. Thanks. Nik-renshaw (talk) 21:34, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Setup
Do the following sentences belong in the setup section, or even in the article at all?

"Bower is an Anglicization of the German Bauer, a word meaning farmer, peasant, or pawn. This name is often used to refer to the jack of German games. This is important later in the game, and is usually known by newcomers as the hardest part to learn about the game.

In Australia decks of cards are for sale especially for 500, with 11's, 12's and red 13's included."

I feel like the second may find some place in "History," perhaps, or in the lead, just as a note that decks exist specifically to accommodate the game, but I can't seen any reason for the first section about the history of the word "Bower" to be in this article, especially since this is just a variant of Euchre, which also uses the Bower. If no one responds, I will likely remove the first section and move the second relatively soon. Nik-renshaw (talk) 21:49, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

11's, 12's, and red 13's
I can find 11's, but no 12's or red 13's on Wikimedia Commons. Please upload the missing cards to Wikimedia Commons. --88.78.4.195 (talk) 08:50, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Till tomorrow......:) ! Krenakarore (talk) 22:26, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It will be here tomorrow............:) ! You know what, too much talk on very little work. This article should already be in a more advanvanced level of development. All card game articles are now being standardised. More important, it's not about writing an article that nobody has ever dreamed of writing, but adding precious information for millions of people who are desperately looking for answers. Dating period card games and trace their lineage should be a common goal.

Done.--Countakeshi (talk) 22:01, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Colour
Best not to colour the headlines, per the style guides adn accessiblity. Rich Farmbrough, 15:41, 16 September 2009 (UTC).

Neutrality
Phrases like "do not do it justice" and "excellent" in the intro don't conform to Neutral POV. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.237.93.137 (talk) 21:03, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Background
500 is still played by many in NE Iowa SW WI and SE Minn and there are many social card clubs that get together monthly in members private homes to play. It is not commonly played in bars in this region, the card game of choice there is usually Euchre or Bid Euchre —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.4.174.242 (talk) 07:42, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

title: Talk:500 (card game)