WWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 39Review_FICTION
collection stands out in the field of current
Southern fiction. (May)
Shakespeare for Squirrels
Christopher Moore. Harper, $28.99 (288p)
ISBN 978-0-062-43402-9
Moore’s amusing third installment to
the Fool series (after The Serpent of Venice)
finds series hero Pocket of Dog Snogging
transported into the plot of Shakespeare’s
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When Pocket
and his apprentice, Drool, are shipwrecked
in Greece, they quickly run afoul of the
powers that be. However, their initial
adventures seem harmless enough: they
discover a group of tradesmen rehearsing
a play, run into Demetrius’s jilted lover,
Helena, and make good use of their cod-
pieces to store the nuts and berries they
collect in the forest. But when Pocket
witnesses the murder of Puck, the sprightly
fellow responsible for the hijinks in
Shakespeare’s original, he is forced to
begin negotiations with various kings and
queens—Duke Thesesus and his soon-to-
be bride, Hippolyta the Amazon; the sex-
crazed Fairy Queen Titania; kinky King
Oberon—to deduce who committed the
murder. Along the way, Drool is thrown
into Duke Theseus’s dungeon, and Pocket
aims to free him and solve the mystery
with the help of enchanted puppet Jones
and Cobweb the fairy. In this raucous,
crass, and innuendo-filled romp, Moore
once again delivers light and derivative
fun. This cheeky homage will please
lovers of Shakespeare and camp. (May)
Strange Hotel
Eimear McBride. Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
$25 (160p) ISBN 978-0-374-27062-9
McBride (A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing)
delivers a globe-spanning travelogue set
entirely in hotel rooms in this beguiling
work. Lists of cities section off the narrative;
in those flagged by an x, the protagonist, an
unnamed itinerant woman, has experienced
a tryst. Rather than chronologically plot
these encounters, McBride presents them as
a runaway train of the woman’s solipsistic
thought as to their significance, leaving
her at odds to draw conclusions. After
rebuffing one man’s advances, she returns
to her room and falls asleep watching loud
TV porn. Sex with one man pushes her
into suicidal contemplation; sex with
another cheers her enough to consider
Why did you write a novel about
Toole instead of a biography?
I originally proposed a biography to
an agent, Andrew Wylie, who was
very enthusiastic about the idea. He
was sure he could get a large advance.
In the end, though, there simply
wasn’t enough information, and my
coauthor and I realized it had to be
done as a nonfiction novel. We had to
fill in the backstory on
how Toole came to create
his highly unusual hero,
Ignatius J. Reilly.How did you divide the
writing between you and
your coauthor?
I outlined each chapter.
Jodee, who is based in
Chicago, would write a
first draft, then I’d edit
and rewrite from New York. We
talked to family members and from
their shorthand responses we wrote
the dialogue between Toole and his
mother and others. It took us three
years.You treat Robert Gottlieb, the Simon
& Schuster editor who encouraged
Toole and ultimately rejected A
Confederacy of Dunces, with great
sympathy. Why so?
Gottlieb deserves credit for recog-
nizing that there was something
important there, but he had no idea
how sensitive Toole was. After he
rejected A Confederacy of Dunces, he
assumed Toole would go elsewhere.
But the tragedy is that Toole didn’t
do that. He was too discouraged topursue other publishers.The book mentions a forgotten 1968
novel, Superworm, which Gottlieb
edited and highly touted just before
moving to Knopf. Did you read it?
No, but Jodee did. She didn’t think it
was very good.Why did you invent a fictional jour-
nalist to research Toole’s
life?
To cover all the later history
after Toole killed himself in
1969, in particular all the
failed efforts to make a
movie of A Confederacy of
Dunces. John Belushi was
the first actor selected to
play Ignatius, but he died.
Other actors had similar
bad luck. Then there’s the
story of Thelma Toole, the author’s
mother. She submitted the manuscript
eight times before she finally hand-
delivered it to Walker Percy. Percy
being a Southern gentleman, he felt
he had to at least read a few pages. And
of course, it was Percy who ensured
that it was published in 1980 by LSU
Press.In your research, did you come across
evidence of a lost manuscript, as
suggested at the end of the book?
That part’s not made up. It came from
a couple of different sources—family
members who were aware that Toole
kept a manuscript in his bedroom
closet. It was apparently thrown out
when his parents sold the New Orleans
house and moved. —Peter Cannon[Q&A]
PW Talks with Kent Carroll
A Fictional True Story
Carroll and Jodee Blanco recreate the life and career of John Kennedy
Toole, author of A Confederacy of Dunces, in I, John Kennedy Toole
(Pegasus, May; reviewed on p. 38).