Book 41 - The Neon Bible - John Kennedy Toole

I was having a conversation about books with someone not too long ago, and she mentioned a book that she had been meaning to read called The Neon Bible. I had never heard of it before, so I whipped out my trusty Blackberry and quickly Googled it. It turns out that the author was none other than John Kennedy Toole, author of A Confederacy of Dunces. I had never known that he wrote anything aside from his brilliant posthumously released satire, which earned a Pulitzer Prize for literature. I ran to the library the next day to check it out.

It turns out that he wrote this book when he was sixteen years old, apparently for a writing contest. Toole's mother, who fought so long and hard to get A Confederacy of Dunces published, found this earlier manuscript and wanted to publish it as well. Louisiana's Napoleonic code specified that the rights to the manuscript also belonged to some other relatives (they had surrendered these rights to the first book), and Toole's mother did not wish to share with these people. She went so far as to assign a trustee to keep the manuscript from being published after her death, but eventually lawsuits forced the trustee to relent, and the book was finally published.

Book 41 - The Neon Bible - John Kennedy Toole

The Neon Bible tells the story of David, a boy growing up in a small rural town in the Deep South, during the 1940s. The story is told through a series of recollections the boy has while riding a train to an unknown destination. He flashes back to life as a young boy, and tells of quality time spent with his aunt, a former actress and singer. His father loses his job and they are forced to move up into the hills, where the soil is thick clay in which hardly anything will grow, and in which the foundation of their house shifts when the rain softens it. The father, who he does not care much for, and who does not care much for him, spends all his money on seeds and tries in vain to grow food. Eventually the father goes off to the war, and when he is killed the boy's mother slips into madness, frequently visiting the garden even after it has become overgrown.

Being a small southern town, religion figures heavily in his memories, but it is often shown in a self-righteous and hypocritical light. He tells of his dealings with Mrs. Watkins, the female half of a holier-than-thou couple, who as his school teacher has it in for him from the start, unjustifiably singling him out for perceived bad behavior. Mr. Watkins, the teacher's husband, seems frequently to be trying to remove a book from the library or stop a show on moral grounds. There is also the revival tour of a charismatic preacher that comes into town, and divides the existing preacher's congregation, and there is the neon bible for which the book is named, a glowing sign hanging over the church that is visible from his house in the hills.

While the book is surprisingly well-written considering the age of the author at the time, it is much more of a novelty than a novel. It is an adolescent piece by an author who would later produce great work but too little of it, leaving us wanting more. In that respect, people who are big fans of A Confederacy of Dunces might be interested in this book to catch another glimpse of the potential of this author. However, if you are uninitiated and want to see what all the fuss about this John Kennedy Toole is about, stick with A Confederacy of Dunces.