Butterfly in the Typewriter Read Online Free PDF

how he was “a bright star from the moment he entered McDonogh 14.” One day their teacher wrote “arctic” on the board, and each student had to pronounce the word. They all lazily dropped the middle “c,” pronouncing it “artic.” Only Toole stood up and pronounced it correctly. Of course, having a mother who was an elocutionist gave him an advantage.
    Any sense of superiority Toole held above his classmates was tested when he started putting on weight. For a time in his youth, Toole became quite plump, and unfortunately he suffered teasing from other children. He quickly identified his wit as his best defense. As Thelma reported, one day he endured the taunts of one of the sons of the owners of the Leidenheimer baking company, makers of “Zip Bread,” a brand widely used for po’boy sandwiches throughout New Orleans. When the Leidenheimer boy called Toole fat, he quickly retorted, “Doesn’t your daddy make Jip bread?” The response delighted Thelma, although she always maintained he was never chubby; she preferred the term “brawny.” Nonetheless, Toole remained self-conscious about his weight his entire life.
    In addition to his sharpening wit, he impressed his neighbor and fellow student John Geiser with his intuition. On the first day of school and months thereafter, Geiser walked with Toole the seven blocks to McDonogh 14. One of the lasting memories that Geiser has of Toole is a rather off-handed remark in 1942. The United States had been involved in World War II for almost a year and Roosevelt still gave his fireside chats on the radio, but television was an emerging medium. One day Toole described television to Geiser as “a mixture of movies and radio” and then predicted, “After the war, TV will be as popular as the radio.” Considering this prediction became quite true, Geiser remembers it as an astoundingly prescient comment to make at the time. Toole was always sensitive to his surroundings, and it was clear, even to him at five years old, the world was quickly changing.

    During his early schooling, the social climate of World War II and the following afterglow of the victory dominated the tenor of the time, especially in New Orleans, which served as a final stop for many servicemen before heading abroad. The war unified the country, and schools made it their responsibility to indoctrinate students with ardent patriotism. As evident in some of Thelma’s sheet music titled Songs for Schools at War , children sang about the poorest of Americans giving up their “tebacker” and “smelly beer” in order to purchase war bonds. “Uncle Sam sure gets our bet,” they sang. The mentality of sacrifice and investment in the war effort proliferated through every aspect of American culture.
    And as the war came to an end, Toole grew into his boyhood years and no longer posed doll-like in pictures with Mardi Gras costumes. For a time he enjoyed typical diversions of an American childhood. He swam at Audubon Park, played catch in dusty fields, and tossed a football with friends. Pictures of him around five years old suggest the possibility of a budding athlete. But Thelma maintained that her son never liked sports. “He was an artist,” she declared. And she was happy for it because, while she “celebrated champions,” she knew nothing about athletics. Besides, she had taken some measures to ensure her son would not fall into the brutish recreation of physical force. His baby book was bound in pink silk, and she had one of his baby pictures colored in hues of pink. And she had nurtured his love for Shakespeare and opera. He was intended to be a sensitive child. And while he showed some artistic talents in sketching, she identified he would be a great performer. Not only were his observations astute, but he proved to be a talented mimic as well. When he came home from school one day and impersonated