Thelma Toole, the mother of the novelist John Kennedy Toole—author of the extraordinary almost-unpublished novel A Confederacy of Dunces—delivered one of the most irresponsible accusations in ...

James McWilliams
James McWilliams is a history professor at Texas State University. He lives in Austin, Texas, and is writing a biography of the poet Frank Stanford. His writing has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Paris Review, and the New Yorker.