Free Butterfly in the Typewriter by Cory MacLauchlin Page A

side of Audubon Park from their old Webster Street house and only seven blocks away from Tulane. On a nice day he could walk through the park, strolling under majestic live oaks and pass the well-appointed estates overlooking the green grass. At St. Charles Avenue the periodic streetcar would groan and sway down the tracks, lazily making its way to the French Quarter, as he approached Gibson Hall, the castle-like gray, stone building marking the entrance to campus and declaring the enduring tradition of the university.
    Having grown up in Uptown, Toole was in familiar territory at Tulane. He had passed it countless times on the streetcar, traveled through its campus on his way to Fortier in his senior year, and played in front of Gibson Hall as a child. But now he was a Tulanian, one of the many freshmen looking for a place in the academic and social circles of college life. At sixteen years old, he stood in the midst of this co-ed university, his pudgy physique contrasting the seniors and graduate students who were well into their twenties. Toole usually met social situations with humor and wit; his four years at Tulane were no exception.

    Unsurprisingly, the engineering program, which focused on mathematics and science, did little to stir his spirits. Unable to closet away his need to write, he sought an outlet, a place for his literary expression. In his first semester, he walked into a meeting of the Newman Club—an organization for Catholic students—and volunteered to help with its monthly publication. He submitted his first story to the president of the club, John Mmahat. Mmahat shared it with the other editors and they all agreed they “had never come across anything like that before.” More than fifty years later, Mmahat is unable to recollect the subject of the story, but he vividly remembers his impression of Toole as a “gifted observer of the human condition.” Mmahat looked at Toole, who was four years younger than he, and judged him to have a “superior writing talent.”
    Predictably, Toole quickly grew discontent with engineering. He could be an engineer no more than Thelma could be a secretary. Writing and reading were in his blood and bones. One day after school he came home upset and confided to his mother that he felt he was “losing his culture.” The presumed financial security a degree in engineering offered could not outweigh his need to express and cultivate the talents he cherished most. The English department offered him an alternate path. No longer a mere support discipline at Tulane, the English department, with its fairly new PhD program, was training scholars and sending them into tenure track positions in colleges all over the country. And as universities grew throughout the United States, the likelihood of young scholars securing a coveted professorship increased. Toole needed only a guide to nudge him toward that career. Fortunately, he walked into the classroom of Alvin Foote, an English instructor who encouraged him to pursue a life in literature.
    In a 1984 interview, when asked about her son’s experience at Tulane, Thelma exclaimed, “Oh that Alvin Foote!” She went on to explain that her son suggested she visit with the inspiring instructor during Open House Night at the college. When they met, Thelma asked Foote what he thought of her son. She reported that he gushed with pride and exclaimed, “Mrs. Toole, the other students can’t even spell!”
    Thelma often embellished people’s reactions to her son’s abilities, but Foote did identify Toole as a prodigy. On the back of one of Toole’s essays on Chaucer, Foote comments, “This is an extremely interesting and perceptive paper. It could, perhaps, be worked into something for publication
in one of the scholarly journals.” Toole was still a teenager, and yet a specialist in the field of literary studies had recognized him as a budding scholar, one who