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May 27, 2006

Happy Birthday Walker Percy

Driving through the Gentilly section of New Orleans, the setting of Walker Percy's novel The Moviegoer, I wondered what Percy would think had he lived to see the neighborhood here utterly destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. With piles of debris and emptied streets, Gentilly resembles more one of Margaret Atwood's apocalyptic-dystopian fictions than one of Percy's apocalyptic-but-hopeful volumes.

No doubt Percy would have written an essay explaining what both the post-Katrina chaos in the Superdome and the post-Katrina neighbor love in the surrounding communities tell us about human nature, human sin, human dignity, and the quest for God.

One wonders further what Percy might have said about current debates over embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and the attempt to bio-chemically alter human nature through medicines designed to numb sadness and to deaden guilt. Truth is, most of these things Percy already wrote about, because he saw them coming, from his little room in Covington, Louisiana, long before they arrived.

On May 28th, Walker Percy would be ninety years old. Perhaps it is appropriate for those who loved his life and work to thank God for giving us such a quirky prophet. Perhaps this weekend would be a good time for those of us who have been shaped by Percy's writings to give a copy of one of his books to a younger Christian. By my lights, The Moviegoer is the best of Percy's fiction, and Signposts in a Strange Land is the best collection of his essays. The collection of letters between Percy and his best friend, the unbelieving but brilliant historian Shelby Foote, is also a good place to start to understand Percy the man.

Gentilly lies in debris. Shelby Foote is now dead too. Self-help books still abound. Thanatos Syndrome-like scientists are still feverishly at work in the search for a chemically-accessible Eden. Read some Percy today in honor of his birthday. And then thank God for the good doctor's reminder to us that even when there is a wasteland everywhere around us, there is love in the ruins still.

Posted by Russell D. Moore at 01:26 PM | Permalink

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Comments

Mr. Moore,

Amen. What I find strange is that even some liberals like Percy. Makes me wonder if they are reading the same books as I am.

Also, I was reading the collected letters of Flannery O'Conner and noted that she corresponded with Percy but none of the letters were in the collection. Do you know if anyone has ever gathered/published the letters between these two?

Posted by: Randy Estes | May 27, 2006 1:48:38 PM

If you are in Covington, go and visit the Benedictine monastery, St. Joseph's Abbey. Walker Percy was an oblate of that house and is buried there. The cemetary is accessible and there was an exhibit of his works in their seminary library. The Abbey Church is also decorated in the Beuronese style and (to my taste) very beautiful.

Posted by: Ken | May 27, 2006 6:51:59 PM

About this time of the year in 1983, I bought or was given a copy of "Lost in the Cosmos" and became an ardent fan of Walker Percy. Percy along with some other strange companions would lead me back to the Church from my arid and pompous world among those of the Left (including Catholic religious).

To Percy, and to some of the others, among whom were Merton, and two great Jewish writers, Abraham Heschel and Martin Buber, along with a host of Hasidic rabbis from the 18th and 19th centuries, I made my journey back across the Tiber--to, be it ever so humble, home.

Happy Birthday, Walker.

Posted by: John Hetman | May 27, 2006 8:24:08 PM

A wonderful reminder. I discovered Percy only this past year and am happily wandering my way through his novels. I'm glad it took me this long, as I appreciate what he is saying so much now.

What got me interested was a really good biography by Paul Elie called An American Pilgrimage in which he looks at the lives of Percy, Merton, Dorothy Day, and Flannery O'Connor together. He does a masterful job weaving their stories as individuals, as Catholics wrestling with their faith, and at their sporadic interactions.

Posted by: Patrick | May 28, 2006 7:56:48 PM

Thank you for this mention of New Orleans and Percy. I used to reside in the monastery mentioned above. I also had the good fortune of meeting Walker Percy and discussing The Moviegoer with him one afternoon there. He was a very unassume person, and kind too. Knowing that it is his birthday rekindles these memories.

Posted by: Mark Redmond | May 28, 2006 8:23:00 PM

Patrick,

I think the book to which you refer is titled "The Life You Save May Be Your Own". This is the title of one of Flannery O'Conners short stories.

In any event, Paul Elie book was fantastic and even made me want to read more about Dorthy Day who I had not heard much of before the book.

Posted by: Randy Estes | May 28, 2006 8:38:01 PM

That's it Randy. My eyes like the pretty white subtitle above the author's name better I suppose.

Posted by: Patrick | May 28, 2006 9:04:10 PM

Randy,
I don't think anyone has collected and edited a volume of the Percy/O'Connor correspondence. Such would be a fascinating work!

Mark,
You are blessed to have had the opportunity to talk with Percy. I regret all the time I lived just down the Interstate from him and never tried to contact him for a meeting of coffee and chicory (Community brand, of course). I now live a few minutes away from Wendell Berry, and plan not to make the same mistake. A colleague and I plan to write and see if he ever has a few minutes for some fundamentalist Christian types.

Posted by: Russell D. Moore | May 29, 2006 9:21:53 AM

I recall reading "The Moviegoer" in a class entitled "Nihilism in Literature" in college. The professor (from the philosophy dept.) was disdainful of Percy's subsequent history. After reading the book, I recall thinking of course - one has to move past nihilism because reason (and the fact there is something and not nothing ;) takes you there. The professor would not entertain the notion.

Perhaps someone would take a different view, but Wendell Berry sitting in his little valley in Kentucky attacking those who make such a life of peace possible does not put him in the same category as these other men. His pacifism does not strike me as the Christian kind (which is really martyrdom) but rather the bloody utopian type…

Posted by: Christopher | May 29, 2006 10:51:14 AM

The director, Scott Derrickson ("The Exorcism of Emily Rose"), speaking at the Damah Film Festival recently, mentioned how he was indspired by a line from Percy's book "Lancelot". Derrickson also brought up how Percy came to write "The Moviegoer". As Derrickson reports it, Percy had written some novels before Moviegoer that got little, if any, attention. So Percy decided to write a book in which absolutely nothing happened.

Does anyone know if this story is true?

And a belated Happy Birthday to one of my favorite authors.

Posted by: Daniel C. | May 30, 2006 9:59:14 AM

It is a little shocking to realize the Wendell Berry isn't politically correct enough for the Touchstone crowd... Walker Percy, I thought, pretty much skewered conventional left/right, liberal/conservative dichotomies, in favor of something more profound and more Christian. Remember the Knotheads and the CCCP and the American Catholic Church in Love in the Ruins? I read an interview in which he said that he pretty much agreed with the liberals on everything except abortion, which sums up my views pretty much exactly. Maybe the some liberals are reading the same books.

Posted by: Dorotheos | May 31, 2006 2:32:24 PM

Walker Percy, I thought, pretty much skewered conventional left/right, liberal/conservative dichotomies, in favor of something more profound and more Christian.... I read an interview in which he said that he pretty much agreed with the liberals on everything except abortion, which sums up my views pretty much exactly.

Well said - and I had to smile at the comment that "even some liberals like Percy."

Posted by: Juli | May 31, 2006 7:00:48 PM

What I find strange is that even some liberals like Percy.

One could change the term "liberal" to non-believer. A friend wrote that "the first time I read Love in the Ruins (early '80's) I was a devout agnostic. As a recent convert to Catholicism (less than a year ago) I can say, without giving anything away, that it struck me *completely* differently when I recently reread it."

Now that Foote and Percy are dead they have a hindsight they lacked in life. I recall Percy joking with Foote in one of his letters: "Yeah: Percy, O'Connor and Foote. A fine trio. Two at least will never get to heaven." To which Foote responded, of course, that he was sorry to learn that Walker and Flannery O. wouldn't be joining him there.

Posted by: TSO | Jun 1, 2006 12:24:06 PM

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