Giving the Sickness a Name: Walker Percy and acedia

Jeff Reimer in Commonweal Magazine.

The artist’s work, in other words, is not an autopsy but a diagnosis made in the hope of recovery—an attempt, he says, to “give the sickness a name, to render the unspeakable speakable.” Even when he is at his bleakest, Percy manages to counter despair with the possibility, however elusive, of hope.