New article in The Linacre. Percy was concerned with spiritual suicide at heart—despair, made explicit to him by Kierkegaard—resembling Victor Frankl’s concern with meaning and the current “existential vacuum” (Desmond 2005). However, the novelist’s theological mooring gave him a stronger platform to map postmodern man’s search for meaning, making him a prime example for physicians…
A good rotation. A rotation I define as the experiencing of the new beyond the expectation of the experiencing of the new. For example, taking one’s first trip to Taxco would not be a rotation, or no more than a very ordinary rotation; but getting lost on the way and discovering a hidden valley would…
Sometimes when she mentions God, it strikes me that my mother uses him as but one of the devices that come to hand in an outrageous man’s world, to be put to work like all the rest in the one enterprise she has any use for: the canny management of the shocks of life. It…
Paul Elie lecture. Paul Eliephilosophical literaturethe moviegoerWalker Percy
Micah Mattix in The American Conservative (November/December 2019) meaningMicah Mattixphilosophical literaturePhilosophy of LanguagesemioticsWalker Percy
Here’s an interview with Ben Alexander about his recently published edited book. Ben also contributed to my Zygon symposium from a few years back. benjamin alexanderFlannery O’ConnorWalker Percy
Born on this date. If you appreciate Percy’s Signposts in a Strange Land: Essays, then you’ll definitely appreciate Viereck. Both were incredibly subtle, independent-minded and scathing and both happen to have been born in 1916. Here’s a piece entitled “Peter Viereck: European-American Conscience–1916-2006” sent to me by the late Irving Louis Horowitz. Irving Louis HorowitzPeter ViereckPoetryWalker…
This is big news for Percy scholars. In preparation over the past few years, edited by three contributors to Walker Percy, Philosopher, this book will be published in October by Mercer University Press. Kenneth Laine Ketner, the lead editor, tells me that the group thinks this work really does show off Percy’s systematic thought, and that it…
Charles Sanders Peirceexistentialismphenomenologyphilosophical literaturePhilosophy of LanguagePhilosophy of PlacesemioticsWalker Percy
John Lawson (website here) has created this piece especially for the 2019 Walker Percy Festival. ArtJohn LawsonLouisianalove in the ruinsnew orleansWalker Percy
manwithoutqualities 