Walker Percy Wednesday – 11

walker percy

So thoroughly in fact did he identify with his group companions of the moment, so adept did he become at role-taking, as the social scientists call it, that he all but disappeared into the group. As everyone knows, New York is noted for the number and variety of the groups with which one might associate, so that even a normal person sometimes feels dislocated. As a consequence this young man, dislocated to began with, hardly knew who he was from one day to the next. There were times when he took roles so successfully that he left off being who he was and became someone else. . . . So well did he adapt that it always came as a surprise when two groups who got along with him did not get along with each other. For example, he had fallen in with an interracial group which met at a writer’s apartment in the Village on Friday nights. It did not strike him as in the least anomalous that on Saturday night he met with the Siberian Gentlemen, a nostalgic supper club of expatriate Southerners, mostly lawyers and brokers, who gathered at the Carlyle and spoke of going back to Charleston or Mobile. At two or three o’clock in the morning somebody would sigh and say, “You can’t go home again,” and everybody would go back to his Park Avenue apartment. One night he made the mistake of bringing a friend from the first group to the second, a Southerner like himself but a crude sort who had not yet mastered group skills and did not know the difference between cursing the governor of Virginia, who was a gentleman, and cursing the governor of Alabama, who was not.

Walker Percy, Philosopher

A Confederacy of Dunces: extracts (50)

john kennedy toole

“The sisters loved Ignatius. He was such a darling child. He used to win all them little holy pictures for knowing his catechism.”

“Them sisters shoulda knocked his head in.”

“When he useta come home with all them little holy pictures,” Mrs. Reilly sniffed, “I sure never thought then he’d end up selling weenies in the broad daylight.” Mrs. Reilly coughed nervously and violently into the telephone. “But tell me. sweetheart, how Angelo’s making out?”

“His wife Rita rings me up a little while ago to tell me she thinks he”s coming down with pneumonia from being stuck in that toilet all the time. I tell you true, Irene, that Angelo’s getting as pale was a ghost. The cops sure don’t treat that boy right. He loves the force. When he graduated from the cops’ academy, you woulda thought he just made it outta the Ivory League. He was sure proud.”

“Yeah, poor Angelo looks bad,” Mrs. Reilly agreed. “He’s got him a bad cough, that boy. Well, maybe he’ll feel a little better after he reads that thing Ignatius gave me to give him. Ignatius says it’s inspirational literature.”

“Yeah? I wouldn’t trust no ‘inspirational literature’ I got from that Ignatius. It’s prolly fulla dirty stories.” 

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John Dunsworth’s The Dicshitnary

satire

Belated birthday thoughts for the wonderful late John Dunsworth. This book is a must have for fans of John and of course his immortal alter ego, Mr. Jim Lahey.

Walker Percy Wednesday – 10

walker percy

But it was worse than this in his case. It was more than being a Southerner. For some years he had had a nervous condition and as a consequence he did not know how to live his life. As a child he had had “spells,” occurrences which were nameless and not to be thought of, let alone mentioned, and which he therefore thought of as lying at the secret and somehow shameful heart of childhood itself. There was a name for it, he discovered later, which gave it form and habitation. It was déjà vu, at least he reckoned it was. What happened anyhow was that even when he was a child and was sitting in the kitchen watching D’lo snap beans, or make beaten biscuits, there came over him as it might come over a sorrowful old man the strongest sense that it had all happened before and that something else was going to happen and when it did he would know the secret of his own life. Things seemed to turn white and dense and time itself became freighted with an unspeakable emotion. Sometimes he “fell out” and would wake up hours later, in his bed, refreshed but still haunted. . . . When he was a youth he had lived his life in a state of the liveliest expectation, thinking to himself: what a fine thing it will be to be come a man and to know what to do—like an Apache youth who at the right time goes out into the plains alone, dreams dreams, sees visions, returns and knows he is a man. But no such time had come and he still didn’t know how to live. . . . To be specific, he had now a nervous condition and suffered spells of amnesia and even between times did not quite know what was what. Much of the time he was like a man who has just crawled out of a bombed building. Everything looked strange. Such a predicament, however, is not altogether a bad thing. Like the sole survivor of a bombed building, he had no secondhand opinions and he could see things afresh. . . . There were times when he was as normal as anyone. He could be as objective-minded and cool-headed as a scientist. He read well-known books on mental hygiene and for a few minutes after each reading felt very clear about things. He knew how to seek emotional gratifications in a mature way, as they say in such books. In the arts, for example. It was his custom to visit museums regularly and to attend the Philharmonic concerts at least once a week. He understood, moreover, that it is people who count, one’s relations with people, one’s warmth toward and understanding of people. At these times he set himself the goal and often achieved it of “cultivating rewarding interpersonal relationships with a variety of people”—to use a phrase he had come across and not forgotten. Nor should the impression be given that he turned up his nose at religion, as old-style scientists used to do, for he had read widely among modern psychologists and he knew that we have much to learn from the psychological insights of the World’s Great Religions.

Walker Percy, Philosopher

Lowell George

music

Born on this date. Lowell George and Little Feat are at their best with these three albums: Waiting for Columbus, Dixie Chicken and Feats Don’t Fail Me Now. An seemingly unlikely pairing, but Lowell George worked quite a bit with Robert Palmer.

Lowell George (Little Feat) during rehearsal for Midnight Special at NBC studios in Burbank, CA, 1976. (Photo by Mark Sullivan/Contour by Getty Images)

A Confederacy of Dunces: extracts (49)

john kennedy toole

“Goofin off? Shit. Goofin off ain cleanin up this mother-fuckin cathouse. They somebody in here sweepin and moppin up all the shit your po, stupor customer drippin on the flo. I feel sorry for them po peoples comin in here thinkin they gonna have theirself some fun, probly gettin knockout drop in they drink, catchin the clap off the ice cube. Whoa!

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Burke Shelly

budgie

Happy birthday to Burke: Now yer squawkin’: The story of Burke Shelley and Budgie

LONDON – 28th JULY: ALEXANDRA PALACE FESTIVAL Burke Shelley (L) and Tony Bourge from rock group Budgie performing on stage at the London Music Festival at Alexandra Palace on 28th July 1973. (Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns)