I am straddling them, trying to wedge them apart. Good God: a New York-New Orleans Democrat Jew fighting it out with a Birmingham Italian Confederate Republican. ***** A discovery: A shrink accomplishes more these days by his fecklessness than by his lordliness in the great days of Freud. ***** Time was when I’d have tested…
Don’t forget Frank Macon, old hunting pal, once a complex old-style sardonic black man, as compact of friendship and ironies as Prince Hamlet, as faithful and abusive as a Russian peasant. Now as distant and ironed out as a bank teller: Have a nice day. ***** We inmates, or rather detainees—assorted con men, politicians, ex-Presidential…
What’s going on? What do they have in common? Are they better or worse? Well, better in the sense that they do not have the old symptoms, as we shrinks called them, the ancient anxiety, guilt, obsessions, rage repressed, sex suppressed. Happy is better than unhappy, right? But—But what? They’re somehow—diminished. Diminished how? ***** Then…
The point of the test, of course, is that self-consciousness implies that there is a self. ***** And there was Debbie’s new lingo, her everlasting talk about dialoguing, creativity, community, intersubjectivity, centeredness (her favorite word, centeredness). And her new word, empowerment. What would happen, I wonder, if I asked them what they thought about God…
What a conspicuous omission by not mentioning Percy in this article. Here is an extract from my forthcoming paper. With Percy’s medical training echoing in the deep background, he took the view that the novelist is a diagnostician, “a literary clinician” so to speak, identifying “the particular [cultural] lesion of the age.” Percy extends the…
Great Catholic narratives grapple with suffering and doubt—experiences that transcend the faith and appeal to readers and viewers of different beliefs — The Atlantic a confederacy of duncesAnthony Burgess.CatholicismEvelyn WaughFlannery O’Connorgraham greeneJohn Kennedy Toolephilosophical literatureShūsaku EndōWalker Percy
He competed ferociously and successfully, his blood pressure went down, he slept better, but in the end he blew it and either withdrew or got kicked out. Why? Because he never caught on to the trick of Louisiana civility, the knack of banter and horsing around, easing up, joshing and joking—in a word, the American…
Very good news. I thoroughly enjoyed poking around the archives in person. There is also some Tooleana in the Percy holdings across the road at Loyola for those in the area. a confederacy of duncesJohn Kennedy Toolephilosophical literature
“Yes.” What I’m thinking is that Louisiana fishermen would not dream of speaking of such things, of my own people, of a way of life. If there is such a thing as a Southern way of life, part of it has to do with not speaking of it. “Tom, I’m what you call a jack-of-all-trades,…
Long ago Hudeen gave up ordinary conversation. Her response to any greeting, question, or request is not the substance of language but its form. She utters sounds which have the cadence of agreement or exclamation or demurrer. Uhn-ohn-oh (I don’t know?); You say!, You say now!, Lawsymussyme (Lord have mercy on me?); Look out!—an all-purpose…
manwithoutqualities 