Walter Isaacson in today’s NYT But Percy’s theory about the redemptive power of hurricanes goes beyond the fact that dangerous situations allow us to become action heroes or saints. “True, people help each other in catastrophes,” he wrote in “Lancelot.” “But they don’t feel good because they help each other. They help each other because…
As the date denotes, this has been known for several years and has been widely covered: here is a follow up to this story. It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to learn that Robert Coles, author of the solid Walker Percy: An American Search (1979) is also the man behind Bruce Springsteen’s America: The…
Recent article freely available here. AbsurddespairexistentialismfaithKierkegaardthe moviegoerWalker Percy
A travel article (who in N.O. talks of “the Big Easy”?) . . . and realized, once again, that there’s no better place to find Walker Percy than inside the pages of his many dazzling novels, which I’d fallen in love with years ago. a confederacy of duncesJohn Kennedy TooleLiteratureLouisiananew orleansphilosophical literatureTennessee Williamsthe moviegoerTruman CapoteWalker Percywilliam…
I shrug. There is only one thing I can do: listen to people, see how they stick themselves into the world, hand them along a ways in their dark journey and be handed along, and for good and selfish reasons. It only remains to decide whether this vocation is best pursued in a service station…
“One last question to satisfy my idle curiosity. What has been going on in your mind during all the years when we listened to music together, read the Crito, and spoke together—or was it only I who spoke—good Lord, I can’t remember—of goodness and truth and beauty and nobility?” Another cry and the ramoneur is…
Christians talk about the horror of sin, but they have overlooked something. They keep talking as if everyone were a great sinner, when the truth is that nowadays one is hardly up to it. There is very little sin in the depths of the malaise. The highest moment of a malaisian’s life can be that…
I know what she means all right. But I know something she doesn’t know. Money is a good counterpoise to beauty. Beauty, the quest of beauty alone, is a whoredom. Ten years ago I pursued beauty and gave no thought to money. I listened to the lovely tunes of Mahler and felt a sickness in…
“Quite a Carnival. Two proposals in one Mardi Gras.” “Who else?” “Sam.” “No kidding.” “No kidding. And I’ll tell you something else. Sam is quite a person behind that façade. An essentially lonely person.” “I know.” “You’re worse than Sam.” She is angry. “How?” “Sam is a schemer. He also likes me. He knows that…
I have to admire the St Louisan for his neat and well-ordered life, his gold pencil and his scissors-knife and his way of clipping articles on the convergence of the physical sciences and the social sciences; it comes over me that in the past few days my own life has gone to seed. I no…
manwithoutqualities 