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The Moviegoer – quotes and extracts – 13

A regular young Rupert Brooke was I, —full of expectancy. Oh the crap that lies lurking in the English soul. Somewhere it, the English soul, received an injection of romanticism which nearly killed it. That’s what killed my father, English romanticism, that and 1930 science. A line for my notebook: Explore connection between romanticism and…

Napoleon in America

Yet another great review by someone who get’s it. Also check out this for another thoughtful example of the reviewer’s art. Even Percy has respect for counterfactual history: One can’t read of that [Civil] War without playing the fascinating game of what-if . . . What if Jackson had lived through Chancellorsville? What if McClellan…

Why The Moviegoer is not a Movie

by Ron Shelton A faithful but uncompelling trans­lation of Percy’s novel to film is exact­ly what the world doesn’t need. There are enough bad movies and precious few great novels. Let us allow that one of the signs of The Moviegoer’s greatness is that it cannot exist in any other form. Binx Bolling was right.…

The Moviegoer – quotes and extracts – 11

As for hobbies, people with stimulating hobbies suffer from the most noxious of despairs since they are tranquillized in their despair. I muse along as quietly as a ghost. Instead of trying to sleep I try to fathom the mystery of this suburb at dawn. Why do these splendid houses look so defeated at this…

A Danse Macabre of Wants and Satisfactions: Hayek, Oakeshott, Liberty, and Cognition

Just published in Austrian Economic Perspectives on Individualism and Society: Moving Beyond Methodological Individualism Austrian EconomicsAustrian SchoolBehavioral economicscomplexityconsumerismcorey abeldistributed cognitionEconomicsguinevere liberty nellHayekIndividualismindividualityLiberalismLibertarianismLibertyMichael Oakeshottsituated cognitionsocial epistemologysocial ontologysocial realitySpontaneous orderWalker Percy

The Moviegoer – quotes and extracts – 10

“What is a repetition? A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle. Last week, for example, I experienced…

George Rodrigue

NYT obituary           Last interview Website: if you are in The Quarter check out the retrospective. While there someone walked in and said how “cute” Blue Dog (Tiffany) was. Cringe!!! It was great to see GR’s pre-Blue Dog work. blue dogGeorge RodrigueLouis ArmstrongTiffanyWalker Percywendy rodrigue

Neuroscience Is Ruining the Humanities

This in The Chronicle of Higher Education.  Is there a novelist today of whom we can we say, as someone said of Dostoevsky, he “felt thought”? To read Dostoevsky, as Michael Dirda pointed out, is to encounter “souls chafed and lacerated by theories.” Yes, Walker Percy Recent arguments about God or creationism are old hat, despite…