I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see. Do not misunderstand me. I…
Brooks Williams bluesbrooks williamsmusicWalker Percy
Until recent years, I read only “fundamental” books, that is, key books on key subjects, such as War and Peace, the novel of novels; A Study of History, the solution of the problem of time; Schroedinger’s What is Life?, Einstein’s The Universe as I See It, and such. During those years I stood outside the…
Here’s a very good article by Rob Chodat It is the scientist’s “being-in-the-world” that allows her to describe planets and bacteria, “things and subhuman organisms,” but the “being-in-the-world” of the layman occupies what Percy calls a “different sort of reality,” resting upon the linguistic and social ties that constitute a “non-material, non-measurable entity.” And what holds…
Here’s an interesting paper co-authored by Jonathan Haidt. Also, here is a good accompanying article in The New Yorker. The problem though with all the discussion is that the terms “conservative” and “liberal” and their supposed practical politics correlates “Republican” and “Democrat” are meaningless. When push comes to shove, self-ascribed or pejorative usage of these terms,…
A few months ago I made a posting concerning Wim Wenders, Peter Handke and Walker Percy. In conversation/correspondence with a filmmaker chum I mentioned that of all Percy’s novels The Thanatos Syndrome would be the most translatable into the modality that is film since it works brilliantly and disturbingly as a thriller on a purely surface level. My…
She refers to a phenomenon of moviegoing which I have called certification. Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees…
2014 JEFFERSON LECTURER It is particularly meaningful for me to be giving this lecture on the 25th anniversary of the one by Walker Percy. I took the train from New York for that occasion, looking out of the window and thinking of his eerie essay about the malaise, “The Man on the Train.” If memory…
“I no longer pretend to understand the world.” She is shaking her head yet still smiling her sweet menacing smile. “The world I knew has come crashing down around my ears. The things we hold dear are reviled and spat upon.” She nods toward Prytania Street. “It’s an interesting age you will live in—though I…
Once, in a small-town bar, Percy observed this: “You sit here and listen, and it doesn’t take long to realize that a lot of the ‘existentialism’ of the intellectual is close to the heart of the person next to you, having a beer after a day in a shrimp boat, or working on a farm,…
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