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percy-l - Re: [percy-l] dead

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Subject: Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion on Walker Percy

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: KMitch2626 AT aol.com
  • To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [percy-l] dead
  • Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2005 00:01:24 EDT

Chuck, and others...

i thinking your "amatuer" status is wonderful. its late, and ive had to much whisky, (no not bourbon, Percy's choice), but i was excited to see such quick responses to my little dead comment. so i thought at least a brief response was in order. yes, my interest in Percy  probably fell into the "academic" category, but it didnt start that way. I was taken with your comments about what the hell to do on a wed. afternoon. In graduate school, i was working hard on formulating a theory of the self and using a lot of Peirce. But, what usually happened was after reading lots of philosophy and biology, I was always left with the existential problem of my self and how the hell to get through the rest of the day. A proffessor turned me onto Percy, and I started to realize that when i read literature, i learned more about my self then i ever learned from reading all my "academic" books. a bit of a revelation, and to add too it, i discovered Percy was interested in Peirce, and had tried to sketch out some philosophical picture of the self. I was certain i was "on to something." I thought if i worked enough of the 2 of them i could give some type of ontological picture of the self: one that explained why narrative and language make up what a self is. one that explained why reading a novel like the moviegoer actually told me more about a self then any philosophy i ever read. well, to make a long story short, i really dont think Percy ever really figured that out. I certainly couldnt. Reading a lot of Ketner's work on the two thinkers got me close, but i still couldnt put it all in philosophical terms. maybe thats appropriate! I abandoned my dissertation (which is kind of a shame since it would have helped others doing research on the 2). I also said goodbye to academia. I havnt read Percy in a few years. And I'm still trying to figure out what the hell to do with myself on an ordinary afternoon. I drink way too much. I am an incessant "womanizer" now that i am divorced after 12 years of marriage. My therapist just told me she cant help me and i need to see someone else. And my father just died unexpectedly last week. I wish just picking up a Percy novel would be like a magic pill for me right now. But i think that is asking way to much of our admired physician/novelist. Well, this is just existential babble. so ill end it for now. But I have to say that is nice to see a few Percy messages in my email bottle.

lets keep talking,
ken



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