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

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  • From: "RHONDA MCDONNELL" <rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com>
  • To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [percy-l] moviegoer
  • Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 19:12:34 -0700

Robert--

I imagine Percy would be far more pleased by your identification with and understanding of his work than with loads of "scholars" papers. I think what he was after was the personal shock of recognition that you describe. I'm reminded of his essay "The Man on the Train" -- he writes that the man on the train who feels alienated but is reading a novel about an alienated man is rescued from that alienation. In other words, that shock of recognition creates a sort of community. Suddenly, instead of feeling as though he is spinning, adrift in the distractions of everyday life, he is onto something. And that makes all the difference. It seems to me that that is the experience you describe. and for that man on the train, or you, or me, it is by its nature an intensely personal experience. For me, the scholarship came much later. I first read Percy (MG) in my first grad school class, but I waited until my dissertation to tackle him. And even then, I was swimming out of my depth most of the time. How do you communicate that ineffable experience?



--Rhonda
. . . what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall . . .
--Walker Percy





From: <Robert_Pauley AT oxy.com>
Reply-To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
To: <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [percy-l] moviegoer
Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 18:08:39 -0700

Thanks, David. I can see why you're the professor and I am not.
Unexpectedly you led me to think that maybe I've always felt proprietary
about Percy, seen him more as a personal, satisfying "find" than a
larger artist along the lines of a Dostoevsky. Well, I guess I always
recognized the latter possibility, just avoided thinking about it. I was
enjoying myself so much, I didn't want to start interpreting him as an
"artist."

Yes -- we have "more ways (than ever) to disguise what we are doing and
call it a search." And that seems to be the game everybody is playing
these days, or the conceit they are indulging. Percy had this pegged way
back when. I live in LA, where the pursuit of the "transformative"
cause, belief, experience is common, feverish and yet, despite all its
energy, seemingly lacking the important authenticity and humility of
Binx's simple search. The searches are in fact inverted. Perhaps they
could even be called search and anti-search.

By merely serving as evidence of this contrast, the book could be
valuable to young people today.

And thanks, Rhonda. I read the essay by Ketner. It was good. I may have
been rash in dismissing all critiques. It was a way of better
understanding the etiology of the "shock of recognition". That's good.
But one feels it or one doesn't. Or can one feel it more fully by
understanding it better? Perhaps. This is all new to me. I have never
approached Percy from a scientific or scholarly angle. I am not a
scholar. And Percy did not lead me to reexamine my life. Rather he
reassured me I wasn't crazy. Or if I was, that I had good company. It
was literature as kinship. Beyond that, he was a splendid writer with a
gift for spotting and speaking the odd and unspoken paradoxes of human
relations.

I enjoyed Ketner's thoughts on "vigorous truthful dialogue." I once took
the reliable possibility of such dialogue for granted. But I do not
anymore. This may be the greatest difference from Percy's time to our
own. I believe we are less likely than ever to find places and
opportunities for "VTD."

Rgards, R.

-----Original Message-----
From: percy-l-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:percy-l-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Beck, David A
Sent: Monday, May 15, 2006 7:59 PM
To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion
Subject: [percy-l] moviegoer

Robert,
I hope that the "existential salience of Binx's predicament" comes
across to my students. If not, the whole thing is a wash. But, at the
same time, Dostoevsky's underground man shares some of the same signs
of alienation (I don't consider Dostoevsky outdated). On the other
hand, you bring up a great point: America is a different world from the
world of TMG. That's why I think students appreciate Dostoevsky (and
most of mine like C&P) or any "period piece" better than something that
is somewhat contemporary.
One of my favorite passages in TMG is when Binx has a conversation with
Walter:

"Oh Lord. What's wrong with the goddamn world, Binx?"
"I am not sure. But something occurred to me this morning. I
was sitting on the bus--"
"What do you do with yourself out there in Gentilly?" (39)

To me this passage sums it up: either you get it (the search) or you
don't. Walter doesn't get it. Many people make statements, platitudes,
ask questions, but never really want to "search" for an answer. It's
easy to spit out a question, but quite another to look deeply into our
own existence, our place in this world. That aspect of the novel is
probably more real today than it was when Percy wrote the book. We have
more ways to hide from the search. Or perhaps we have more ways to
disguise what we are doing and call it a search
(does that make sense?).
We have more tv channels to distract us, more obligations (taking
kids here and there--when did sports begin at age five?), more
technology (he says as he writes this email), etc. For me, the
challenge is to show students that something "ain't right" with our
day-to-day existence (or at least it's not right for most of us). So,
to show students that there is more to life than what is on the
surface, to encourage them to dig deeper and see the mystery that lies
beneath our day-to-day existence (to notice the dung
beetle)--that is what I hope this novel can do to them (as it did for
me). And, of course, I hope to inspire myself to continue the search.
Like Binx after reflecting on dung beetle, I get home and "forget all
about it."
Whew! Sorry for the long email. But the more we correspond, the more
I see the importance of this book (and am glad that I decided to try it
again). It is a novel that, according to some of us, changed lives
(that's why it beat out Catch 22 for the National Book Award--of
course, there probably is a Heller listserve....)
Thanks for all of the feedback.
-David



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An archive of all list discussion is available at
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--
An archive of all list discussion is available at https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/percy-l/

Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy

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