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  • From: "Beck, David A" <dabeck AT iupui.edu>
  • To: Karey via Percy-L <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War
  • Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 21:00:36 -0400

I agree, Karey (did I just say that?). Seriously, though, I posted the
opening to LIR, because, while it is a work of fiction, it shows that
Percy saw where we were headed--in Karey's words, "hell in a
handbasket." It seems to me--just off the top of my head--that his
concern was not a right or left one, but one that concerned our
"culture of death." I need to re-read Fr. Smith's "sermons" from the
fire tower (it's been awhile).

But I don't think he saw us as the "city on the hill." I think he had
some legit concerns. He obviously saw and showed how easily we can
"fall asleep at the wheel", with our endless distractions.

-David

Quoting Karey via Percy-L <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>:

Rhonda: I'm in!

Janet - I'm not sure what you thought the Iraq war was fought for?
Or even Vietnam? (Yes, David, we agree on something! ;) ...) And
Malaysia just indicted the Bush-Cheney admin for war crimes; I'd be
surprised if other countries didn't follow suit.

Percy definitely didn't see America through rose-colored glasses. He
kinda thought we were going to hell in a handbasket. One of his most
important themes is social criticism - not only the generic
postmodernism of the 20th century West (a big one), but particular
political and social issues of America of his day. Some of his
critics have even said his themes were too contextual and that's why
he's sort of faded in the 21st century - I don't think so though.
Look at the Knotheads and the Leftpapas. The Knots ARE the Tea
Party, envisioned 30 - 40 years before they ever came about.

Smart guy that Percy.

Karey

Sent from my iPad

On Jun 23, 2014, at 10:11 AM, RHONDA MCDONNELL
<rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com> wrote:

Janet,

Oh how I wish I could see things as you do. I fear, though, that I am
more cynical, and I perceive that Percy was too. The Death-Dealing
Death-Loving 20th century as moved into the 21st with no respite. If
we are merely altruistic as a nation, how is it that we let genocide
go unchecked in places like Myanmar? I fear our interests are often
(always?) control by corporate interests and lobbyists. The days of
the knotheads are here. Let us hope we survive them.

ps--it'd be fun to do a slow read of Love in the Ruins together on
the list. Maybe we could spark up a little life? Anyone in?

Rhonda

Sent from my iPad

On Jun 23, 2014, at 7:54 AM, "janetcantor37--- via Percy-L"
<percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org> wrote:

David,
I know the Percy Lists are supposed to try to avoid the political
but you offered the Percy quote in response to my comment and I feel
a need to have my say. I find it interesting that Coriolanus, my
favorite Shakespeare play, is used by both goodies and baddies to
justify their personal choices.

We fought in Korea and the president stopped the fighting and did
not allow the fight to continue into the north. Where would Koreans
prefer to live, in South Korea or North Korea?
Americans do not fight to gain territory or to takeover countries.
We fight to try to give others the chance to have liberty. We may
differ on when it is our fight.
If a cancer invades, it is something that is either fought or it
kills. Islamism and Communism are the cancers.

So we may differ on whether something is our fight or not, or in how
the fight is fought, but, please, let us at least agree that America
represents the goodies and not the cancer.
Janet Cantor




From: "Beck, David A" <dabeck AT iupui.edu>
To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2014 8:50 AM
Subject: Re: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War

Janet,
I'm not sure we are a "shining light to the world" anymore or have been
for a long time. Our credibility has been on a downhill slide since
Viet Nam. I'm more apt to remember Percy's analogy of the old, rusting,
roller coaster at the beginning of Love in the Ruins: "now [is]the
blessing [on the U.S.A.] or the luck is over, the machinery clanks, the
chain catches hold, and the cars jerk forward?" (I love that passage.)

-David



Quoting janetcantor37--- via Percy-L <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>:

> How lovely to read this now. But how sad because I am beginning to
> think that this is becoming obsolete thinking these days. There is
> more race rancor in our conversation today than I can remember since
> the 60's. It shouldn't be this way. I wish it were not so. We have a
> great country. I hope we don't lose it because we are asleep at the
> switch. It is a country worth saving, a shining light to the world. I
> wonder what Percy would be saying about current attitudes?
> Janet Cantor
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Jim Forest <jhforest AT gmail.com>
> To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion
> <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2014 6:04 AM
> Subject: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War
>
>
>
> from the March 29, 1957 issue of Commonweal
>
> https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/american-war
>
> The American War
>
> by Walker Percy
>
> WHAT ARE THE reasons for the current revival of interest in
> the Civil War? That there is such a revival is undeniable. Books
on the War
> pour off the presses every week?some of them, incidentally, of a very high
> order, such as Bruce Catton's This Hallowed Ground and Shelby
Foote's Shiloh!
> What is at once noticeable about the current literature is its frankly
> non-political character and the absence of the old rancor. The
race issue may
> be still very much an issue, but Northern and Southern historians
> have achieved
> a common view of the War itself. When Catton from Michigan and Foote from
> Mississippi write about the battle of Shiloh, it sounds like the
same battle.
> Catton is never more eloquent than when he is appraising Lee's
generalship;
> Foote is just as impressed by the fighting qualities of the
Northern soldier.
> Indeed, from this distance the underdog psychology probably kindles
> the reader's
> enthusiasm more readily than do the social issues?and perhaps this
is just as
> well.
>
> The general impression outside the South seems to be that it
> is the rest of the country which has rediscovered the Civil War, that
> the South
> has never stopped looking back. This is mistaken, I believe, and
is due to an
> understandable optical illusion. The truth is, at least in my
> experience, that
> the Southerner never thinks about the Civil War?until he finds
himself among
> Northerners. Then, for some reason-perhaps because the Northerner
insists on
> casting him in his historical role and the Southerner is perfectly
willing to
> oblige, or because, lost in the great cities of the North, he
feels for the
> first time the need of his heritage?he breaks out the Stars and Bars. I
> remember traveling from Alabama to summer camp in Wisconsin in the
twenties.
> The train would stop in Chicago to pick up more boys. We from Alabama
> had heard
> as little about the Civil War as the Boer War and cared less, but
every time
> the Illinois boys got on in Chicago the War started, a real brawl yet not
> really bad-tempered. The same sort of thing must have happened during
> the World
> War I when an Alabama division suddenly found itself in a
donnybrook with the
> Fighting 69th at Plattsburg.
>
> The truth of it is, I think, that the whole country, South
> included, is just beginning to see the Civil War whole and entire for
> the first
> time. The thing was too big and too bloody, too full of suffering
and hatred,
> too closely knit into the fabric of our meaning as a people, to be
> held off and
> looked at-until now. It is like a man walking away from a mountain.
> The bigger
> it is, the farther he's got to go before he can see it. Then one
day he looks
> back and there it is, this colossal thing lying across his past.
>
> A history of the shifting attitudes toward the War would be
> enlightening. There would probably emerge a pattern common to such great
> events, a dialectic of loss-recovery: the long period of
recollection, of in­
> tense partisan interest which is followed by a gradual fading of the
> Event into
> a dusty tapestry. (Lee and Grant at Appomattox taking their place beside
> Washington Crossing the Delaware.) Then under certain
circumstances, there is
> the recovery. Perhaps Washington will never be recovered, having been
> ossified
> too long in grammar school tableaus. But Lincoln and Grant and
McClellan and
> even the legendary Lee, who after all are closer in time to
> Washington than to
> us, have come very much alive. Why, then, their recovery, and what
> exactly has
> been recovered?
>
> WHAT HAS been recovered, it seems clear, is not the politics
> or the sociology of the War, nor even the slavery issue, but the
> fight itself.
> The tableau I remember from school was the Reconciliation, Grant and
> Lee in the
> McLean house, Lee healing the wounds at Washington College. Little
was said
> about the War, except that it was tragic; brother fighting against
brother,
> etc. Undoubtedly this was the necessary if somewhat boring
emphasis for the
> textbooks. Now, after ninety years of Reconciliation, we can take a
> look at the
> fight itself.
>
> What a fight it was! The South is a very big place, yet
> there is hardly a district that didn't have its skirmish, its
Federal gunboat
> sunk in a bayou?where some old-timer won't tell you, "Yes, they came
> through here." It is startling to realize that there were more casualties
> in the Civil War than in all the American forces of World War II, and
> more than
> in all other American wars put together. Of 3,000,000 men under arms,
> 2,300,000
> for the Union, 750,000 for the Con­ federacy, 618,222 died, with total
> casualties probably going well past a million. For sheer
concentrated fury,
> there are few events even in modern warfare to equal that terrible
> September 17
> at Antietam Creek when over 20,000 men fell?or the May-June of '64
> when, beginning
> with the battle of the Wilderness, Grant lost on the average of 2,000
> men a day
> for 30 days, culminating in the slaughter at Cold Harbor when over
8,000 men
> fell in about ten minutes! There were murderous battles in the
West which one
> never heard of, like Stone's River with over 25,000 casualties.
>
> Yet terrible as it was, it is impossible to read of the Army
> of Northern Virginia or of the Army of the Potomac without being
caught up in
> the tremendous drama. The armies were big enough so that the action
> took place
> on an epic scale, yet the War was, as much as were the Punic Wars,
a personal
> encounter of the opposing leaders. Lee was very much aware of this
> grim beauty
> when the fog rose over Fredericksburg showing Burnside's entire
army facing
> his, battle flags flying. "It is
> well that war is so terrible,? he said; "else we should grow too fond of
> it." But what gave the Civil War the tragic proportions of the Iliad
> was the fact, apparent after Shiloh, that the American soldier,
> Union and
> Confederate, was not going to be beaten until he could literally fight no
> longer or was killed. When his leader was great, he was almost
> invincible; when
> his leader was mediocre, he was still superb. Pickett's charge is justly
> famous, but just as heartbreaking was the Union assault on
> Longstreet's position in the sunken road at Fredericksburg.
> The difference was that where Pickett?s men had every confidence in Lee,
> Couch's men knew very well that Burnside was wrong. Yet they
attacked all day
> long, and only stopped when the field was piled so high with dead
that they
> could no longer run over them.
>
> AS IN ALL tragedies, a great deal seemed to de­ pend upon
> fate. Small mischances become as important as Thetis?s oversight when she
> dipped Achilles?all but his heel?into the Styx. A Con­federate
> courier loses some
> battle orders; they are found wrapped around three cigars and
> brought to McClellan; the direct result is the battle
> of Antietam. One can't read of that war without playing the
> fascinating game of
> what-if.... What if Jackson had lived through Chancellorsville? What if
> McClellan had listened to Phil Kearny (instead of the Pinkerton
detectives)
> during the Seven Days? What if Jeb Stuart had tended to business at
> Gettysburg?
> Lee was always just missing his Cannae and Lincoln's generals were
> always just
> short of ordinary competence?until he got Grant.
>
> Besides the great failures, there were the great successes,
> the heroes' deeds which are always irresistible to the human spirit
> and so pass
> over immediately into the legend of the race. There was
Chancellorsville when
> Lee, facing Hooker's 85,000, divided his battered army of 43,000,
> sent Jackson
> to the left, leaving him in front of Hooker with 17,000 men?and
attacked and
> very nearly destroyed the Army of the Potomac. There was the Union's
> "Pap" Thomas's assault on Missionary Ridge at Chattanooga and the
> subsequent demoralization of Bragg. And there was the fateful decision at
> Spotsylvania when, after taking a fearful mauling, Grant, instead
of falling
> back toward Washington as the army had been doing for the past
three years,
> re­treated south, sliding around Lee's right.
>
> Therein lies the tragedy. If Lee had been a little more or a
> little less?if he had gotten his Cannae or if he had only been
just competent
> and been whipped by McClellan in '62?the results would still have
> been notable,
> but they would not have approached the terror and piteousness of
> what actually did happen. The
> summer of 1864 has a Gotterdammerung quality. With the issue
hardly in doubt
> after Gettysburg, the fighting nevertheless increased in fury with
both sides
> attacking steadily, without the usual remissions between battles.
>
> YET WITH all the horror, or perhaps because of it, there was
> always the feeling then, and even now as we read about it, that
the things a
> man lived through were somehow twice as real, twice as memorable
as the peace
> that followed. Peace is better than war, yet it is a sad fact that
> some of the
> heroes of the War, like Grant and Longstreet and many a lesser
man, found the
> peace a long descent into mediocrity. In
> the ordeal the man himself seemed to become more truly himself,
revealing his
> character or the lack of it, than at any time before or after. If
a man was
> secretly cowardly or secretly brave, stupid or shrewd, that was
what he was
> shown to be. The War infallibly discovered his hidden weakness and
his hidden
> strength. Hooker the braggart was reduced to impotence simply by
having Lee's
> small army in front of him (and understandably, for the veterans of
> the Army of
> the Potomac used to say to replacements fresh from victories in the West:
> "Wait till you meet Bobby Lee"). Grant the ne'er-do-well matured in
> defeat and became a noble and sensitive human being by having Lee at
> his mercy.
> It is no wonder that there was the temptation, especially in the
> ruined South,
> to enshrine those four years as the four years of truth and to
discount all
> other times, even the future.
>
> Then there were the thousand and one lesser en­counters, any
> one of which, if it had happened at another time, would have its own
> literature
> and its own historians: the Confederate raiders, Farragut's capture of New
> Orleans, the battle of the ironclads, Forrest's miniature Cannae at Bryce
> Crossroads, James Andrews' stealing the
> Confederate train, and so on. It was the last of the wars of
> individuals, when
> a single man's ingenuity and pluck not only counted for some­
thing in itself
> but could conceivably a:ffect the entire issue. Forrest himself is quite
> unbelievable. It is as if Launcelot had been reborn in Memphis. He
> carried into
> battle a cavalry saber sharpened to a razor edge and actually
killed men with
> it. He actually did fool a Yankee commander into surrendering by
parading a
> single cannon back and forth in the distance as they parleyed. He
> actually did
> have twenty-nine horses shot from under him.
>
> THERE IS an ambiguity about this new interest in the Civil
> War. On the one hand it is the past recaptured, the authentic
recovery of the
> long agony during which this nation came to be what it is. Yet
there is also
> the temptation to yield to an historical illusion by which the
past seems to
> gain in stature and authenticity as it recedes and the present to be
> discounted
> because it is the here and now. We sense the illusion in the words of the
> old-timer, "Yes, they came through here," in which it is somehow
> implied that this place has existed in a long trivial aftermath
after its one
> day of glory. Perhaps the North is in for a mild case of the same
romanticism
> which the South recovered from over fifty years ago.
>
> The increased emphasis upon the fighting at the expense of
> ideology is probably good. One does well, anyway, not to apply
ideology too
> closely to that war. James Truslow Adams can talk about the March of
> Democracy
> and Bruce Catton can call the Union army a truly revolutionary army
> and perhaps
> they are right. Perhaps the War was really and truly fought over
> slavery. But the
> other case can be made too. It is difficult to see the yeoman farmers who
> largely made up the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of Northern
> Virginia as
> Southern Bourbons. The South had some reason to regard the fight as a
> continuation of the American Revolution. After all it was her soil
which was
> being invaded and her independence which was being denied. The South
> might even
> have the better of the constitutional argument; yet what won out seems to
> transcend all the arguments. For it is that extraordinary thing,
the American
> Union.
>
> * * *
> Jim & Nancy Forest
>
> Kanisstraat 5 / 1811 GJ Alkmaar / The Netherlands
>
> Jim's books: www.jimandnancyforest.com/books/
>
> Jim & Nancy web site: www.jimandnancyforest.com
>
> Photo albums: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/
> Photo collections: www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/collections/
> On Pilgrimage blog: http://jimandnancyonpilgrimage.blogspot.com/
> A Tale of Two Kidneys blog: http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/
> In Communion site: www.incommunion.org
> Forest-Flier Editorial Services: http://forestflier.com/
>
> * * *
> --
> 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
>
> Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add
> @ sign when addressing email)



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