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

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  • From: Lauren Stacy Berdy <lauren.stacy.berdy AT gmail.com>
  • To: Percy-L AT lists.ibiblio.org:Literary and Philosophical Discussion <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [percy-l] [External] LITR slow read
  • Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 12:16:55 -0400

as usual our diagnostician/author was prescient in so many ways


the "pit" used as an educational setting? yes, Thomas Eakins has a beautiful painting rendering of others ( students) looking onto the surgical pit below. The pit is an excellent way to focus in and center ones attention and discipline gaze. (There is quiet in the room no booing or cheering)

However Dr. Percy isn't using the pit like that..........no he tweaks it to show us that our minds are no longer habituated to attention.
we are in the entertainment arena now. Huxley knew it in "Brave New World" didn't he? Huxley knew we have an enormous appetite for distractions.
"We will love what ruins us."he said.
Back to the pit.
Gregory uses the word "entertainment",
I think that this is the whole point of students and pit. As we all know and as The Doctor knew we are all dumbing down. Everything is fodder for entertainment, " In Amusing ourselves to death" Neil Postman wrote that Huxley got it right and I think the Doctor knew it and saw it and used it. Show business dominates the culture and the serious business of learning has been turned into entertainment. The fallacy for the ultimate truth of a proposition does not depend on content but on who is speaking it and getting the most cheers?

I adore cranky Mr. Ives. He is pissing ( pooping) on everyone from a high height. He is on to them and Tom knows it.

I believe Tom is on to all of it too as it unfolds yet plays his part. Maybe he also likes being on stage? As I have written elsewhere that's a big part of us and our problems.

students too now think that learning should be fun. Students are now passive with no autonomy , sense of history or maturity. Their lessons aren't as much fun as television. maybe too the "pit" is a form of television like "Kitchen stadium" ( Iron Chef)? they are the future and Percy was pointing this out.

about Tom and "grace" what comes up for me is not "grace" but a coming back into one ownself. After being away and drinking duck eggs and early times. He gets back to the business of living and being and what unfolds is just that. For me he got the gift of insight. Our very own precious human gift that each of us owns.
(I also love that this thought arrives in his head as he is descending .........)

I believe Mr. Ives can go fourth and live out his life in his lost cove or what ever.......... He isn't distracted!! (he might be displaced) The others are distracted playing their roles.
He got out alive and I would add God help us if we have to be granted life according to a "Big brother."

I recommend Aldous Huxleys"Brave new World"
"people will love their oppression and the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance".

Thank you Gregory for all your additional news about Tennessee. it seems to have a lot of flavor. I hear the BBQ is pretty good too but you don't hear about it in the NYTS.
Good for them.

Thank you,













"

Lauren Stacy Berdy

On 7/21/2014 11:56 PM, Plemmons, Gregory wrote:
Hi, y'all,

Below are some thoughts I had on reading this section:

Percy’s July Third section takes place almost exclusively within the confines
of the medical school. After a relatively brief and seemingly uneventful
section with Tom’s mother, action/machination returns, this time on an stage,
which is often a useful device itself (the play within a play...)

I wondered about Percy’s choice of the Pit as the setting for this section.
What do others think? He seems to use it to great effect here. Such
amphitheaters are still fairly common in educational settings. How much of
what we consider education is entertainment, and vice versa? Does it matter?
Did everyone else find Mr. Ives to be quite a sympathetic character? The
public inquisition to which he is subjected here is quite humiliating, and
yet while Tom initially seems sympathetic, defending Mr. Ive’s defecation and
mutism, how much is done out of empathy, and self-recognition? How much is
done for spectacle? Tom is quite the critic of how gladiatorial the whole
guise of academic “sportsmanship” pretends to be—and a brilliant
satirist--yet I feel finds himself completely swept up in the game, at times.
Is it humanly possible to remain objective and aware of the Game? (and what
would Percy think of Dr. Phil…)

At one point (p. 219) Tom says “students are, if the truth be known, a bad
lot.” Does he believe this? In this section, the teachers act just as
juvenile—is there hope for future generations, or are we essentially trapped
in the human condition? I keep thinking of the young hippie couple with the
baby, on Honey Island…are they lost, or simply Hope?

At one point, Tom has a fleeting moment of insight—“the thing to do, it
occurs to me halfway down into the pit, is to concern myself with the patient
and what ails him, and forget the rest”—which I think is a shining moment of
grace—but it seems to me that the challenge is how to forget the rest—is it
humanly possible, without the Gift? Without Grace?

Although Percy has never been pegged as a traditional Southern writer, at
least in the Faulknerian sense of place, I’m always struck by his keen
awareness of the nuances of each region and his depiction of Mr. Ives
here—Mr. Ives seems curiously displaced, yet is most likely typical Everyman
for your average 1960’s middle-class Southerner. Ives, we’re told, is from
Tennessee, but lived for forty years in Hartford, Connecticut as an insurance
controller before his wife died (shades of Doris/Catherine?
self-identification?), and he desires to return home to Tennessee (aptly,
Lost Cove--Lost Self?). I’m sure whole essays have been written on this
choice, and What is Home, and what is Self (as someone pointed out earlier,
the Mall-ification of the South)…but it seemed at least worth a comment here.
Can he truly go home? Was he there to begin with?

Mr. Ives: “his monkey eyes snap”—I couldn’t help but chuckle, and wonder about Percy’s
word choice here, having spent the weekend not too far from Dayton, Tennessee—home of
the Monkey Trial—(which is not too far from Lost Cove, either—if any of you are
wondering, which is a real, not fictional place). Both of those locales are fairly
close to Sewanee, where Percy's family had property, I'm told, and where he spent some
time. Nearly a hundred years later, evolutionary biology is still being debated here
(and nationally) and I continue to be fascinated by the constant intersection/conflict
of science and faith. Interestingly, of note, here in Tennessee a rebuttal
“play/musical” has been written to counterbalance “Inherit The Wind”--entitled
"Inherit The Truth" (and the Creation Museum up the road in Kentucky is
erecting a life-size replica of Noah’s Ark). At least in my neck of the woods, it seems
we need Percy’s voice more than ever…the center cannot hold...

Greg





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________________________________________
From: Percy-L [percy-l-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] on behalf of RHONDA
MCDONNELL [rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com]
Sent: Monday, July 21, 2014 5:54 PM
To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion
Subject: [External] [percy-l] LITR slow read

I'm looking forward to reading Greg's thoughts on the July 3rd section of the
novel this week.

In the mean time, no one has stepped forward for the July 4th section, so why
don't we all just post whatever random thoughts we might be having on that
section next week (the last week of July), without waiting for a discussion
leader's post?

Janet will wrap the novel up during the first full week of August.

Rhonda

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