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  • From: "janetcantor37 AT yahoo.com" <janetcantor37 AT yahoo.com>
  • To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [percy-l] quote source
  • Date: Wed, 27 May 2015 03:12:01 +0000 (UTC)

Whatever I looked up, it only listed the quote as one of Percy's famous ones. It gave no source so I am assuming he said it in a speech at some point.
Janet Cantor


From: Skip Collins <skip.collins AT gmail.com>


Hello, I am new to the list, but have been reading Percy since
college, around 1987.

Percy's 99th birthday this week prompted me to search for a quote I
have seen attributed to him:
"Fiction doesn’t tell us something we don’t know, it tells us
something we know but don’t know that we know."

I have not been able to locate a source for the quote.

This paradoxical idea of "unknown knowns" fills a gap in the
Rumsfeldian epistemology of "known knowns," "known unknowns," and
"unknown unknowns."

Can anyone provide the source for the quote above? The closest I could
find was from an interview he gave in the Paris Review in 1987,
reprinted in More Conversations with Walker Percy:
"The most commonplace example of the cognitive dimension in fiction is
the reader’s recognition---sometimes the shock of recognition---the
"verification" of a sector of reality that he had known but not known
that he had known. I think of letters I get from readers, which may
refer to a certain scene and say, in effect, yes! that’s the way it
is!"

--
skip
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