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

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  • From: Lauren Berdy <lauren.stacy.berdy AT gmail.com>
  • To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [percy-l] Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, Seen Again by Paul Elie (Podcast)
  • Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2020 13:37:58 -0500

Dr Percy thought of his readers
Looking over his shoulders
He was the I
We was his
Thou 

Love being the magnetic of all thing’s 

The grosser human animal
Consciousness is creeping along
Nicely 
Percy tried to do some heavy
Lifting 
That leap of faith bounding out
Of him
He believed in our eternal elements
Down to sucking crawfish.
He showed us our wine and our
Bread







Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 10, 2020, at 11:52 AM, Thomas Gollier <tgollier AT gmail.com> wrote:


Lauren,

I liked your message in response the Paul Elie's lecture. Binx does find love, an I-Thou relationship, but what I
liked about 'The Moviegoer' was where he found it. Paul Elie says:

   His sense of what a writer does — and this owed in part to his philosophy and in part to a southern upbringing
   — was that communication is intersubjective. You don't write for yourself, you write to reach another
   person, and it takes two to make a truth and then you dick over that truth, and you figure something else out.
   So his philosophical essays were diminished by the lack of an audience.

Binx finds love, as Walker Percy finds truth, in 'everydayness'. The search for Binx leads to and back from the
movies and Aunt Emily's cultural mores, like for Percy it leads him to and back from semiotic and existential
philosophy, to where it began. I like to think Percy didn't sweat "the lack of an audience" for either his
philosophical essays or his literary novels. He was speaking to neither philosophers nor critics but to individuals
living in their 'everydayness'. And to what can be found there. It's not surprising he had to be back-doored into
the National Book Award and literature, and too bad that hasn't quite happened with philosophy.

Thanks,
Tom

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 6:49 AM Lauren Berdy <lauren.stacy.berdy AT gmail.com> wrote:
I listened carefully.

It was the crucial act of Dr Percy
At least for these eyes to show
us the desolate decline of love
In the world.
And
Showing us the daring adventure of
Human relations
The quicksand of our mental
Possessiveness 
And that self possession can be
Restored 
Even the Moviegoer filled withdeep life illusions Ends with an 
I and a thou
We are that I and thou
That’s the mystery
It’s nuff for this one reader

Reread 
“Allie and Will“ dialogues
Poems of illumination 
Out of the dark cave into the illumined light of love.

“ deep might call unto deep”





Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 8, 2020, at 12:05 AM, Henry P. Mills <wppdirector AT gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Percy-L:

Perhaps this recent, close revisit to The Moviegoer by Mr. Elie could be a good start to 2020. As always, comments to the community are welcome. Enjoy!

Henry Mills
Percy-L Administrator

_________________________________________________

Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, Seen Again by Paul Elie

This lecture by Prof. Paul Elie (Georgetown) was given as part of "The Moral Imagination of the Novel", a conference held at Columbia University on 4-5 October 2019. 

The conference was co-hosted by the Morningside Institute, Columbia University's Department of Philosophy, and the Thomistic Institute.







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