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  • From: Charles Lowry <lowry.charles 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 14:04:14 -0500

Thank you, Janet, you are very kind.  One of the strengths and one of the frustrations of this list is that it covers such a wide group, scholars, friends and neighbors of Walker Percy himself and of the Percy family, those who love the philosophical writings, those who love the novels, those who are fascinated by Southern literature, general readers who have stumbled upon Percy almost by accident, etc.  We seem to tolerate one another pretty well!  In that regard, we owe a constant debt of gratitude to our patient, learned, observant friend Henry Mills.

On a side note, I first met Janet eight or nine years ago at a conference at Loyola New Orleans.  It was a terrific two days (well, some of us may have stayed for the whole weekend) of talking to each other about Walker Percy.  I would love to do it again!

On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 1:48 PM honeyjbc1 . <honeyjbc AT gmail.com> wrote:
So funny. I said Charles Percy and of course I meant Charles Lowry.
Ha ha.
Janet Cantor

On Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 1:46 PM honeyjbc1 . <honeyjbc AT gmail.com> wrote:
Charles Percy,
You need no longer apologize that you are not a poet or a scholar.
I always love your comments. They derive from lots of information and experience. Your observations are clear, direct and helpful to all readers of Percy.
So from now on you can dispense with the apologies about your limitations. You have none sir.
Janet Cantor


On Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 1:35 PM Charles Lowry <lowry.charles AT gmail.com> wrote:
I both envy and admire the earlier contributions to this thread, since I have no talent for the lyrical and no capacity for the scholarly, but I offer a tidbit.  I think Jay Tolson, from his masterful biography of Percy, might have a contribution to make here.  He offers an interesting slant on Paul Elie's perspective: "Artist though he was, Percy became and remained a moralist who saw the end of art not in formal perfection but in the adequacy of its gesturing toward the truth that would make him free."  Tolson offers us an important piece of context on truth and freedom by reminding us of Pascal's observation that the source of all human misery is the inability to sit alone and content in one's own room.  Binx embraces what he knows will be this misery, because he has figured out that this is also the only path that leads to even the possibility of joy and authenticity.

     "What do you plan to do?"

     I shrug. There is only one thing I can do: listen to people, see how they stick themselves
     into the world, hand them along a ways in their dark journey and be handed along, and for
     good and selfish reasons......

Along the way, though, he has picked up a thing or two, as eloquently summarized by an anonymous Knopf copywriter: "Binx's rediscovery of the strengths of his tradition coincides with his new-found capacity to encounter and love Kate as a person in her own right."  Contrary to Pascal's advice, Binx has left his room, has transformed himself from observer to actor, has stuck himself into the world.  It is not always easy, and the results are unpredictable, but for Binx it is a very humanizing process.  As an example, simply compare the tenor of Binx's early conversations with Aunt Emily to his conversation with her after his return from Chicago.  It is as straightforward as the transition from certitude to struggle.  Percy does a masterful job in taking us along to observe Binx's journey.  And that is why I love The Moviegoer.

Chuck Lowry
Brooklyn, New York 

On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 12:50 PM Lauren Berdy <lauren.stacy.berdy AT gmail.com> wrote:
I always believed that Dr Percy
Turned towards Catholicism
(Dostoevsky too, never straddled )
Because
Christ discovered 

Love 

What humans have done with this
Discovery is
Dr Percy’s landscape.

Everything else is
Material thought . Mostly Our illusions.

Which isn’t 
Faith.

Existentialists never have vibrated
As close as Dr P towards 
The ground of
I/thou
It’s the only ground 
And still
The biggest mystery 
It’s not an intellectual discussion it’s
The only thing that exists.

Take gd care in this Very messy world 
Lauren


 





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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