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percy-l - [percy-l] Walker Percy, New Orleans and a Thought for All Souls’ Day

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

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  • From: lowry.charles AT gmail.com
  • To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [percy-l] Walker Percy, New Orleans and a Thought for All Souls’ Day
  • Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2021 13:51:46 -0400

From “The City of the Dead”:

“The cemeteries, true cities of the dead, seem at once livelier and more
exotic to the visitor newly arrived, say, from the upper Protestant South
where cemeteries are sedate ‘memorial gardens,’ or from New York City, where
mile after mile of Queens is strewn with gray stone, a vast gloomy moraine.
A New Orleans cemetery is a city in miniature, streets, curbs, iron fences,
its tombs above ground—otherwise, the coffins would float out of the
ground—little two-story dollhouses complete with doorstep and lintel. The
older cemeteries are more haphazard, tiny lanes as crooked as old Jerusalem,
meandering aimlessly between the cottages of the dead….

“They, the little cities, are liveliest on All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day
when families turn out to fix up the family tomb, polishing or whitewashing
the stone, scrubbing the doorstep for all the world like Baltimore housewives
scrubbing the white steps of row houses…. Even now, All Saints’ and All
Souls‘ have a more festive air than otherwise—should they not?—startlingly
different from the unctuous solemnity of Forest Lawn. Crowds throng the tiny
streets, housekeeping for the dead, setting out flowers real and plastic,
perhaps regilding the lettering, while vendors hawk candy and toys for the
children, and on All Souls’ saying a not noticeably sad prayer or two for the
dead.”

Et fidelium animae per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace.

Sent from my iPhone


  • [percy-l] Walker Percy, New Orleans and a Thought for All Souls’ Day, lowry . charles, 11/02/2021

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