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

["Mason" <masonb AT epiphany-lcms.org>]

A quick introduction before my suggestion- My name is Mason Beecroft and I am a Lutheran pastor in the suburban ruins of Houston. Walker Percy's "Lost in the Cosmos" caught my attention as I was considering how one might go about instructing people about the Christian faith in this strange time and place. Of course I fell in love with his work and have read all of his published works except for "The Last Gentleman." I have been listening to these discussions for several months and enjoy the range of issues....

 

Karey-

The questions about what it looks like to "find God" in Percy's novels have also attracted my attention. Although subtle, I believe the sacramental and incarnational aspects of his Roman Catholic faith are key in what it looks like to find God. You wrote:

 

They can't go back - there's a mighty angel with a flaming sword guarding the entrance, pretty intimidating picture, I think.  So they must turn to Christ, and make their Kingdom of Heaven "on earth," but isn't it inside them, an inner heaven, and seems to be transcendent of what's going on around them?   Aren't we "in the world" but not "of the world?"

 

Percy wrote in his essay "Another Message in a Bottle" that "the incarnational and sacramental dimensions of Catholic Christianity are the greatest natural assets of a novelist." I don't think Percy would agree that the Kingdom of Heaven is "inside them, an inner heaven" or "transcendent." Rather, I think that Percy uses earthy, physical, human relationships to argue that the love of God is made known through such visible signs. St. Augustine defined a sacrament as a visible sign of an invisible reality whereby God communicates His grace. For Christians, the incarnation of Jesus Christ is THE sacrament-- God became man in a time and a place and lived among us, dying, and rising again... the Christian message is particular, earthy, visible, historical, and physical. And there are the other sacraments- Holy Baptism, Holy Communion, etc. But there is also a sacramental aspect to our relationships with other human beings. We cannot escape our time and place. Our God chose a time and a place. We cannot escape our physicality (nor do we desire to escape lest we be accused of docetism or gnosticism). Our God chose the incarnation. I think that Percy uses such "worldly" relationships to highlight such sacramental and incarnational aspects of Christianity. Of course this may just be a sacramental Christian finding what I desire to find, but I don't think so...

 

I would love to hear any input on Percy's understanding of some of the Vatican II statements on the dignity of humanity and how these might have influenced his work.

Mason Beecroft

 

 -----Original Message-----
From: Karey L. Perkins [mailto:karey AT charter.net]
Sent: Friday, September 13, 2002 1:06 PM
To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion
Subject: [percy-l] RE: a good woman in a leafy enclave and living a moral life and where's God?

Percy writes on the fourth page of _Love in the Ruins_ :

 

"I believe in God and the whole business but I love women best, music and science next, whiskey next, God fourth, and my fellowman hardly at all."  He continues:  "Generally I do as I please.  A man, wrote John, who says he believes in God and does not keep his commandments is a liar.  If John is right, I am a liar."

 

One supposes with this kind of prelude that our hero will eventually, by the end of the novel, work his way towards loving God most, (or, alternatively, God himself will do the work and eventually make his way up the list) -- whatever permutation to his real, daily life that might take (e.g.: retiring to a leafy enclave or crying out in the wilderness) but our protagonist really ends up having succeeded in accomplishing his goal of what he loves most -- women -- i.e.: finding a good woman.

 

I agree with you that popular culture, Hollywood, etc., has that (i.e.: boy and girl finding each other) as "an" if not "the" answer to our existential loneliness, and certainly Percy does in his novels, as well as his interviews.  Here's the question:  Is that a SUBSTITUTE for the real thing (God) or a MANIFESTATION of the real thing?

 

I don't want to get all Gnostic here and claim we should all lead ascetic, hermetic lives of denial, donning hair shirts and ashes each day, but really, and this is a real question here, not rhetorical, but, is God any higher on the list at the end of the novels?  What is the evidence?  After Percy's hero eschews everything of "this world" so he can find God, he then goes back and embraces the world.  Is this how it's meant to be done?

 

Along the same lines, to wax theological, Adam and Eve were turned out of the Garden of Eden, once they had "knowledge."  They can't go back - there's a mighty angel with a flaming sword guarding the entrance, pretty intimidating picture, I think.  So they must turn to Christ, and make their Kingdom of Heaven "on earth," but isn't it inside them, an inner heaven, and seems to be transcendent of what's going on around them?   Aren't we "in the world" but not "of the world?" I get the picture that we'll never be as comfortable or "one" with the garden experience ever after -- it's not ours to have again.  Isn't that what Percy wants to say?  Isn't that what the fugue states are about?

 

In the end, it seems God should be our "all" -- though that means loving others as well, but they are not our "salvation."  As Ben Jonson says, in "On My First Son," speaking of his son who as just died..."My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy," and of himself, "For whose sake, all his vows be such/As what he loves, may never like too much."

 

Certainly, I, like Percy, really really want his characters to end up happily in love with each other and ensconced in a lush and fruitful garden living the good life for themselves and others -- "happily ever after," (hey, I'd love that for MY life, too!), but then we have a nice little romance novel or a fairy tale, not real life, and Percy seems to have gotten off-track.

 

(Who, me, a cynic?)

 

Karey

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Tpmonaghan AT aol.com

To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion

Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2002 11:54 AM

Subject: [percy-l] RE: a good woman in a leafy enclave and living a moral life and where's God?

Settling down with a good woman in a leafy enclave and living a moral life, sounds a lot like Eden to me.  God is obviously there.  God did observe that was His plan, and that even before the Fall, it was not good that man should be alone and there is all that about from the rib, not the foot, not the head... from the Church fathers then the madonna and child.....  As time goes by, the fundamental things apply....whether 20's, 30's, 40's, 60's, 70's, 80's and on and on and even millenniums...

The Great Books, the hot bodsky bite of bourbon whiskey, chicken soup, and grits all in a cave in Lost Cove, Tennessee with Ellen and a moral life...isn't this as close to the eschaton as some of us should think of getting on this side of the river?  Isn't that the good life for Tom and Ellen, and Adam and Eve, and .... And if that option is not our vocation, there is the prophet/hermit crying in the wilderness and enjoying the things of creation and studying and writing and pondering.  Both approaches depend upon each other.  Praying, moral living, and tending the garden are requirements for all.

Percy wrote somewhere that boy and girl finding each other usually solved a lot.  That would seem to be indicated as well in common experience.  It's also reflected in the pop reading of Westerns...man spends 19 chapters clearing out bad guys, building fences, etc. finds woman in last few paragraphs, kisses her and book ends and life begins....or in the Romance, man clears out the bad guys, builds fences, etc. in first few paragraphs and spends 19 chapters geting around to finding girl, kissing her, etc. which it turns out is a lot more complicated than he ever thought and book ends and life begins.

Actually, I just found the quote that I remembered.  It is on the back cover of "More Conversations with Walker Percy" edited by Lewis A. Lawson and Victor A. Kramer..."You would like for your characters to get out of the fix they are in and achieve some kind of happiness.  The best way to do it, the easiest way to do it, is to fall in love.  A man falls in love with a woman or vice versa.  If both happen at the same time, that's pretty good." --
An archive of all list discussion is available at <http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail>.
Visit the Walker Percy Project at <http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy>. --
An archive of all list discussion is available at <http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail>.
Visit the Walker Percy Project at <http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy>.