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

[Nikkibar AT aol.com]

Dear Friends,

I have been lurking about with an increasing Holiday headache for the last couple of weeks over the interesting discussion and have been unwilling to spoil the fun by getting doctrinaire and behaving like a prissy old fart; but now that things seem to be slowing up, let me provide a few biographical observations which I hope will not go so far as to become deconstructionist.

The whole discussion about animals and symbols -- Chomsky, the Chimps in the household with the letter and icon boards, John Lilly and his dolphin language, etc. -- was something that Walker followed with eagerness and interest. We (Walker and I) constantly argued over the matter, Walker adopting with Aristotle and The Church the position that animals had no souls (and there was an end on't) and me adopting quite the contrary position which I had always associated with Theosophical Gnosticism, that the universe (or all-that-is) is in a state of both physical and spiritual evolution. And mixing into this lifelong debate was Walker's stout defense of the notion that animals can't use symbols (despite Chomsky and the household chimps, etc., and Lilly with his investigation of terciops truncatus' click language -- possibly indicating to the contrary).

My own argument inevitably ran to the notion that the symbol as we and Peirce know it, is irrelevant to the debate and that communication and not symbolization is the more proper touch-stone to get one to the concept of evidence of the kind of consciousness that would betoken the existence of animal-souls. Walker always felt that he prevailed in these contests because he could fall back on "show me the symbol-making ability) and that for me was the breakpoint, for while I couldn't show him a symbol emanating from an animal (although with enough funding and sufficiently sensitive and complex computers with enough RAM we may in time learn to talk to the dolphin or translate whale-song) I could always rejoin that he couldn't be certain that animals couldn't and didn't talk to each other; for our uncertainty is grounded in the notion that just because they may have little interest in talking to us, does not logically prove that they cannot talk to one another. In other words, in good lawyer-like fashion, I could always demonstrate that an absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. I can assure you, however that WP was head-over-heels in touch with the problem and took a long and lively interest in it.

For those bewildered by Gnosticism and what it is, search our archives of about five years back using not only Gnostic as a word search tool but Elaine Pagels and to a lesser degree Harold Bloom, whose works we discussed thoroughly. At the end of that discussion I resolved never to get involved in that fight again, as it simply produces (on this channel at any rate) a good deal more heat than light. And the debate seemed fruitless to me for another reason: which was that the RC proponents of antiGnosticism knew a lot less about Gnosticism than I did (and do)  about the Dogma and History of the Roman Catholic Church. What was interesting (and horrible to me) in the discussion was the virulence and mean-tempered attitude emanating at that time from the antiGnostic position, a latter day resurrection of the very same mortal combat which the church won with Valentinian and in winning the victory -- physically obliterated the ancient Gnostics. Pagels reflects with great eloquence on that fact of this victory and speculates over what the world might be like today, had the Gnostics prevailed at least to the point of remaining alive past the sixth century CE. An additional exploration might be taken up by anyone interested, by reading an enthralling novel on the subject published the last year entitled The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (Bantam-Random House). An additional observation: in all my many discussions with Walker over these matters, he NEVER raised the slightest banner of mean-tempered virulence but was always the soul of interested courtesy. For further discussion of Gnosticism and what it is, I refer you to Bloom's speculatively intriguing American Gnosticism, but it is not nearly as informative at the basic level of defining terms as the works of Elaine Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels and Gnostic Paul). Google or Amazon will provide a useful bibliography complete with price lists. For a useful chapter on Gnosticism, specifically in the work of Percy (which may however leave you more puzzled after reading it than before) see Eddie DuPuy's book Autobiography in Walker Percy -- if you can find a copy.

I am amused to the point of gentle mirth at the notion that Walker was a Jew ab initio through his conversion to Rome. That in my view is stretching the poetry of language just a little too far. (BTW Poets name things all the time. Just think of Edward Lear's toeless Pobble QED). What Walker would have said himself to this interesting error about boxing him in with the Jews, was that on the contrary he was not a Jew, but a reconstructed bad Presbyterian made over into a bad Roman Catholic. The wistful reverence for Jewry that he displays repeatedly in the novels was just that: very wistful and VERY reverent, which it occurs to me is roughly my own attitude toward Rome but that is BTW; it equals being an indifferent Episcopalian.

A Parthian shot on the subject of the animals. Anyone watching the last season of The Sopranos (and who isn't?) may have some very interesting insights to draw over how Tony's conflicted Catholic attitude to the "Genesis dominion over the beasts" concept works in that most American of myths in its current HBO state of becoming. This agon may be the only thing that draws me back to it in its next season. I am suggesting that for us in the business of the aesthesis of words, myths and stories in the public mind, it's a pivot point well worth thinking about. One could assign grad school papers of 20 K words on it... It could enliven one's grading period to see what results.

And a happy New Year to all.

Nikki Barranger