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

["Karey L. Perkins" <karey AT charter.net>]

I'm still off-work for the holidays, but back from my holiday trip, so Percy has my attention today:

 

Did anyone read the December 23 Newsweek on "Racism and the Republicans"?  It was about Trent Lott's recent unfortunate remark, and the article thorough describes the South, its politics, and the race issue in the first part of the century, and aptly quotes William Alexander Percy, as the aristocratic Percys were involved in politics and the race issue, always coming out in favor of better treatment of blacks. I just, coincidentally, happened to be reading Tolson's biography, describing Percy's ancestors and their political activism against the KKK and such.

 

In this case, Newsweek quotes from Will's Lanterns on the Levee to describe the liberal/progressive part of the state in contrast to the more conservative/backwards northern Mississippi, with which Lott associates himself.  Will Percy describes, and the article quotes him, that part of the state as "ill-dressed, unintelligent and slinking -- the sort of people who lynch Negroes, attend revivals, and fight and fornicate in the bushes afterwards."

 

However, Newsweek misses the better quote in capturing a Percy opinion -- Walker Percy's himself.  His Signposts essays dwell considerably on racism and segregation -- timely of course considering the era of their writing -- and the Life in the South section was immensely illuminating to me, as a non-Southerner, on the problem Southerners had with integration (which Percy was for, of course).  His discussion of the fact that the South had no public space probably goes as far to explain the problem as any I've heard yet.

 

I think the South's history of racism, his family's political heritage of political activism and "noblesse oblige" as he himself calls it, northern Mississippi's "backwards" political agendas that his southern-born relatives spent their lives battling, the fact that just a few years ago the Germans just barely failed attempt to decimate an entire race (and the U.S. did not enter the war to save the Jew, but for other interests), the heated racial conflicts and out-and-out riots of the 50's/60's, and the fact that much of this was playing out on his home state's front yard, such as James Meredith entering U. of Miss. -- all of this caused Percy to be intensely concerned about racism. 

 

Also, I think I can shed some light on Nikki's remark that Percy was never mean-tempered by relating a conversation I had at a conference with another person who was personally acquainted with Percy -- James Babin, who taught with Percy at LSU in his later years.  The conversation was fascinating -- to hear his first-hand stories -- and I hope James Babin does not mind my telling this, but one of the things he said was that he had read Percy's work before he met him, and was thoroughly surprised when he met him.  He had expected Percy to by "sly and ironic," as he termed it, based on reading Percy's writings and I have to agree that that does come across in his writing -- even some of his personal letters can seem brutally honest, with no attention to social niceties merely to preserve someone's feelings.  But, according to Babin, he was, and I can't recall the exact phrasing Babin used, but the impression he gave was of a perfect "Southern gentleman" -- considerate, polite, gentle, retiring -- one more prone to watch the battle going on around him with detached humor rather than to join in.   Again, Babin was completely surprised by this, as it didn't fit with how Percy comes across in his work.  However, I might add that Percy's PROTAGONISTS are like that -- even, voiceless and passive, rarely expressing what they're really thinking to the other characters they're with.

 

Karey