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

[LTberrywtr AT aol.com]

Jim --    
 All may be flux for the post-everythings. But that's their problem; we 
needn't make it ours.
    To say that everyone is a product of his time and place and is tugged by 
all sorts of prejudices (and in some caeses, agendas) is to demonstrate no 
more than a firm grasp of the obvious. But to then jump to the conclusion 
that 
words have no meaning and there's no truth to be found is absurd.  
     And believe me, the post-everythings don't even live this nutty idea. 
When the air conditioning goes out in August in the Women's Studies faculty 
warren at my alma mater - the University of South Florida in sub-tropical 
Tampa - 
no one there insists on a feminist, Marxist repair person. When a full 
professor of literature - with all the politically correct views on life and 
language 
-- needs to have his heart four-laned or die, he doesn't seek a 
non-phallo-centrict cardiologist. These folks are willing, whether they state 
it or not, to 
believe under these trying circumstances that there are Real Truths in air 
conditioning repair and in cardiology. And it's easy enough to know whether 
or 
not the AC repairman has found The Truth. If he has, the AC comes on and the 
office become bearable again. 
    When the post-everythings gave up on the search for truth they didn't - 
as they frequently like to advertise - find freedom. They simply found 
fashion. 
Some liberation. 
-- Larry