Walker Percy

[Doug Brown <wply1223 AT gmail.com>]

Hi Leonard and gang,

I’ll work from your longer version, which I enjoyed too much to bypass.

1. Percy’s descriptive passages

Percy’s dialogue is so good that I sometimes flip ahead a page or two just to see when people start talking again. Once reassured that Tom will soon be trading barbs or quizzical non sequiturs with someone in a few minutes, I can settle back into his descriptions. Once I do, I realize just how beautiful it can be.

On my edition’s page 260, Tom talks about sitting at home with Samantha after she has been stood up by her prom date. It’s such a lovely few paragraphs: “…she with her blue pinafore skirt tucked under her fat knees.” The scene of the two of them sitting together pretending nothing bad had happened ends with Tom’s characteristic vitriol. This scene does nothing to advance the plot, but it sticks with me days after reading it. Then back we cut to the Howard Johnson where Moira asks, “Why are you crying?” Perfect.

2. The language and attitudes that might be relics of the 1970s

I appreciate that Wade brought up Randy Newman. I was thinking about him as well, although I was thinking less about “Short People” and more about the entire album “Good Old Boys.” I listened to it yesterday as part of my observance of Independence Day. I think there is a lot to be said for an artist giving voice to attitudes and language that are not really his own, but doing so by fully inhabiting those attitudes and words. That feels like an act of artistic compassion. But compassion does not always equal agreement or consent – just acknowledgement of a person’s (character’s) full humanity.

3. The apocalyptic vision of the essay

Before we started this year’s slow read, I tried to read Percy’s “Notes for a Novel About the End of the World.” It made my eyes water. I couldn’t get through it, although I’ve read it before. I think Percy’s “Notes” are more attuned to “A Canticle for Lebowitz” than LITR. In both cases, I think the novel is better than the essay.

4. What do I think of Tom?

I’m kind of with you, Leonard. Tom More is a hero to me – for much the same reason. I love that he does not shy from admitting his own deeply flawed and heartbroken self while he critiques the world around him. He’s just trying to figure out how to live an embodied life in an abstracted world.

Is he a drunk? Well, yeah, sure he is. The British singer Rebecca Lucy Taylor, who performs under the name Self Esteem, has a song called “The Curse” which is heart-wrenching in it’s honesty about using alcohol to dilute the sadness: “I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work, but it really works, and that’s the curse.”

5. Percy’s humor

All of Percy’s novels are funny. I think this is his funniest, although The Second Coming is close. I’d love to hear other people’s favorite funny bits, but I feel overwhelmed trying to cite examples. There is a laugh or two on every page. The only novelist I can think of who is just as funny page-for-page is Terry Pratchett.

Another of my heroes, Carol Burnett, describes the difference between a comic and a comic actor: “A comic says funny things. A comic actor says things funny.” Percy is a comic writer in the same way that Burnett is a comic actor. He says things funny.

Doug Brown

Asheville, NC

On Sun, Jul 5, 2026 at 4:25 PM Karl M. Terrell <kterrell AT stokeswagner.com> wrote:

I am not doing the slow read this year. But I love LITR, and am enjoying everyone’s comments.

On this question by honeyjbc:

“do you tend to skim description (a friend of mine thinks all description is frivolous) and find it hard to visualize the scenes, or do you find joy in More’s (Percy’s) words a source of pleasure [?]”

I say yes, absolutely I find joy in Percy’s descriptions and observations — his sly prose style. 

One description has always stuck with me (I forget which book and don’t have the actual quote). He was describing young women of a certain type from the Piedmont region of South Carolina, noticing the smooth taut plates of flesh behind their knees.

(Bonus points for anyone who can find that quote — [insert smiley face].)

Karl

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 5, 2026, at 3:17 PM, honeyjbc1 <honeyjbc AT gmail.com> wrote:



My comments under each question. 

Greetings Percyites, from under the Heat Dome:

How cool is it to be contemplating the Fourth of July in “Love in the Ruins” at that same time of the year as we continue the Slow Read on the hottest weekend of the year? On the country’s 250^th birthday, a book that opens with the speculation that the USA may have run out of luck. Do you think it has?

You can experience the sensation of the long hot summer right along with Doc More as he recovers from the riotous night in the Pit: “A hot still gold-green Fourth of July. Not a breath stirs. No squirrels scrabble in the dogwoods, no jaybirds fret in the sycamores.”

 And you can appreciate the relief from the scorching outdoors when he takes Moira into the Howard Johnson: “From the blistering white heat of the concrete we come into a dim cool grotto.” Reminds me of the New York City summer scenes in “The Great Gatsby,” a book Percy loved: “The next day was broiling, almost the last, certainly the warmest, of the summer…. The room, shadowed well with awnings, was dark and cool.”

I found it glorious reading LITR  July 4th - our part one - on July 4th. 

If you listen to the news reports of any outlet, you hear echoes of this book’s warnings of division, mistrust, a failing country, fear and hatreds.  But if you watched any of the celebrations on this day, you got reassurances that all will be well. 

Part of the fun of reading on July 4th was how united all of the networks seemed to be at least for this one day. And ABC went out of its way to celebrate the wonders of America. They showed volcanoes in Hawaii suddenly spewing lava and erasing whatever was in their paths. Then they showed one sprig finding its way into the world as it showed life after devastation. I couldn’t help laughing because this book is about many vines and plants showing up in the cracks as a vision of nature invading man’s achievements. 

1) I share Percy’s admiration of Fitzgerald’s poetic style. More recently, after “studying” him, I’ve become a fan of Percy’s description, beyond the European philosophical ideas and his Twain-like yarn-spinning. Rather than looking for facts, I‘d like to hear your opinions. How do you find his aesthetic quality as you make Tom’s way through the links, past Bledsoe’s fire, into the Howard Johnson, back to his house, his mother’s and Lola’s, onto the club and the clubhouse? Specifically, do you tend to skim description (a friend of mine thinks all description is frivolous) and find it hard to visualize the scenes, or do you find joy in More’s (Percy’s) words a source of pleasure. Please feel free to tell us why, if you’d like, and offer an example or two.

I do not skim PERCY’s descriptions. They are part of the joy of reading him. 

I too noticed that phrase about man’s excellent geometries and was going to bring it up, but you already did. 

Loved that buzzing phone that Tom mistook for a too early heart attack. So funny. 

Loved the phrase on 256 “at least until I make sure it’s safe for us either in Paradise or the center. “ Because Percy named a location Paradise, that becomes resonant and the use of the center, meaning a place, is good because it also can be read to be not either extreme. Percy the phrase maker rides again. 

I liked when Lola says the land never lets you down. I don’t know if Percy intended it but the house is called Tara and the land was also extolled in Gone With the Wind. 

2) Thank you, Rhonda, for the shoutout and reference to my feline reputation…and for your comments about student reactions to Percy. What do you all say about Percy’s political “correctness,” as it might be called? Rhonda said students objected to “chinaman eyes”; what about Tom’s use of the term ‘’picaninny”? What would you tell students: is “Love in the Ruins” a relic of the early ‘70s; is Tom a reflection of careless ideas sometimes attributed to the South? Are Tom’s attitudes (“I’m tired of hearing about the four hundred years”) as explainable as Huck’s use of the N-word? Are they separable from Percy’s attitudes? (Doug has already offered a fine response to the issue.)

Forgive me, but if people want to read great books and reduce them to objectionable because the author used the N word, they lose me. No one enjoys gratuitous use of bad names but good readers should know the difference between honest good writing and crap. 

3) I finally read Percy’s “Notes for a Novel About the End of the World,” a little tougher to me than many of his philosophical essays. My attempt to summarize its themes include the idea that a contemporary novelist treating the future shouldn’t forecast an imminent violent end of the world but should be concerned with other signs of catastrophe. Evils such as “racism, Vietnam and inflation” should be less concerning than determining if “people are crazy,” that other signs of evil “portend a different kind of danger.”  Do you think “Love in the Ruins” successfully follows Percy’s “Notes”? Is the danger Tom sees a real problem, more threatening, say, than the undeniably real problem in the novel of a coming race war? Does the fact of the Bantus rebellion detract from what Tom is concerned about? Does that hurt Percy’s theme? I was impressed at Kenneth’s bringing in AI as a problem Percy couldn’t foresee, but one that fits right into the future threats he did see.

Whoever, living today, does not see dangers of divisiveness is not paying attention. Is Percy then destined in this novel to always be prescient?  I hope not. 

4) I confess, as I’ve said before, I love “Love.” It gave me a permanent view of the objective world I was living in back when Prof. Lawson brought it into class at Maryland. My thinking was running along the lines of Doris’s “spiritualism” and the lifestyle at the Honey Island Swamp. Tom’s existential discoveries and Percy’s non-fiction were a pleasant shock to the system that was seeing material reality as evil. Tom has the audacity of describing a construction site as having “man’s excellent geometries wrought from God’s somewhat lumpish handiwork,” declaring “money is splendid” and explaining “it took religion to save me from the spirit world…and let me inhabit my own flesh.” Last month, I laughed when I read Lawson’s essay concluding that Tom was “a drunk.” Between us, I know where Lawson’s great humor was coming from, so I wasn’t offended. Tom More is a hero to me. He reveals realities about the relationship of spirit and material, and discovers things about his patients’ mental conditions that explored a new way of seeing the world for me. He’s a flawed victim of many things; he’s not so aware of existential ideas as Binx Bolling is, but he is coming around with help of his lapsometer. But what I want to know is, what do you think of him?

I don’t think Binx is so different from Tom. They take a similar journey and arrive at similar places. 

AI, what a good idea - Art Immelmann - was first brought up in 1950. It surprised me to find that out. So maybe Percy was also prescient about that. 

5) Finally, I don’t hear enough about Percy’s humor. PT Bledsoe’s wife, “Skewered with PT’s kebab skewer”! Colonel Ringo shot through the scrotum! And I can’t stop “laughing out loud” (thanks, Chuck) at Rudy’s “orange and green bike flying through the air, Rudy still astride, and plummeting into the alligator-infested waters of Bootlegger Bayou.” What do you think of the humor? Favorite examples? Or is it just me?

All along I have been commenting on Percy’s humor. I always wonder if it is enough that I laugh as I am reading. Would that kind of reader, the non scholar who just enjoys reading him, have been enough to please Percy?

And no one answers me about birds all through Percy and their significance or about those reflections of light from so many things so often referred to. 

On page 294 there are lots of unfamiliar words Percy uses to describe the one who wants to kill Tom and then takes him hostage. What is that all about? Is Tom supposed to know all this? 

I am enjoying this book a lot as I reread it. Leonard, you have stimulated me to say a lot. 

Thanks. 

Janet Cantor

Thank you all!

Leonard

PS, Isn’t “Love in the Ruins” a wonderful distraction from the hysteria around Taylor Swift’s wedding?

 

 

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