Walker Percy

[honeyjbc1 <honeyjbc AT gmail.com>]

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 - part one - on July 4th. 

The news reports of any outlet usually echo 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. ABC went out of its way to celebrate the wonders of America. They showed the volcanoes of Hawaii where suddenly spewing lava erased whatever was in the path. Then they showed sprigs finding their way into the world - life after devastation. I couldn't help laughing because this book is about those vines emerging from cracks as a vision of nature invading and taking over 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 his books. 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 "at least until I make sure it's safe for us either in Paradise or the center." Two place names but resonating as metaphors as well. The center means not either extreme. Percy, the phrase maker rides again. 

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

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 the 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 similar journeys and arrive at similar places if my memory is correct. 

AI - what a good idea - Art Immelmann. AI 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 because he is funny and smart and a good writer, have been enough to please Percy?

An no one answers me about the 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 terms Percy uses to describe the guy who wants to kill Tom and then takes him hostage. Is Tom supposed to understand all those words? What is that?

I am enjoying reading this book and rereading it now. Leonard, you have stimulated me to say more than I suspected I would.

Thank you all!

Leonard

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