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

["Gray, Rich" <RGray AT montreat.edu>]

As the first-named priest in Percy's work, Boomer could be considered a
prototype priest for Percy.  Boomer is routine and unable to communicate
with the skepticism in the hospital room.  Yet his dumbness can be his
asset as a character -- he engages Will, Sutter, and Jaime symbolically
and sacramentally, rather than rationally.  

In Percy's essay "Notes for a Novel about the End of the World" in The
Message in the Bottle, p. 118, Percy writes: 

"How does [the Christian novelist] set about writing, having cast his
lot with a discredited Christendom and having inherited a defunct
vocabulary?  He .  .  . calls on every ounce of cunning, craft, and
guile he can muster from the darker regions of his soul.  The fictional
use of violence, shock, comedy, insult, the bizarre, are the everyday
tools of his trade.  .  .  . Flannery O'Connor .  .  .  . replied that
for the near-blind you have to draw very large, simple caricatures."

Is Boomer -- and are priests generally in Percy -- simple caricatures?

Rich 


-----Original Message-----
From: RHONDA MCDONNELL [mailto:rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com] 
Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 9:29 PM
To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [percy-l] LITR

You're right, Boomer is servicable, but he clearly doesn't "get it." Of 
course, neither does Will. Remember, he asks Sutter, "What happened back

there?" And Sutter is the only one who knows--what does that say about 
Sutter? Perhaps that's why he's still around for Will to send his letter
to 
in SC.

--Rhonda