Nikki,
I love all these little vignettes you relate about your interactions with Percy and Percy in his life. They aren’t in Tolson or Samway, and they really add much to the picture of the man. When I went to the UNC archives and read the Percy papers, there were such interesting things in the notes that showed sides of him you don’t get elsewhere - a couple of times in the immense pack of papers there were some exclamations of religious joy written down in one or two word exclamations that were completely opposite the picture you get from the biographies and his writings – that of a cool, analytical, stoic man who took his faith seriously but very intellectually.
Why don’t you write all of these little stories down on paper, then bind the pages together in that thing we call a book? I bet a lot of people would buy it – at least one (me) would.
You could call it: Percy and me. Or: My Dinner[s] with Walker Percy. Or: What Shelby Didn’t Know. (Since apparently Shelby and Walker didn’t talk about that stuff.) Or: My Walk with Walker.
OK, maybe you’d better be the one to name it.
Karey
From: percy-l-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:percy-l-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Nikkibar AT aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 8:20 PM
To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [percy-l] Walker, animals and Julian Jaynes
Although we did not read Julian Jaynes' (TOOC&TBOTBM)book in the book group, we did discuss Jaynes' theory of the development of the corpus callosum and the notion that our distant human ancestors may have walked around in the world hearing instructions from some outer or perhaps inner voice, like so many teenagers with cosmic i-Pods. Walker tended to resist any attribution to animals of anything that smacked of an animal soul in the lower primates or mammals. I always held for the opposite view and it was I who introduced Jaynes' theories to the group.
On the other hand, Walker was uncommonly fond of his own animals (to the point of sardonic sentimentality) and kept schnauzers, and a Siamese cat that I gave him (Old Broke-tail, photographed on his lap in a TIME magazine story) and at the time of his death he had an affectionate corgi named Sweet Thing. The schnauzers were forever getting smashed flat on the street and were a cause for great grief whenever it would happen. Unfortunately Walker developed a painful allergy to Old Broke who had to be given away. There was nothing sardonic about MY affection for the non street wise schnauzers or Old Broke, as I was (and am) unreservedly sentimental about mine, but then I think of them as younger brothers, a non-canonical view that Walker regarded as just plain silly. But then, whenever one of them got spread-eagle flattened on Jahncke Ave. he was some broken up. Sometimes the emotional centers in the hippocampus over-rule the cerebrum.
Towards the end of Jaynes' popularity, the word went round that his book had been an elaborate academic leg-pull, and Walker very much enjoyed feeling that he had gotten the best of the argument, in the notion that even Jaynes had not been serious. Later I had occasion to discuss this urban myth with Jaynes' tennis partner and his view was equivocal. So we'll never know.
