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

["D.E. Pierce" <leftatthegate AT gmail.com>]

Hey y'all - 

Thanks for all the kind replies to my introductory post last week. I'm sorry it's taken me as long as it has to respond - I've been taking a few "media-free" days and steering somewhat clear of the web. 

To answer a few of the questions asked:

I've read all of the novels. Were I to be forced to pick a favorite, it'd probably be The Last Gentleman, as it hit closest to home. My reaction to passages in that novel were exactly those of the alienated commuter from "The Man on the Train": "I'll be damned if that's not precisely the way it is!"

I've also read the two collections of essays, the Tolson and Samway biographies, and Paul Elie's wonderful book about Percy, O'Connor, Merton, and Day. 

More recently I read the two "Conversations..." volumes published at Ole Miss. 

In specific response to Karl and Chuck: I had a similar experience in discovering Ford. I was in a used bookstore in DC about ten years ago and picked up a copy of The Sportswriter. (It was an early pressing, and had a small blurb from Percy on the cover.) I think I just liked the title and the use of a sportswriter as a sort of "everyman". When I think of the two of them together - Percy and Ford - what jumps out at me immediately is a similarity in technique, at least where The Moveiegoer and the Bascombe novels are concerned. That is, the use of first person present tense and the carrying-on of an almost constant interior monologue.

A technical question: how does one go about replying to individual posts? 

Hope everyone has a safe and happy Mardi Gras. Tomorrow I'll be sitting around with ashes on my forehead watching Tiger tee it up for the first time in what seems like forever. (Watching sports on television is not among my Lenten sacrifices, which likely says something about my rather half-assed piety.)

Y'all take care.

e.