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

[John Pearson <jp AT jlarsp.com>]

It's great to see activity on the list. Makes me want to read LG again. It's been a few years. The Second Coming has always been my favorite Percy novel, though I think part of the reason for that may be that it was the first of his books that I read.

It's interesting to read the thoughts on the book's endings. I could be wrong, and I seem to recall reading in one of the interviews Percy describing how he wrote and he said something to the effect that he put a man in a situation and watched to see what happened. I always liked that. In my own attempts at writing novels, I often find characters end up going in directions I hadn't planned. I find that philosophy, or method, of writing, however you want to characterize it, more interesting than for example, that of John Irving, who has said he always writes the last line of his novels first, because he has to know what the final destination is (or words to that effect). I always felt Percy used fiction as a means of discovery, which I tend to think all good writing is. 

John

On May 23, 2011, at 11:20 PM, RHONDA MCDONNELL wrote:

Janet, I agree with this point wholeheartedly! I love Percy's ending, particularly the ending of THE LAST GENTLEMAN, when will goes bounding toward Sutter's car.  Even LANCELOT, which is by far Percy's darkest, ends with hope, but it is LG that ends with joy.  

--Rhonda 

"You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing."
  
                                    Walker Percy

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Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 21:11:17 -0700
From: janetcantor37 AT yahoo.com
To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [percy-l] another thing

I would even go so far as to say that the endings of Percy's books are the reasons he writes the books in the first place. Judging from only these two, I'd bet the stories, characters and situations are there to entertain and inform; and they are preordained to come to a specific conclusion.
Janet

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