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

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

Harry Whelchel,

 

I have been fascinated by connections between O’Connor and Percy.  Their careers barely overlapped, running mainly end-to-end.  They met once at a conference at Loyola, New Orleans.  Percy alluded often to O’Connor as successfully bridging to a broad, religiously skeptical readership, and Percy claimed—correctly I believe—that he had drawn from O’Connor’s poetics.  You might look at Rich Gray, “Walker Percy’s Appeal to Searchers: The Last Gentleman and The Second Coming,” by Rich Gray, Christian Scholars Review, 41:1 (fall 2011) 15-34.

 

You have tackled a complex novel in Lancelot.  It stands apart from Percy’s other work, in that Lance’s 200 page harangue reveals his spiritual lostness, without much interest in Christianity or religious faith of any sort.  The artful conclusion can support your thesis, with references to Percy’s essays.  Percy’s interviews should also shed light: Lewis Lawson and Victor Kramer, eds., Conversations with Walker Percy (Jackson: U. Mississippi Press, 1985), and More Conversations with Walker Percy, same editors and publisher, 1993.

 

From: percy-l-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:percy-l-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Harry Whelchel
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2012 12:53 AM
To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [percy-l] New Member Greeting

 

My name is Harry Whelchel and I am a 4th year at the University of Virginia majoring in Religious Studies and Economics. I am currently taking a class in our Religious Studies department taught by Prof. Bill Wilson and Prof. Vigen Guroian on the subject of Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor. So far we have read The Loss of the Creature, Metaphor as Mistake, The Message in the Bottle, and Lancelot by Percy. We have read essays from O'Connor's Mystery and Manners as well as her first novel Wise Blood. 

 

I am interested in Percy to learn more about his works of fiction, philosophy, and the conversation surrounding him. Recently I wrote a paper on Lancelot detailing how the process itself of sharing his story with Percival allows Lancelot to apprehend narrative's power to convey sovereign experience. I then argued this apprehension changes the world view Lancelot had developed and leads Lancelot to be open to the possibility of God's existence (yet Percy leaves the reader uncertain as to whether Lancelot will accept or reject God's existence).

 

The exercise of writing on Lancelot, a difficult work that I am sure I still do not fully grasp, led me to search for more academic resources on Percy. So I decided to join this listserv.

 

Best,

 

Harry Whelchel