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

["Beck, David A" <dabeck AT iupui.edu>]

I agree, Karey (did I just say that?). Seriously, though, I posted the
opening to LIR, because, while it is a work of fiction, it shows that
Percy saw where we were headed--in Karey's words, "hell in a
handbasket." It seems to me--just off the top of my head--that his
concern was not a right or left one, but one  that concerned our
"culture of death." I need to re-read Fr. Smith's "sermons" from the
fire tower (it's been awhile).

But I don't think he saw us as the "city on the hill." I think he had
some legit concerns. He obviously saw and showed how easily we can
"fall asleep at the wheel", with our endless distractions.

-David

Quoting Karey via Percy-L <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>:

> Rhonda:  I'm in!
>
> Janet - I'm not sure what you thought the Iraq war was fought for?
> Or even Vietnam? (Yes, David, we agree on something! ;) ...)  And
> Malaysia just indicted the Bush-Cheney admin for war crimes; I'd be
> surprised if other countries didn't follow suit.
>
> Percy definitely didn't see America through rose-colored glasses.  He
> kinda thought we were going to hell in a handbasket.  One of his most
> important themes is social criticism - not only the generic
> postmodernism of the 20th century West (a big one), but particular
> political and social issues of America of his day.  Some of his
> critics have even said his themes were too contextual and that's why
> he's sort of faded in the 21st century - I don't think so though.
> Look at the Knotheads and the Leftpapas.  The Knots ARE the Tea
> Party, envisioned 30 - 40 years before they ever came about.
>
> Smart guy that Percy.
>
> Karey
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Jun 23, 2014, at 10:11 AM, RHONDA MCDONNELL
> <rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com> wrote:
>
> Janet,
>
> Oh how I wish I could see things as you do. I fear, though, that I am
> more cynical, and I perceive that Percy was too. The Death-Dealing
> Death-Loving 20th century as moved into the 21st with no respite.  If
> we are merely altruistic as a nation, how is it that we let genocide
> go unchecked in places like Myanmar?  I fear our interests are often
> (always?) control by corporate interests and lobbyists.  The days of
> the knotheads are here. Let us hope we survive them.
>
> ps--it'd be fun to do a slow read of Love in the Ruins together on
> the list. Maybe we could spark up a little life?  Anyone in?
>
> Rhonda
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> > On Jun 23, 2014, at 7:54 AM, "janetcantor37--- via Percy-L"
> > <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org> wrote:
> >
> > David,
> > I know the Percy Lists are supposed to try to avoid the political
> > but you offered the Percy quote in response to my comment and I feel
> > a need to have my say. I find it interesting that Coriolanus, my
> > favorite Shakespeare play, is used by both goodies and baddies to
> > justify their personal choices.
> >
> > We fought in Korea and the president stopped the fighting and did
> > not allow the fight to continue into the north. Where would Koreans
> > prefer to live, in South Korea or North Korea?
> > Americans do not fight to gain territory or to takeover countries.
> > We fight to try to give others the chance to have liberty. We may
> > differ on when it is our fight.
> > If a cancer invades, it is something that is either fought or it
> > kills. Islamism and Communism are the cancers.
> >
> > So we may differ on whether something is our fight or not, or in how
> > the fight is fought, but, please, let us at least agree that America
> > represents  the goodies and not the cancer.
> > Janet Cantor
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > From: "Beck, David A" <dabeck AT iupui.edu>
> > To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
> > Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2014 8:50 AM
> > Subject: Re: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War
> >
> > Janet,
> > I'm not sure we are a "shining light to the world" anymore or have been
> > for a long time. Our credibility has been on a downhill slide since
> > Viet Nam. I'm more apt to remember Percy's analogy of the old, rusting,
> > roller coaster at the beginning of Love in the Ruins: "now [is]the
> > blessing [on the U.S.A.] or the luck is over, the machinery clanks, the
> > chain catches hold, and the cars jerk forward?" (I love that passage.)
> >
> > -David
> >
> >
> >
> > Quoting janetcantor37--- via Percy-L <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>:
> >
> > > How lovely to read this now. But how sad because I am beginning to
> > > think that this is becoming obsolete thinking these days. There is
> > > more race rancor in our conversation today than I can remember since
> > > the 60's. It shouldn't be this way. I wish it were not so. We have a
> > > great country. I hope we don't lose it because we are asleep at the
> > > switch. It is a country worth saving, a shining light to the world. I
> > > wonder what Percy would be saying about current attitudes?
> > > Janet Cantor
> > >
> > >
> > > ________________________________
> > > From: Jim Forest <jhforest AT gmail.com>
> > > To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion
> > > <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> > > Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2014 6:04 AM
> > > Subject: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > from the March 29, 1957 issue of Commonweal
> > >
> > > https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/american-war
> > >
> > > The American War
> > >
> > > by Walker Percy
> > >
> > > WHAT ARE THE reasons for the current revival of interest in
> > > the Civil War? That there is such a revival is undeniable. Books
> > on the War
> > > pour off the presses every week?some of them, incidentally, of a very high
> > > order, such as Bruce Catton's This Hallowed Ground and Shelby
> > Foote's Shiloh!
> > > What is at once noticeable about the current literature is its frankly
> > > non-political character and the absence of the old rancor. The
> > race issue may
> > > be still very much an issue, but Northern and Southern historians
> > > have achieved
> > > a common view of the War itself. When Catton from Michigan and Foote from
> > > Mississippi write about the battle of Shiloh, it sounds like the
> > same battle.
> > > Catton is never more eloquent than when he is appraising Lee's
> > generalship;
> > > Foote is just as impressed by the fighting qualities of the
> > Northern soldier.
> > > Indeed, from this distance the underdog psychology probably kindles
> > > the reader's
> > > enthusiasm more readily than do the social issues?and perhaps this
> > is just as
> > > well.
> > >
> > > The general impression outside the South seems to be that it
> > > is the rest of the country which has rediscovered the Civil War, that
> > > the South
> > > has never stopped looking back. This is mistaken, I believe, and
> > is due to an
> > > understandable optical illusion. The truth is, at least in my
> > > experience, that
> > > the Southerner never thinks about the Civil War?until he finds
> > himself among
> > > Northerners. Then, for some reason-perhaps because the Northerner
> > insists on
> > > casting him in his historical role and the Southerner is perfectly
> > willing to
> > > oblige, or because, lost in the great cities of the North, he
> > feels for the
> > > first time the need of his heritage?he breaks out the Stars and Bars. I
> > > remember traveling from Alabama to summer camp in Wisconsin in the
> > twenties.
> > > The train would stop in Chicago to pick up more boys. We from Alabama
> > > had heard
> > > as little about the Civil War as the Boer War and cared less, but
> > every time
> > > the Illinois boys got on in Chicago the War started, a real brawl yet not
> > > really bad-tempered. The same sort of thing must have happened during
> > > the World
> > > War I when an Alabama division suddenly found itself in a
> > donnybrook with the
> > > Fighting 69th at Plattsburg.
> > >
> > > The truth of it is, I think, that the whole country, South
> > > included, is just beginning to see the Civil War whole and entire for
> > > the first
> > > time. The thing was too big and too bloody, too full of suffering
> > and hatred,
> > > too closely knit into the fabric of our meaning as a people, to be
> > > held off and
> > > looked at-until now. It is like a man walking away from a mountain.
> > > The bigger
> > > it is, the farther he's got to go before he can see it. Then one
> > day he looks
> > > back and there it is, this colossal thing lying across his past.
> > >
> > > A history of the shifting attitudes toward the War would be
> > > enlightening. There would probably emerge a pattern common to such great
> > > events, a dialectic of loss-recovery: the long period of
> > recollection, of in­
> > > tense partisan interest which is followed by a gradual fading of the
> > > Event into
> > > a dusty tapestry. (Lee and Grant at Appomattox taking their place beside
> > > Washington Crossing the Delaware.) Then under certain
> > circumstances, there is
> > > the recovery. Perhaps Washington will never be recovered, having been
> > > ossified
> > > too long in grammar school tableaus. But Lincoln and Grant and
> > McClellan and
> > > even the legendary Lee, who after all are closer in time to
> > > Washington than to
> > > us, have come very much alive. Why, then, their recovery, and what
> > > exactly has
> > > been recovered?
> > >
> > > WHAT HAS been recovered, it seems clear, is not the politics
> > > or the sociology of the War, nor even the slavery issue, but the
> > > fight itself.
> > > The tableau I remember from school was the Reconciliation, Grant and
> > > Lee in the
> > > McLean house, Lee healing the wounds at Washington College. Little
> > was said
> > > about the War, except that it was tragic; brother fighting against
> > brother,
> > > etc. Undoubtedly this was the necessary if somewhat boring
> > emphasis for the
> > > textbooks. Now, after ninety years of Reconciliation, we can take a
> > > look at the
> > > fight itself.
> > >
> > > What a fight it was! The South is a very big place, yet
> > > there is hardly a district that didn't have its skirmish, its
> > Federal gunboat
> > > sunk in a bayou?where some old-timer won't tell you, "Yes, they came
> > > through here." It is startling to realize that there were more casualties
> > > in the Civil War than in all the American forces of World War II, and
> > > more than
> > > in all other American wars put together. Of 3,000,000 men under arms,
> > > 2,300,000
> > > for the Union, 750,000 for the Con­ federacy, 618,222 died, with total
> > > casualties probably going well past a million. For sheer
> > concentrated fury,
> > > there are few events even in modern warfare to equal that terrible
> > > September 17
> > > at Antietam Creek when over 20,000 men fell?or the May-June of '64
> > > when, beginning
> > > with the battle of the Wilderness, Grant lost on the average of 2,000
> > > men a day
> > > for 30 days, culminating in the slaughter at Cold Harbor when over
> > 8,000 men
> > > fell in about ten minutes! There were murderous battles in the
> > West which one
> > > never heard of, like Stone's River with over 25,000 casualties.
> > >
> > > Yet terrible as it was, it is impossible to read of the Army
> > > of Northern Virginia or of the Army of the Potomac without being
> > caught up in
> > > the tremendous drama. The armies were big enough so that the action
> > > took place
> > > on an epic scale, yet the War was, as much as were the Punic Wars,
> > a personal
> > > encounter of the opposing leaders. Lee was very much aware of this
> > > grim beauty
> > > when the fog rose over Fredericksburg showing Burnside's entire
> > army facing
> > > his, battle flags flying.  "It is
> > > well that war is so terrible,? he said; "else we should grow too fond of
> > > it." But what gave the Civil War the tragic proportions of the Iliad
> > > was the  fact, apparent after Shiloh, that the American soldier,
> > > Union and
> > > Confederate, was not going to be beaten until he could literally fight no
> > > longer or was killed. When his leader was great, he was almost
> > > invincible; when
> > > his leader was mediocre, he was still superb. Pickett's charge is justly
> > > famous, but just as heartbreaking was the Union  assault on
> > > Longstreet's position in the sunken road at Fredericksburg.
> > > The difference was that where Pickett?s men had every confidence in Lee,
> > > Couch's men knew very well that Burnside was wrong. Yet they
> > attacked all day
> > > long, and only stopped when the field was piled so high with dead
> > that they
> > > could no longer run over them.
> > >
> > > AS IN ALL tragedies, a great deal seemed to de­ pend upon
> > > fate. Small mischances become as important as Thetis?s oversight when she
> > > dipped Achilles?all but his heel?into the Styx.  A Con­federate
> > > courier  loses some
> > > battle orders;  they  are found wrapped  around  three cigars and
> > > brought to McClellan; the direct result is the battle
> > > of Antietam. One can't read of that war without playing the
> > > fascinating game of
> > > what-if.... What if Jackson had lived through Chancellorsville? What if
> > > McClellan had listened to Phil Kearny (instead of the Pinkerton
> > detectives)
> > > during the Seven Days? What if Jeb Stuart had tended to business at
> > > Gettysburg?
> > > Lee was always just missing his Cannae and Lincoln's generals were
> > > always just
> > > short of ordinary competence?until he got Grant.
> > >
> > > Besides the great failures, there were the great successes,
> > > the heroes' deeds which are always irresistible to the human spirit
> > > and so pass
> > > over immediately into the legend of the race. There was
> > Chancellorsville when
> > > Lee, facing Hooker's 85,000, divided his battered army of 43,000,
> > > sent Jackson
> > > to the left, leaving him in front of Hooker with 17,000 men?and
> > attacked and
> > > very nearly destroyed the Army of the Potomac. There was the Union's
> > > "Pap" Thomas's assault on Missionary Ridge at Chattanooga and the
> > > subsequent demoralization of Bragg. And there was the fateful decision at
> > > Spotsylvania when, after taking a fearful mauling, Grant, instead
> > of falling
> > > back toward Washington as the army had been doing for the past
> > three years,
> > > re­treated south, sliding around Lee's right.
> > >
> > > Therein lies the tragedy. If Lee had been a little more or a
> > > little less?if he had gotten his Cannae or if he had only been
> > just competent
> > > and been whipped by McClellan in '62?the results would still have
> > > been notable,
> > > but they would not have approached the terror and  piteousness of
> > > what actually did happen. The
> > > summer of 1864 has a Gotterdammerung quality. With the issue
> > hardly in doubt
> > > after Gettysburg, the fighting nevertheless increased in fury with
> > both sides
> > > attacking steadily, without the usual remissions between battles.
> > >
> > > YET WITH all the horror, or perhaps because of it, there was
> > > always the feeling then, and even now as we read about it, that
> > the things a
> > > man lived through were somehow twice as real, twice as memorable
> > as the peace
> > > that followed. Peace is better than war, yet it is a sad fact that
> > > some of the
> > > heroes of the War, like Grant and Longstreet and many a lesser
> > man, found the
> > > peace a long descent into mediocrity.  In
> > > the ordeal the man himself seemed to become more truly himself,
> > revealing his
> > > character or the lack of it, than at any time before or after. If
> > a man was
> > > secretly cowardly or secretly brave, stupid or shrewd, that was
> > what he was
> > > shown to be. The War infallibly discovered his hidden weakness and
> > his hidden
> > > strength. Hooker the braggart was reduced to impotence simply by
> > having Lee's
> > > small army in front of him (and understandably, for the veterans of
> > > the Army of
> > > the Potomac used to say to replacements fresh from victories in the West:
> > > "Wait till you meet Bobby Lee"). Grant the ne'er-do-well matured in
> > > defeat and became a noble and sensitive human being by having Lee at
> > > his mercy.
> > > It is no wonder that there was the temptation, especially in the
> > > ruined South,
> > > to enshrine those four years as the four years of truth and to
> > discount all
> > > other times, even the future.
> > >
> > > Then there were the thousand and one lesser en­counters, any
> > > one of which, if it had happened at another time, would have its own
> > > literature
> > > and its own historians: the Confederate raiders, Farragut's capture of New
> > > Orleans, the battle of the ironclads, Forrest's miniature Cannae at Bryce
> > > Crossroads, James Andrews' stealing  the
> > > Confederate train, and so on. It was the last of the wars of
> > > individuals, when
> > > a single man's ingenuity and pluck not only counted for some­
> > thing in itself
> > > but could conceivably a:ffect the entire issue. Forrest himself is quite
> > > unbelievable. It is as if Launcelot had been reborn in Memphis. He
> > > carried into
> > > battle a cavalry saber sharpened to a razor edge and actually
> > killed men with
> > > it. He actually did fool a Yankee commander into surrendering by
> > parading a
> > > single cannon back and forth in the distance as they parleyed. He
> > > actually did
> > > have twenty-nine horses shot from under him.
> > >
> > > THERE IS an ambiguity about this new interest in the Civil
> > > War. On the one hand it is the past recaptured, the authentic
> > recovery of the
> > > long agony during which this nation came to be what it is. Yet
> > there is also
> > > the temptation to yield to an historical illusion by which the
> > past seems to
> > > gain in stature and authenticity as it recedes and the present to be
> > > discounted
> > > because it is the here and now. We sense the illusion in the words of the
> > > old-timer, "Yes, they came through here," in which it is somehow
> > > implied that this place has existed in a long trivial aftermath
> > after its one
> > > day of glory. Perhaps the North is in for a mild case of the same
> > romanticism
> > > which the South recovered from over fifty years ago.
> > >
> > > The increased emphasis upon the fighting at the expense of
> > > ideology is probably good. One does well, anyway, not to apply
> > ideology too
> > > closely to that war. James Truslow Adams can talk about the March of
> > > Democracy
> > > and Bruce Catton can call the Union army a truly revolutionary army
> > > and perhaps
> > > they are right. Perhaps the War was really and truly fought over
> > > slavery. But the
> > > other case can be made too. It is difficult to see the yeoman farmers who
> > > largely made up the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of Northern
> > > Virginia as
> > > Southern Bourbons. The South had some reason to regard the fight as a
> > > continuation of the American Revolution. After all it was her soil
> > which was
> > > being invaded and her independence which was being denied. The South
> > > might even
> > > have the better of the constitutional argument; yet what won out seems to
> > > transcend all the arguments. For it is that extraordinary thing,
> > the American
> > > Union.
> > >
> > > * * *
> > > Jim & Nancy Forest
> > >
> > > Kanisstraat 5 / 1811 GJ Alkmaar / The Netherlands
> > >
> > > Jim's books: www.jimandnancyforest.com/books/
> > >
> > > Jim & Nancy web site: www.jimandnancyforest.com
> > >
> > > Photo albums: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/
> > > Photo collections: www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/collections/
> > > On Pilgrimage blog: http://jimandnancyonpilgrimage.blogspot.com/
> > > A Tale of Two Kidneys blog: http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/
> > > In Communion site: www.incommunion.org
> > > Forest-Flier Editorial Services: http://forestflier.com/
> > >
> > > * * *
> > > --
> > > An archive of all list discussion is available at
> > > https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/percy-l/
> > >
> > > Visit The Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy
> > >
> > > Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add
> > > @ sign when addressing email)
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > An archive of all list discussion is available at
> > https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/percy-l/
> >
> > Visit The Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy
> >
> > Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add
> > @ sign when addressing email)
> >
> > --
> > An archive of all list discussion is available at
> > https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/percy-l/
> >
> > Visit The Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy
> >
> > Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add
> > @ sign when addressing email)
>
> --
> An archive of all list discussion is available at
> https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/percy-l/
>
> Visit The Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy
>
> Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add
> @ sign when addressing email)