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

[Marshall Smith <mhsmithjrlaw AT gmail.com>]

I don't feel qualified to lead a discussion, but would enjoy participating.

Marshall Smith

Lexington, Mississippi  

On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 1:45 PM, Charles Cowherd <charlescowherd AT hotmail.com> wrote:

All,
   I would love to participate in the reading of "Love in the Ruins" and to
lead a weekly discussion, if necessary.
~ Charles R. Cowherd

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Walker Percy on the Cil War (RHONDA MCDONNELL)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 12:42:17 -0500
From: RHONDA MCDONNELL <rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com>
To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion"
        <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War
Message-ID: <BAY407-EAS300ECDBEE5D9CD0AE52299CE41B0 AT phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

My understanding of a slow read is that we (the list) divide the novel up
into sections (using Percy's divisions is natural).  Someone volunteers to
be a "discussion leader" of sorts for each section.  We discuss one section
a week (hence the term "slow read").  The discussion leader starts each week
off with an initial post reflecting on that section.  As long as we remain
connected to the text, I think it's fair to say that anything
goes--connections to contemporary politics, politics in the 1970s,
philosophy, science, Percy's other fiction, Percy's non-fiction, etc.

It looks like (based on my kindle edition) that the sections are as follows:
1. July Fourth
2. July First
3. July Second
4. July Third
5. July Fourth (again)
6. Five Years Later

So over a period of six weeks, we'd engage in a spirited discussion of
Percy's novel without straining those of us busy with other projects,
academic or otherwise.

I'd happily take the first section and have an initial post up by Monday,
June 30.

Then if five others would be willing to lead sections, we'd look for initial
section posts on Sunday/Monday of each following week: Section 2 on July
6/7; Section 3 on July 13/14; Section 4 on July 20/21; Section 5 on July
27/28; and Section 6 on Aug. 3/4.

To me, it seems like a brilliant way to spend July during a time when the
center is not holding.

Is anyone else game to take on a section?

Rhonda


Sent from my iPad

> On Jun 27, 2014, at 12:21 PM, "Karl M. Terrell"
<kterrell AT stokeswagner.com> wrote:
>
> In Love in the Ruins, Walker Percy described an imagined America in which
we ?have turned against each other.?  He wrote, ?There are Left states and
Knothead states, Left towns and Knothead towns, but no center towns.?
>
> I agree certainly with the comments that Percy skewered both left and
right, and that it was not his intent to make a political statement, per se.
I agree with you that, if here today, he would skewer (for example) Mayor
Bloomberg?s attempt to regulate the cup sizes of our favorite sugar
beverages (and I would laugh right along).
>
> Percy?s intent, at the political level, was to describe the potential for
the disintegration of our ?beloved USA.?  This is reflected in his borrowing
from Yeats? The Second Coming, when first describing the situation of the
LeftPapas and Knotheads: ?The center did not hold,? Percy described.  (As
Yeats spot-on put it, ?The ceremony of innocence is drowned / The best lack
all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity?).
>
> I know we shouldn?t drag the discussions on this list into a
political-bickering fest.  But, Percy did create his imaginary America out
of the cloth of the country in which he lived, and so some degree of
political comment, I think, is fair game.  He described, for example, the
Knothead Party as derived from the ?old Republican Party,? and which
initially called itself the Christian Conservative Constitutional Party
(until someone pointed out the acronym ? CCCP ? is the same as that for the
USSR in their alphabet).  ? And so, Percy pretty accurately foresaw the rise
of the Tea Party, and the center failing to hold.
>
> I perhaps fell victim to my own passions of the present era when
describing my personal disagreements with the current-day Knotheads.  I did
not mean to offend, or drag this list into a political discussion.  And I
can certainly agree not all Tea Partiers are racist ? but I can?t avoid my
ability to observe (being old enough to remember Jim Crow and the attitudes
then openly expressed, and knowing that such attitudes don?t just disappear)
that there are still plenty of racists out there.  Unfortunately, for the
Tea Party, it?s hard to deny that a lot of them have aligned themselves in
your camp.
>
> You?re obviously an intelligent and thoughtful person.  I accept your
denial of racist motives on the part of the Tea Party you know, and I
respect the fact you took offense at the suggestion of being lumped with
racist cretins.  But to deny those cretins are out there is a mistake.
>
> Someone made the suggestion of doing a ?slow read? of LITR on this list.
I don?t know how that works, but it sounds like a good idea to me.  I think
spirited comment and comparison to present-day political realities would be
appropriate, but I agree ?name-calling? should be avoided, and agree again
that it was not Percy?s intent to advocate any particular political
viewpoint.
>
> Karl Montague Terrell
>
>
>
> From: Percy-L [mailto:percy-l-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of
> janetcantor37--- via Percy-L
> Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2014 11:07 AM
> To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion
> Subject: Re: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War
>
> I have taken to answering some things in personal E-mails rather than
sullying the Lists with the mere political.
>
> But, sir, you go too far.
>
> I am a Tea Party member. I know dozens of other Tea Party members. I have
NEVER met or known indirectly one member who, to use President Obama's
phrase, has a smidgeon of racism in choosing to be a Tea Party member.
> When the president was elected, my liberal friend asked how I felt. I told
her, "He is my president. I hope he does good work for the country and may
G-d be with him."
>
> If it makes you feel better or superior to state what you have said here,
it is a free country and I would be the last one to try to stop you because
as a Tea Party member we are about protecting individual freedom and
remembering and honoring the Constitution and thus the Bill of Rights.
> Please, everybody, cease and desist from this name calling. I am no
liberal in my political persuasion. But I do not impugn the motives of
liberals. I like to think liberals want what is best for this country and I
would sincerely enjoy it so much better if the left would stop impugning my
motives, because, believe me, sir, I have the best motives in the world.
> I want a return to Constitutional government, a return to smaller
government that does not make up new rights everyday.
> I do not believe Walker Percy would be pleased with all of this business
of telling us what to eat, how to live, what the government has the right to
do to us to keep us in line. And I will best Percy would not describe the
knot heads as those who believe in an overweening government. I think that
would disturb him no end. Read Father Smith in the Thanatos Syndrome warning
us that "All tenderness leads to the gas chambers." I could write reams
here.
>
> But I will just ask, please, stop calling others you disagree with names.
It always amazes me that liberals love to consider Tea Party people closed
minded and savage. But do they ever listen to themselves? Listen to
yourself, for example, Mr. Terrell. I do not insult you or your motives.
Please stop insulting mine.
> Respectfully,
> Janet Cantor
>
> From: Karl M. Terrell <kterrell AT stokeswagner.com>
> To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion
> <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2014 9:56 AM
> Subject: Re: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War
>
> Well put, I say.  I have had Percy?s Knotheads on my mind ever since the
emergence of the Tea Party, and the ?birthers,? and all the others
viscerally at odds with the image of a black man in the White House. **
These folks are careful to avoid (most of the time) obvious racist comments,
but racism is clearly driving them.
> I am currently re-reading (after 30 or more years) the Strange Career of
Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward, and Kenneth Stampp?s revisionist history
(written in 1965) of Reconstruction.  Woodward teaches that Jim Crow didn?t
erect himself until the 1890s, following a period in which ? relatively
speaking ? there was a real progress in race relations.  Stampp points out
that the South?s retrospective loathing of Reconstruction was distorted to
an unwarranted extreme by histories written in 1890 ? 1910 sympathetic to
the fantasy of the patrician South.
> There was, at that time in 1890 - 1910, growing sympathies in the North to
the situation of the white man in the South vis a vis the Negro, prompted by
(among other factors) xenophobic reactions in the North to immigration from
southern and eastern Europe.  The sociology, anthropology and psychology
popular at that time supported a racist view, as did the law (e.g., Plessy v
Ferguson?s imprimatur of the demonstrably unsound and intellectually
bankrupt notion of ?separate but equal?).  Racism was its height then.  The
KKK re-emerged, the movie Birth of a Nation by D. W. Griffith, etc.
> These things come in waves.  Maybe the waves are weaker each time, but the
Tea Party wave is very real.  It is full of people who, at its most nakedly
obvious, are like that fellow out West, Clive Bunden I think is his name
(?Now, let me tell you another thing about the Negro ??).  This wave could
grow larger ? particularly if the GOP takes the Senate in November.   Or
maybe they?ll just make bigger asses out of themselves, and it will all blow
over.  That?s usually what happens.  It is, after all, what happened the
last time around, mid-century, when the segregationists made their last
stand
> In any event, we need Walker Percy, and his vision of the Knotheads.  I
like, therefore, what you said: ? Percy pointed to the power of irony to
rescue us from this condition.  It highlights hypocrisy and contradiction
for us.  It gives us a perspective outside of ourself to see ourselves and
therein lies the possibility of freedom.?
>  ** I bet Percy would have loved Randy Newman?s ironic song released
> during the 2012 election, I?m Dreaming of a White President (sung to
> the tune of White Christmas)  Karl Montague Terrell
>
>
>
>
> From: Percy-L [mailto:percy-l-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of
> Wade Riddick
> Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2014 10:18 AM
> To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War
>
>
> The Knots ARE the Tea Party, envisioned 30 - 40 years before they ever
came about.
> The knotheads - and thus the Tea Party - are not very new.  They are, in
fact, very old.  They represent a strain of Southern self-righteousness that
goes back well beyond the outbreak of the Civil War and trace themselves to
the imagined courtliness of the planter classes who secretly believed
confiscating the private property of black people by making them slaves was
really a form of liberty.  These were enemies to the Constitution.
>
> Rand Paul is a perfect example of the anti-liberty libertarian streak
> still alive in the neofeudalists among us.  He believes,
>
> 1)  Defending the value of the dollar is one of the most important jobs of
the federal government.  This is why he's mad at the Federal Reserve.  He
believes they're devaluing money by printing dollars (ignoring for the
moment that he's been wrong about imminent inflation for six years now;
money behaves differently in a depression, as Keynes proved).  The simple
fact is money is a good like any other in that its price (the interest rate)
can fluctuate due to demand.  This is not "devaluation" per se.
>
> 2)  Paul believes it's anti-property rights to force businesses not to
discriminate on the basis of race (or sex or religion) when doing business
with their customers.  He's against the public accommodations provisions of
the civil rights era laws.  This is a David Duke-esque message of "reverse
discrimination" or well-cultivated white Southern Christian victimhood
designed to appeal to the militantly overprivileged rightwing Pharisees who
now constitute his base.  This is why all these guys talk about succession
and state's right and nullification and other imaginary concepts that never
survived the 13th and 14th Amendments.  They're the sons and grandsons of
the white citizenship councils and sovereignty commissions that Walker Percy
loathed in the '60s and '70s and targeted squarely in _Love in the Ruins_.
>
> Combine 1 + 2: Paul believes it's a top job of the government to defend
the value of the greenback except when the hand holding it is black and then
corporation can infinitely devalue it to zero.
>
> What sense does that make?
>
> It makes plenty of sense when you realize there's a long tradition in the
South dating back to before _Dred Scot_ declaring that black people can't be
American citizens and thus they're free targets (Obama's citizenship
"controversy" fits into this pattern; they don't think he's a citizen for no
other reason than the color of his skin, even if they can no longer say so
openly).  I think this is why Percy was fascinated with Nazi death camps and
the culture of death.  American racism in the South fit in a literary sense
with religious and class warfare in Europe.
>
> Rand Paul got his political theory from Ayn Rand who believed Christianity
was for rubes and altruism was a form of delusion.  She literally worshipped
psychopaths for their "will" - i.e., lack of conscience.  (Wouldn't that
just tickle Goebbels who said, "Intellectual activity is a danger to the
building of character?")  It's an irony but no mere coincidence that so many
white Evangelical Christians now believe the same.  They're not Christians
as much as they are Southern Nationalists in the stripe of Thomas Jefferson
(an historical figure I've come to loath the more I age and read).
>
> The modern Tea Party pushes for voting restrictions when the original Tea
Party stood for no taxation without representation.
>
> The fact is the modern Tea Party hates liberty.  Liberty isn't just
> the freedom to do something like speak your mind - it's also the
> obligation to use that freedom responsibly on behalf of a better
> society.  Liberty, to paraphrase the founding fathers, is the
> responsible exercise of self-government.  Tea Party anger is nothing
> but incoherent id, barbarian-yawping like Jim Bond.  (Oh, God.  Stop
> me from having another Faulkner episode.)  A true conservative
> stresses social responsibility.  A true conservative doesn't lie about
> science.  These people aren't conservatives.  They're radicals
> hell-bent on overturning campaign finance laws so they can turn
> America into a newly reborn plantation economy where we're all
> corporate serfs.  Since the Civil War the South has had one central,
> consistent response to economic development which is to drive down the
> cost of labor - (infinitely to zero, in the case of slavery).  This is
> the "moonlight and magnolias" economic strategy that fo
 cuses on tax credits/giveaways to rich businessmen because apparently they
are lazy and have to be paid to make money and create jobs whereas workers
have to be punished because they work for a living and thus are, well, in
need of punishment.  (Refusing to accept matching Medicaid funds is a great
example of believing it builds character to ration medical care to the
sick.)
>
> Percy pointed to the power of irony to rescue us from this condition.  It
highlights hypocrisy and contradiction for us[1].  It gives us a perspective
outside of ourself to see ourselves and therein lies the possibility of
freedom.  Listen to John Kyl on the floor of the Senate saying with a
straight face, "This may not be a factually true statement," and tell me the
Republicans aren't so lost they no longer have even irony?
>
> Being lost is the human condition.  It's when you think you've found
yourself all on your own that you are truly in the dark.  Anyone who's ever
understood grace knows that.
>
> Wade Riddick
>
> 1.  Without this tension, "meaning" itself would be impossible; things
have to be different or "contradict" to fall into he same category and
define a term.  You must have different colors like red and blue to have a
concept of "color."  Percy was probably thinking of all of these linguistic
currents and eddies as he was manipulating old Southern contradictions and
ironies for his novels.
>
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