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

["Karl M. Terrell" <kterrell AT stokeswagner.com>]

Interesting comments and questions.  Thanks to all (or, I should say, 'thanks y'all,' since this is a list devoted to a Southern writer, though soon as I say that, I question ... did Percy use 'y'all' much in his dialogues?)

I don't think Slomo has any ambitions for methodology.  He's just hit on what seems to make sense for him.  Maybe he does have a bad relationship with his son, both pre-Slomo and present.  Maybe he does need a female Will Barrett to crash into him and set him up for a bigger picture.  It would be interesting to know more about him than could be presented in a 15 minute film.  

Personally, for what it's worth, I would be less interested in him had he always been 'Slomo.'  If he hadn't preceded this phase of his journey on the planet with a productive career inside the rational world, then his adoption of the Slomo-life wouldn't be worth remarking about.  But he did, and has done so in a thoughtful way, it seems, and that's a refreshingly radical life story ... very much in the vein of WP's stories, I thought.  Which is why I decided to share it with y'all.

Karl

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 10, 2014, at 6:27 PM, "Patrick Lynch" <padraig AT well.com> wrote:

In response to Janet Cantor's query, "Slomo" captures the scientific and active spirit of LITR, as well as "Second Coming," as others have mentioned. However, Slomo's journey seems more individualistic where as Will and More had others journeying with them and sought to include these in their "experiments" (in the long run, excluding Will's cave adventure). I wonder what has become of Slomo's son and what that relationship is like...

However, I am not sure that Slomo contains all of Percy's purpose. While spiritual, and while it attack malaise, Slomo's solution does not address a general malaise and a general 4 O'Clock feeling that Percy attends to in his work. Slomo HAS woken up on his own terms, but does it have a more universal methodology.  So far Dr More knows he can only diagnose the problem (as of C 2), and he knows he lacks the best treatment for what ails us all, but Slomo seems aware of what treatment works for him. With all due respect, has the filmmaker marginalized and simplified Slomo to such an extent that it becomes difficult to compare him to More?

I appreciate Lauren Stacy Berdy's observation that Slomo may need a female Will Barrett (or an Allison) to crash into him to set up a larger picture.

Thanks all for such thoughtful comments.
Patrick Lynch

53BF1C18.5050800 AT gmail.com" type="cite">

<compose-unknown-contact.jpg>

Lauren Stacy Berdy

July 10, 2014 at 4:04 PM

through the self the predicament of self becomes not only speakable but laughable! 
( kafka and his friends LAUGHED when the unnameable was named)

and

Dr. Percy has shown us to start with the world.  It is our aggregate.
Slomo laughs a lot and he seems to live very simply......... Maybe,he is some kind of Kafka on rollerbaldes?
( I sort of think he is a cousin to Ally in "The Second Coming") he is very careful with the words he uses and he makes good use of  everything including his luck in this his only world.
Maybe a female Will Barrett will crash into him on her roller blades? Then they can help hold each other up?
His story like our own is still unfolding?
Lauren Stacy Berdy

On 7/10/2014 5:26 PM, janetcantor37--- via Percy-L wrote:

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janetcantor37--- via Percy-L

July 10, 2014 at 2:26 PM

Does everyone on the Lists agree that this is what Walker Percy is driving at? I would like other feedback about this, please.

Janet Cantor

Glad you liked the Slomo video.  The idea of "do what you want" may not be particularly elegant, but when actually pursued by way of escaping what we call the rational world, in order to live a life of meaning -- whatever that might mean to a particular individual -- has value, I think.

Karl

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 10, 2014, at 12:52 PM, "Charles Cowherd" <charlescowherd AT hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> All,
>  I loved the video of "Slomo", gives a modern example of the spiritual
> crisis/ malaise at the heart of Percy's work. I am thinking about the
> contrast between his mantra "Do what you want" to the previously mentioned
> quotation/ repetition in Percy's work from the story of the Prodigal Son:
> "And he came to himself". THUS: "Do what you are". Just a thought.
>  Had less joy with the second chapter of LITR. I had just read "The Second
> Coming" and some of the similarities between the novels (as well as the
> others) become kind of grating. But we will see.
>  I am on tap for the 3rd chapter, which I will deliver on the 13th, if I
> am reading the schedule correctly. It's a much shorter chapter.
> All my best,
>    Charles
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Percy-L [mailto:percy-l-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of
> percy-l-request AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Sent: Monday, July 07, 2014 2:22 PM
> To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Percy-L Digest, Vol 108, Issue 9
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> Today's Topics:
>
>  1. Re: Love in the Ruins 'slow read' -- chapter 2 -- "July
>      First" (Karl M. Terrell)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2014 19:21:19 +0000
> From: "Karl M. Terrell" <kterrell AT stokeswagner.com>
> To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion"
>    <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>, "Percy-L@" <"Literary
>    andPhilosophicalDiscussionpercy-l"@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Subject: Re: [percy-l] Love in the Ruins 'slow read' -- chapter 2 --
>    "July First"
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>
> This is, I think, a satisfying explanation.  It's also what Percy followed
> in his own life, isn't it?
>
> After his recovery from tuberculosis, he turned his back on medicine as a
> career and, in your words, 'got off the stage and got quiet and grabbed a
> wife and lived a life of quiet joys or whatever came his way' .... For him,
> it was a life of study and writing, in Covington, La., which I understand he
> liked because it was "not a place."  I've read also, people in Covington
> would ask him what he did for a living, and when he said, "I'm a writer," no
> one could accept just that as an answer, and I'm guessing too many questions
> were asked that he didn't really want to explain.  Eventually, he took to
> responding - "I don't do anything."  Most, he reported, were quite content
> with that answer.
>
> I saw a great, short documentary (linked below) about a fellow who did the
> same thing, in his own way .... Dr. John Kitchins - now known as Slomo - a
> successful neurologist/psychiatrist in San Diego, originally from N.C., who
> made a lot of money, lived in what he called a mansion, an owner of
> expensive sports cars, an exotic animal farm, etc., etc.
>
> He met, one day, a 90 year old man who appeared healthy and satisfied, and
> asked him how he had achieved this.  The reply: "Do what you want."
>
> For the next 20 years, though, Dr. Kitchins continued to live "miserably,"
> he said, in what he called "the rational world."  At the end of each day,
> driving home in his 12-cylinder BMW, he would ask himself how much he had
> advanced himself that day spiritually and how much he had advanced himself
> financially.  Increasingly, he was advancing only on the latter front.
>
> Taking the lesson from the old man to "do what you want," he gave up his
> practice and his possessions - save for a small apartment - and today, Slomo
> as he now calls himself, spends most of his waking hours roller-blading on
> the boardwalk in San Diego, balancing with arms outstretched and one leg in
> the air behind him, which he likens it to flying (and provides something of
> a neurological explanation for this).  He spends his days flying ... which,
> in dreams, is interpreted usually as signifying happiness.
>
> If you've seen him there, or if you watch the video, your first thought will
> be that he is crazy.  He seems, instead, to have made a satisfactory
> adjustment to the comic and the religious (or spiritual, for Slomo speak of
> it in the latter way, not in any kind of 'church' way).
>
> http://nyti.ms/1mctVil
>
> Karl
>
> From: Percy-L [mailto:percy-l-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Lauren
> Stacy Berdy
> Sent: Monday, July 07, 2014 12:31 PM
> To: Percy-L@
> Subject: Re: [percy-l] Love in the Ruins 'slow read' -- chapter 2 -- "July
> First"
>
> Hello,
>
>
> He explains an idea from reading K, concerning the seemingly disconnected
> ideas of the comic and the religious.  Of LITR, he states: "In this novel, I
> was less interested in a search, in progressing from one category to the
> other, than I was in the exercise of the comic and the religious."
>
>
> Explainer's are part of the comedy, Dr. Percy knew this so well.
>
> We are all being part of the broad comedy routine we call living.
>
> The comedy comes into the sweep of his thought thru the door our our own
> lives.
> here goes.........
>
> as I understand from reading a selective reading ( very) of Kierkegaard and
> a long pull of  the good doctors diagnosis for all of us.
>
> The comedy is ourselves..........we ( us) are both actors and our own best
> audience. The doers and observers of our own actions and decisions.We lack a
> standpoint to view ourselves. To be fully revealed and fully known. We
> become the audience for our own tragic existence. WE ARE UNABLE TO GET OFF
> THE STAGE.
> DR. Percy is the ironist who is bringing the play  to our attention thru Dr.
> More. He is not judging he is if you will the "producer"/Play write of this
> play his "novel"
>
> so it is hilarious that we don't get off the stage and get quiet and "grab a
> wife and live a life" of quiet joys or whatever comes our way.
> Dr. More does just that at the end.
> (The other (Ellen) will help him revel himself to himself)
>
> Frankly, for me everything else in the book is helping us to tell  our
> story. Our human story.
>
> I think the trick here is to see the humor of ourselves and to pony up a bit
> by examining our own everyday lives as we move thru space and time.("on this
> spinning cinder") After all he was a excellent diagnostician wasn't he?
>
> Thank you very much for this excellent dialogue.
>
> Lauren Stacy Berdy
>
> On 7/6/2014 11:36 PM, Karl M. Terrell wrote:
>
> Hello everyone.  I am picking up the baton on the slow read, with these
> opening comments on chapter 2.
>
> Disclaimers: One, I am not an academic - just someone who has for many years
> loved Percy's prose, his ideas and observations on the human condition.
> Two, while I have read close to everything he's written, most of my reading
> was done quite a few years ago (I recently re-read The Moviegoer, though).
> And three, it's been 20 or more years since I last read LITR .... and, on
> this go-round, I haven't read past chapter 2 yet.  I am reading this 'as we
> go,' and almost as if reading it for the first time.
>
> I welcome any insights my few observations and questions might generate,
> from amateurs like me, and from those who've really studied Percy.
>
> I like the comment someone made recently, not to 'make a campsite' of LITR,
> but to think of it as a trail.  I thought about that a few times while
> reading this chapter, as I found myself trying to keep a handle on the main
> plot-line - turning back a few pages every so often, looking for plot-line
> clues maybe I might've missed - and just generally wondering where the story
> is going.
>
> In the end, I guess, plot/story line was not really Percy's forte; not what
> he was about.  Agree?  Disagree?  In any event, what carries me along is the
> wonderful writing and his observations, the vivid characters, and the
> descriptions of his world (real world Louisiana, set in an imagined future).
>
> I also found myself wondering: how reliable is our narrator?  I noted, for
> example, at least two passages where the characters More interacts with
> don't see the vines (Ruby the bartender at p. 88 and Max at p. 115 ["What
> was that about the vines?"] - Farrar, Straus, 1991 printing).  In other
> words, how much of what is presented in the story, as told to us by More, is
> (so to speak) actually happening?  At one or two points I felt a tinge of
> annoyance thinking about this, but by the end of the chapter I found myself
> enjoying the tension created by this uncertainty - Is he really being shot
> at by a sniper?  Is a Bantu uprising, or worse, really in the works?  See,
> end of subchapter 12, the conversation with Victor: "Now everything's got to
> go and everybody loses." / I rise unsteadily.  "Everybody?" / ... "Not you,
> Doc.  All you got to do is move in with your mama.  She'll do for you."
>
> Speaking of Victor, the opening scene in subchapter 13 - where Victor
> assists our addled hero through the door of the Little Napoleon,
> encountering Leroy Ledbetter - is a brilliant exposition of the subtleties
> of racial mores and customs in the Jim Crow world.
>
> So, what's the larger goal or idea of this novel, beyond the spinning of a
> yarn?  I'm aware of the Kierkegaard influence, so I googled that, and came
> across an interview Percy gave in 1974 - "Walker Percy Talks about
> Kierkegaard" (Journal of Religion).  My knowledge of Kierkegaard is very
> limited (covered in a few philosophy courses taken many years ago), and so I
> bring this up only to invite comment from those more knowledgeable in this
> connection.  My limited understanding is of K's role as the father of
> existentialism, and of his radical emphasis on the individual, distinct from
> and in reaction to the more systematic (right word?) approach to philosophy
> by Hegel.  The search for the true self seems to be Percy's point of
> connection with K.  Except, Percy said the following in the interview about
> LITR:
>
> He explains an idea from reading K, concerning the seemingly disconnected
> ideas of the comic and the religious.  Of LITR, he states: "In this novel, I
> was less interested in a search, in progressing from one category to the
> other, than I was in the exercise of the comic and the religious."
>
> Not sure I fully understand this concept, and would be interested in any
> thoughts one might have.  I get the comic end of things, but what is Percy
> really referring to when he terms More as a Bad Catholic? (Fourth
> disclaimer: I'm not a Catholic, and in fact count myself as agnostic - I
> believe my interest in Percy nonetheless stems from his emphasis on the
> search for meaning at the individual level, rather than at the
> church/man-made level ... and, I like the skewering of the Englishman
> wife-Doris runs off with, who dabbles in Oriental mysticism.  In the
> interview on K, he talks in the same vein about the communal hippies of the
> late 60s, early 70s).
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Karl
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Karl M. Terrell

July 10, 2014 at 1:36 PM

Glad you liked the Slomo video. The idea of "do what you want" may not be particularly elegant, but when actually pursued by way of escaping what we call the rational world, in order to live a life of meaning -- whatever that might mean to a particular individual -- has value, I think.

Karl

Sent from my iPhone

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Charles Cowherd

July 10, 2014 at 12:52 PM

All,
I loved the video of "Slomo", gives a modern example of the spiritual
crisis/ malaise at the heart of Percy's work. I am thinking about the
contrast between his mantra "Do what you want" to the previously mentioned
quotation/ repetition in Percy's work from the story of the Prodigal Son:
"And he came to himself". THUS: "Do what you are". Just a thought.
Had less joy with the second chapter of LITR. I had just read "The Second
Coming" and some of the similarities between the novels (as well as the
others) become kind of grating. But we will see.
I am on tap for the 3rd chapter, which I will deliver on the 13th, if I
am reading the schedule correctly. It's a much shorter chapter.
All my best,
Charles


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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Love in the Ruins 'slow read' -- chapter 2 -- "July
First" (Karl M. Terrell)


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

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2014 19:21:19 +0000
From: "Karl M. Terrell" <kterrell AT stokeswagner.com>
To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion"
<percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>, "Percy-L@" <"Literary
andPhilosophicalDiscussionpercy-l"@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [percy-l] Love in the Ruins 'slow read' -- chapter 2 --
"July First"
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Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

This is, I think, a satisfying explanation. It's also what Percy followed
in his own life, isn't it?

After his recovery from tuberculosis, he turned his back on medicine as a
career and, in your words, 'got off the stage and got quiet and grabbed a
wife and lived a life of quiet joys or whatever came his way' .... For him,
it was a life of study and writing, in Covington, La., which I understand he
liked because it was "not a place." I've read also, people in Covington
would ask him what he did for a living, and when he said, "I'm a writer," no
one could accept just that as an answer, and I'm guessing too many questions
were asked that he didn't really want to explain. Eventually, he took to
responding - "I don't do anything." Most, he reported, were quite content
with that answer.

I saw a great, short documentary (linked below) about a fellow who did the
same thing, in his own way .... Dr. John Kitchins - now known as Slomo - a
successful neurologist/psychiatrist in San Diego, originally from N.C., who
made a lot of money, lived in what he called a mansion, an owner of
expensive sports cars, an exotic animal farm, etc., etc.

He met, one day, a 90 year old man who appeared healthy and satisfied, and
asked him how he had achieved this. The reply: "Do what you want."

For the next 20 years, though, Dr. Kitchins continued to live "miserably,"
he said, in what he called "the rational world." At the end of each day,
driving home in his 12-cylinder BMW, he would ask himself how much he had
advanced himself that day spiritually and how much he had advanced himself
financially. Increasingly, he was advancing only on the latter front.

Taking the lesson from the old man to "do what you want," he gave up his
practice and his possessions - save for a small apartment - and today, Slomo
as he now calls himself, spends most of his waking hours roller-blading on
the boardwalk in San Diego, balancing with arms outstretched and one leg in
the air behind him, which he likens it to flying (and provides something of
a neurological explanation for this). He spends his days flying ... which,
in dreams, is interpreted usually as signifying happiness.

If you've seen him there, or if you watch the video, your first thought will
be that he is crazy. He seems, instead, to have made a satisfactory
adjustment to the comic and the religious (or spiritual, for Slomo speak of
it in the latter way, not in any kind of 'church' way).

http://nyti.ms/1mctVil

Karl

From: Percy-L [mailto:percy-l-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Lauren
Stacy Berdy
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2014 12:31 PM
To: Percy-L@
Subject: Re: [percy-l] Love in the Ruins 'slow read' -- chapter 2 -- "July
First"

Hello,


He explains an idea from reading K, concerning the seemingly disconnected
ideas of the comic and the religious. Of LITR, he states: "In this novel, I
was less interested in a search, in progressing from one category to the
other, than I was in the exercise of the comic and the religious."


Explainer's are part of the comedy, Dr. Percy knew this so well.

We are all being part of the broad comedy routine we call living.

The comedy comes into the sweep of his thought thru the door our our own
lives.
here goes.........

as I understand from reading a selective reading ( very) of Kierkegaard and
a long pull of the good doctors diagnosis for all of us.

The comedy is ourselves..........we ( us) are both actors and our own best
audience. The doers and observers of our own actions and decisions.We lack a
standpoint to view ourselves. To be fully revealed and fully known. We
become the audience for our own tragic existence. WE ARE UNABLE TO GET OFF
THE STAGE.
DR. Percy is the ironist who is bringing the play to our attention thru Dr.
More. He is not judging he is if you will the "producer"/Play write of this
play his "novel"

so it is hilarious that we don't get off the stage and get quiet and "grab a
wife and live a life" of quiet joys or whatever comes our way.
Dr. More does just that at the end.
(The other (Ellen) will help him revel himself to himself)

Frankly, for me everything else in the book is helping us to tell our
story. Our human story.

I think the trick here is to see the humor of ourselves and to pony up a bit
by examining our own everyday lives as we move thru space and time.("on this
spinning cinder") After all he was a excellent diagnostician wasn't he?

Thank you very much for this excellent dialogue.

Lauren Stacy Berdy

On 7/6/2014 11:36 PM, Karl M. Terrell wrote:

Hello everyone. I am picking up the baton on the slow read, with these
opening comments on chapter 2.

Disclaimers: One, I am not an academic - just someone who has for many years
loved Percy's prose, his ideas and observations on the human condition.
Two, while I have read close to everything he's written, most of my reading
was done quite a few years ago (I recently re-read The Moviegoer, though).
And three, it's been 20 or more years since I last read LITR .... and, on
this go-round, I haven't read past chapter 2 yet. I am reading this 'as we
go,' and almost as if reading it for the first time.

I welcome any insights my few observations and questions might generate,
from amateurs like me, and from those who've really studied Percy.

I like the comment someone made recently, not to 'make a campsite' of LITR,
but to think of it as a trail. I thought about that a few times while
reading this chapter, as I found myself trying to keep a handle on the main
plot-line - turning back a few pages every so often, looking for plot-line
clues maybe I might've missed - and just generally wondering where the story
is going.

In the end, I guess, plot/story line was not really Percy's forte; not what
he was about. Agree? Disagree? In any event, what carries me along is the
wonderful writing and his observations, the vivid characters, and the
descriptions of his world (real world Louisiana, set in an imagined future).

I also found myself wondering: how reliable is our narrator? I noted, for
example, at least two passages where the characters More interacts with
don't see the vines (Ruby the bartender at p. 88 and Max at p. 115 ["What
was that about the vines?"] - Farrar, Straus, 1991 printing). In other
words, how much of what is presented in the story, as told to us by More, is
(so to speak) actually happening? At one or two points I felt a tinge of
annoyance thinking about this, but by the end of the chapter I found myself
enjoying the tension created by this uncertainty - Is he really being shot
at by a sniper? Is a Bantu uprising, or worse, really in the works? See,
end of subchapter 12, the conversation with Victor: "Now everything's got to
go and everybody loses." / I rise unsteadily. "Everybody?" / ... "Not you,
Doc. All you got to do is move in with your mama. She'll do for you."

Speaking of Victor, the opening scene in subchapter 13 - where Victor
assists our addled hero through the door of the Little Napoleon,
encountering Leroy Ledbetter - is a brilliant exposition of the subtleties
of racial mores and customs in the Jim Crow world.

So, what's the larger goal or idea of this novel, beyond the spinning of a
yarn? I'm aware of the Kierkegaard influence, so I googled that, and came
across an interview Percy gave in 1974 - "Walker Percy Talks about
Kierkegaard" (Journal of Religion). My knowledge of Kierkegaard is very
limited (covered in a few philosophy courses taken many years ago), and so I
bring this up only to invite comment from those more knowledgeable in this
connection. My limited understanding is of K's role as the father of
existentialism, and of his radical emphasis on the individual, distinct from
and in reaction to the more systematic (right word?) approach to philosophy
by Hegel. The search for the true self seems to be Percy's point of
connection with K. Except, Percy said the following in the interview about
LITR:

He explains an idea from reading K, concerning the seemingly disconnected
ideas of the comic and the religious. Of LITR, he states: "In this novel, I
was less interested in a search, in progressing from one category to the
other, than I was in the exercise of the comic and the religious."

Not sure I fully understand this concept, and would be interested in any
thoughts one might have. I get the comic end of things, but what is Percy
really referring to when he terms More as a Bad Catholic? (Fourth
disclaimer: I'm not a Catholic, and in fact count myself as agnostic - I
believe my interest in Percy nonetheless stems from his emphasis on the
search for meaning at the individual level, rather than at the
church/man-made level ... and, I like the skewering of the Englishman
wife-Doris runs off with, who dabbles in Oriental mysticism. In the
interview on K, he talks in the same vein about the communal hippies of the
late 60s, early 70s).

Thoughts?

Karl








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