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

[Patrick Lynch <padraig AT well.com>]

Note: Like others, I enjoy Percy from an amateur (in its original sense) perspective.

We read about the times before and after the opening July Fourth section. There is a Bantu uprising and More has turned over the lapsometer to Art Immelmann. He also has holed up Moira, Lola, and Ellen in a motel as the sand pits in the golf course; Art has loosed the lapsometer on Knothead, Bantu, and others while imminent destruction may happen, according to Dr More.

 

Currently I am reading Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (Vol. 1) and it seems to parallel one of the points Percy may be making in this section, as Knausgaard meditates on art and how it changes over time:

 

The fact that things other and mysterious were relevant to us had led my thoughts to angels, those mystical creatures who not only were linked to the divine but also to humanness, and therefore expressed the duality of the nature of otherness better than any other figure. At the same time there was something deeply dissatisfying about both the paintings and angels, since they both belonged to the past in such a fundamental way, that part of the past we have put behind us, that is, which no longer fit in, into this world we had created where the great, the divine, the solemn, the holy, the beautiful, and the true were no longer valid entities but quite the contrary, dubious or even laughable[Emphasis added.] … As far as Norwegian art is concerned, the break came with Munch; it was in his paintings that, for the first time, man took up all the space. Whereas man was subordinate to the Divine through to the Age of Enlightenment, and to the landscape he was depicted in during Romanticism - the mountains are vast and intense, the sea is vast and intense, even the trees are vast and intense while humans, without exception, are small - the situation is reversed with Munch. It is as if humans swallow up everything, make everything theirs. The mountains, the sea, the trees, and the forests, everything is colored by humanness. Not human actions and external life, but human feelings and inner life. [Emphasis added.]  … We understand everything, and we do so because we have turned everything into ourselves. Nowadays, as one might expect, all those who have occupied themselves with the neutral, the negative, the nonhuman in art, have turned to language, that is where the incomprehensible and the otherness have been sought, as if they were to be found on the margins of human _expression_, on the fringes of what we understand, and of course, actually, that is logical: where else would it be found in a world that no longer acknowledges that there is a beyond? (pp. 220-22 in Knausgaard, My Struggle, Vol. 1, (trans. Don Bartlett), New York: Archipelgo Books, 2012)

 

While there is a lot here about art, I think it also reflects More’s point of view in this section. He talks of angelism and bestialism. Everything becomes shaped by his humanness, his perspective. Everything, the women, the lapsometer, the Bantus, the Knotheads, reflect him and where he currently exists. Winner in The Pit (almost by accident), he now must go out into the world as it is in this section.

 

In one sense, this section is More in The Pit, not as himself, but as Mr. Ives.  He knows what others do not. His responses are determined by his inner comprehension. Yes, he is abstracted from himself by love/lust for the three women, and yes, this Pit (with fire and brimstone burning in the sand pits of the gold course) may even be the Inferno, and yes, More finds it very more difficult to breath and stay awake, because some kind of revelation is at hand.  (Are the three women parallels to the three temptations of Christ in the desert in some way?) Dr. More will see it all come together in his own epiphany, similar to Mr. Ives understanding of what he perceives everything is about in the Pit section. This may be because all of this is a much needed distraction. He must be distracted because, as Mr Ives must shut down, he will reveal a frightening and hard-to-express revelation about what Samantha’s death means to him. (He will also need a grace to process this. Three graces in Lola, Moira, and Ellen?)

 

In a comic sense (very much like the Divine Comedy and very much as Lauren Stacy Berdy has already hinted), More for this section seems very much Percy’s “man on the train.” Snipers are shooting at him; colleagues are attacking him; only a few like Ellen and Victor truly commiserate with him. He annotates every moment with a keen sense of that moment and he details every move. He answers all questions curtly because he ‘s “focused.” Here arises the comedy because he is focused on the moment (shades of Kiekegaard) and the current crisis. Yet he remains distracted by needing to “save” the women and his lapsometer. He has a clear antagonist in Immelmann (with a nod to the Satanic overtures many here have mentioned). In fact, he resembles a Flannery O’Connor’s character with a gun (lapsometers?) pressed against the head.

 

But is all of this some kind of strange grace that Percy has assembled, leading to More’s very quick revelation about what happened toward the end of Samantha’s life? Is this the Pit where More reveals to himself, as he revealed to the crowd the “truth” about Mr Ives, the utter truth necessary to seek a grace? To comprehend a grace? Are we joining More in answering what may be a key question, “If only––If only we hadn’t been defeated by humdrum humming present time and missed it, missed ourselves, missed everything” (p. 374)? Is he finding a way to step past his broke heart and find the grace to return to the present and his present life, and consequently to be present to his own life and “pineal self”?

 

And what of the lines from Christmas carols/songs that echo throughout the chapter? Where do they fit into all of this?

Thanks to  all the thoughtful consideration of the previous section (in the the future subsequent section.

I offer these as thoughts to begin consideration of Chapter 5 of our online discussion. Have at them, reinforce them, undermine them, ignore them. Please accept these amateur considerations as a mere invitation for more wonderful thoughts, draft-like as they are.

Patrick Lynch