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

[Jim Forest <jhforest AT gmail.com>]

https://www.lawliberty.org/2019/05/31/prophets-for-our-age-of-suicide/

Jessica Hooten Wilson reviews John Desmond’s Walker Percy, Fyodor Dostoevsky and the Age of Suicide: “Love in the Ruins is set a dozen years in the future from when Percy published it, set in 1983 in an apocalyptic USA, vines are sprouting everywhere and taking hold, violence is an acceptable form of arguing oppositional ideologies, love equals orgies and multiple sexual partners, and demonic forces sell technology and scientific advances to eager consumers. Percy borrowed the idea from Dostoevsky’s The Demons. Although both novels appear panoramic in scale, the problems arise from persons who, like Dostoevsky’s title suggests, act devilishly, and the evil is contagious. Both novels depict worlds where no one believes in God any longer. Dostoevsky predicted, if God does not exist, all things are permitted. Going a step further, Percy argues that this explains ‘the rise of all these ideologies.’ Anyone want to live in these fictional brave new worlds? Cultural diagnoses like these are easy and go rather unheeded if an author only foretells gloom and doom. The prophets of genius must also elucidate the cause and offer an alternative vision. Novelists like Dostoevsky and Percy strive to prevent World War III not by lamenting the destruction, but by depicting narratively how a person’s erroneous perception of herself may lead to nuclear holocaust.”

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recipient of the International Thomas Merton Society’s “Louie” award:

The Root of War is Fear: Thomas Merton's Advice to Peacemakers  

www.jimandnancyforest.com/2016/06/root-of-war-is-fear/ 

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