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

[Doug Brown <wply1223 AT gmail.com>]

I have received a number of encouraging comments from readers in the Percy-L community, either here at the listserv or directly to my email. All of them have delighted me, but perhaps none have delighted me more than this one from Mr Lowry. (I hope this community will forgive me - a newbie here - for a bit of fanboy gushing: the novelist Ron Rash left me a charming and funny voicemail telling me how much he enjoyed my book.)

Part of what I appreciate about Chuck Lowry's posting is that he seems to lean into the irony that is ingrained in Percy's writing. Would Walker Percy love either me or Mr Lowry? Was Percy as misanthropic as some of his writing might suggest? Or was his misanthropy an ironic veneer? Percy certainly loved his characters and had compassion for them.

And did Walker Percy have a plan for our lives? I'll hazard a guess that his left eyelid would start to twitch at the suggestion. Clearly, the title of my book is an ironic play on the old _expression_ that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. But any plan that Percy might have for us has less to do with moral dogma or a prescription for happiness, and has more to do with the frameworks we construct (or inherit) that shape how we see the narratives of our lives.

That's what I appreciate most about Mr Lowry's post. He acknowledges what I see as the key point of my book: that language and literature and narrative all matter - whether it is the poetry and stories that we read, or it is the stories we tell ourselves and each other about our own lives. 

Thank you, Chuck Lowry.

Doug Brown

Asheville, NC 

Walker Percy Loves You and Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life

On Sat, Aug 7, 2021 at 12:18 PM Charles Lowry <lowry.charles AT gmail.com> wrote:

Honestly, I have never believed that Walker Percy loved me, or that he would have loved me if he had known me.  I can say with certainty that Dr. Thomas More would not have loved me, since he says in Love In The Ruins, "I believe in God and the whole business but I love women best, music and science next, whiskey next, God fourth, and my fellowman hardly at all."  I acknowledge that I am a small and insignificant part of the final category on that list, loved "hardly at all."

Doug Brown has not convinced me that Walker Percy loves me, or that Walker Percy has an excellent plan for the rest of my life.  My personal view is that if Walker Percy and I had encountered one another in life, we would have handed one another along a ways on the dark journey, "all for good and selfish reasons."  It always does come back to The Moviegoer, doesn't it?

Anyway, after some delay, I finished the book so graciously recommended to us by our esteemed (an actual description, not a formulaic insert) moderator.  Although I did not necessarily agree with all the author's literary judgments, I learned something important from this book.  I learned how one person was able to integrate literature into life, and for those of us who are not academicians, that is an extremely valuable insight.

Several years ago, at a symposium sponsored by Loyola New Orleans, I gave a small and imperfect talk on The Moviegoer.  I took as my starting point Percy's "ordinary Thursday at 4:00" conundrum: if I read history and philosophy and essays and biography and novels and theology all morning, shall I be a better person after lunch? The twist I gave it was attuned to the theme of the conference: if I read The Moviegoer all morning, shall I be a better person after lunch?  I realize now that I was probably trying to do what Doug Brown did, though he did it more poignantly and at greater length.  We need to know why this matters.  We need to know why The Moviegoer matters, or "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" or South of the Border, West of the Sun or Crime and Punishment or "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" or the Aeneid or The Divine Comedy or Don Quixote or any of it.  Doug Brown has offered a solid perspective on how literature not only enriches life (we have surely all thought about that) but also fits into the gristle and ligaments and aches and pains of life.  To non-professional readers, that is what makes literature matter.  Bravo, Doug Brown!

Chuck Lowry

Brooklyn, New York 

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