You’ve outlined an interested essay, Doug. One of these years you ought to write it up and submit to one of the SAMLA sessions on Percy (there’s usually one or two sessions). I’d love to hear more extended thoughts on it.
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 31, 2021, at 5:15 PM, Doug Brown <wply1223 AT gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Rhonda and other Percyites,
First, I'm sorry for being so absurdly slow responding. I'm not sure how much I can add to the idea of the Foote/Percy Iliad & Odyssey, since my thought was little more than that - a thought. Here goes.
My one big insight into Percy's writing is that all six novels form a single progression of a state of mind. What I mean is, the novels trace out a "quality of consciousness" (a Flannery O'Connor phrase) from book to book that shows a sort of trajectory
of mental breakdown and return to health.
- Binx Bolling - free floating anxiety
- Will Barrett - dislocation and fugue states
- Tom More - deepening mental health issues
- Lance Lamar - homicidal breakdown and imprisonment
- Will and Allie - split personality (using the terms of the time, or dissociative identity disorder, if you prefer) eventually reintegrated and reconciled. Think of the alternating perspectives in alternating chapters with the two characters ultimately coming
together.
- Tom More again - a relatively healthy-minded character, for a Percy novel at least.
What does this have to do with Foote's Civil War or an American Odyssey? Maybe not much, to be honest. But just as Homer's Iliad was epic in scope and his Odyssey was the mythic journey home of one person, so too, I think, an American Odyssey is likely
to be rooted in the individual's efforts to come to terms with the insanity of our time, emerge from the violence and violations of our past, and find some kind of substantial healing. (I'm not discounting the hard work of moving our entire country and culture
forward, I'm just locating the American Odyssey in the individual.)
Does this make any sense at all? I'm totally fine with anyone here telling me that I've missed the point or gone off the deep end.
I just know that Percy's writing has helped me find substantial healing through the sacraments of the ordinary that I receive in my own life here in my beloved Asheville with my beloved dog and beloved friends. That seems like an American Odyssey to me.
Thank you for your indulgence for this long post.
Doug Brown
Nice observation, Doug. Foote even uses the Iliad (I think) as a structuring model. I remember him writing to Percy about that. I’d love for you to expand on your thoughts if you have time!!
Rhonda
Sent from my iPhone
Hi Rhonda and all y'all,
I've often thought (not uniquely, I'm sure) that Foote's writings and Percy's writings form a sort of American Iliad and Odyssey, especially if by odyssey we mean a spiritual journey in response to the long tail of the war. Sounds a bit cliched when I
write it out plainly like that, but the idea has emotional resonance for me.
Doug
Wow Greg, that must have been something to hear them reminisce. Can you image Foote’s voice raised in that sort of parental frustration that Huger described!? The Walker Percy Weekend is a Percy event I haven’t attended. Maybe someday … after
the current apocalypse. I can’t help but wonder what the two of them (Percy and Foote) would make of our current social and cultural woes? It’s both the future Percy imagined and the past Foote illuminated.
There’s an interesting thought — if I ever get a minute it’d be interesting to read Foote’s Civil War and Love in the Ruins as being in conversation. How might each inform the other? Hmmmm—anyone looking for a dissertation topic?
Happy Saturday all!
Rhonda
Sent from my iPhone
Thanks for posting. I really enjoyed reading the collection a years ago. Not only did I gain a richer chronological understanding of Percy’s evolution as a writer and what life events were occurring with each of his novels, the esteem,
humor, and friendship between these two was enviable. Lifelong male friendships particularly seem uncommon—rarer, still, it seems to be documented in such a wonderful collection of letters.
p.s. a few years ago, at the Walker Percy Festival in St. Francisville, both Percy’s daughter Mary Pratt and Foote’s son Huger spoke on a panel about growing up with their fathers. I don’t remember much now, but do recall that Huger said
that Shelby got annoyed with Huger’s constant practice on the drums in their house in Memphis, when he was growing up. At one point, Shelby reached his breaking point and stormed into the room, enraged, declaring “Goddammit, stop that noise! I’m trying to
finish the Battle of Vicksburg up here!”—or something to that effect.
Greg Plemmons
Nashville, TN
Hello fellow Percy folks,
There is a fascinating hour-long CSPAN interview of Shelby Foote on YouTube that was conducted not long after the publication of The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy, edited by Jay Tolson,
in 1997. Below is a brief description of the book.
How I love that lovely Southern accent Shelby Foote has! The documentary reminds me of the first experience of reading their letters. Reading their responses to each other through the years, the mix of topics
they engaged in, the love and respect they had for each other, was such a privilege.
I think of how Will Barrett wandered to Civil War battlegrounds while in his fugues, and later how he used a cave previously used by the Confederate army for his grand experiment in The Second Coming. Certainly
all Southerners of their time were haunted by that war, but I wonder to what degree Percy’s references to the Civil War in his novels and essays reflect discussions they had together.
Now that I live in Virginia, I’m surrounded by the vestiges of that war, though of course many statues have come down. I’ve traveled often to Gettysburg, and after my first trip there, I read Foote’s section
on Gettysburg aloud to my family. Of all the Civil War history I’ve read, Foote is my go to, perhaps a bit out of affection but more out of respect for the stellar scholarship he did.
I wonder if anyone else has any comments about their letters in the collection or about Foote’s Civil War masterpiece or even about the Ken Burns series on the Civil War, which features Foote.
The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy (W.W. Norton, 1997)
In the late 1940s, Walker Percy and Shelby Foote, friends since their teenage years in Greenville, Mississippi, began a correspondence that would last until Percy’s death
in 1990. Their letters provide a rich record of an enduring literary and personal friendship. Walker Percy, winner of the National Book Award, wrote six novels and two volumes of philosophical writing. Shelby Foote’s reputation rests less on his five works
of fiction than his massive three-volume narrative history of the Civil War that he started in the early 1950s and completed in 1974. In their letters Percy and Foote openly discuss their ambitions, artistic doubts, and personal problems with intelligence,
good-natured ribbing, and a large dose of self-mockery. https://documentarystudies.duke.edu/books/correspondence-shelby-foote-and-walker-percy
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