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

[lowry.charles AT gmail.com]

From “The City of the Dead”:

“The cemeteries, true cities of the dead, seem at once livelier and more 
exotic to the visitor newly arrived, say, from the upper Protestant South 
where cemeteries are sedate ‘memorial gardens,’ or from New York City, where 
mile after mile of Queens is strewn with gray stone, a vast gloomy moraine.  
A New Orleans cemetery is a city in miniature, streets, curbs, iron fences, 
its tombs above ground—otherwise, the coffins would float out of the 
ground—little two-story dollhouses complete with doorstep and lintel.  The 
older cemeteries are more haphazard, tiny lanes as crooked as old Jerusalem, 
meandering aimlessly between the cottages of the dead….

“They, the little cities, are liveliest on All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day 
when families turn out to fix up the family tomb, polishing or whitewashing 
the stone, scrubbing the doorstep for all the world like Baltimore housewives 
scrubbing the white steps of row houses….  Even now, All Saints’ and All 
Souls‘ have a more festive air than otherwise—should they not?—startlingly 
different from the unctuous solemnity of Forest Lawn.  Crowds throng the tiny 
streets, housekeeping for the dead, setting out flowers real and plastic, 
perhaps regilding the lettering, while vendors hawk candy and toys for the 
children, and on All Souls’ saying a not noticeably sad prayer or two for the 
dead.”

Et fidelium animae per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace.

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