Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

percy-l - Re: [percy-l] From Leonard Hughes: Is Will's search an impossiblity in 2025?

percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org

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

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Wade Riddick" <wriddick AT usa.net>
  • To: <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [percy-l] From Leonard Hughes: Is Will's search an impossiblity in 2025?
  • Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2025 11:31:50 -0400

I think the far more interesting question is what's happened to the rest of us
in the last fifty years as we've recognized the "power" in being watched. Is
Will's people-watching "voyeurism" now impossible? Are we now a nation of
posers and influencers waiting to snag our few seconds of attention so we can
pimp our primped-up selves out for a slice of corporate cheese?

Was Mark Zuckerberg's genius to defund Walker Percy's Hollywood with it's 99
takes to get life perfect and replace our fantasy entertainment with an
outsourced, low-rent version in which we turn our lives into Facebook TV shows
on top of which Zuck could plaster his ads?

Only now, there's no studio censor squatting on the Confederate basement/crazy
uncle in the attic?

Are the days of a Will posing as the Marlin Perkins/Jacques Cousteau of
National Geographic people watching in our "natural" environments in decline
because now, as Shakespeare prophesied, all the world's truly a stage - and we
now know we're all players, that's to the tyranny of that electronic eye in
our pockets?

We will never be "authentic" again?

I'd note that British slang is falling apart in Britain. The kids are plugged
into digital communities so much, they can't speak the lingo with their
folks.

Are our lives to be filled with the rage of Lancelot because we're always
placed in comparison to the airbrushed perfection of other people's lives who
do a better job as posers? Even if we don't feel like we fall short, some of
us hate finding out everybody does life differently.

Contempt has a bad habit of being contagious.

We seem plagued at the moment by recovery from an actual plague (Covid), waves
of strangers in the country (immigrants), the ongoing hangovers of a financial
panic (2008) - not the mention the anti-social media disruption of journalism,
reading and community. Talk about opportunities for getting lost in the
cosmos.

We've been looking for salvation in the wrong places for fifty years and the
trends toward materialism only seem to be getting worse.

Wade Riddick

------ Original Message ------
Received: Mon, 16 Jun 2025 03:49:27 PM EDT
From: Leonard <leonardh6363 AT gmail.com>
To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [percy-l] From Leonard Hughes


*Chapter 2 (through section 5)*

5. I couldn’t help but think of how 2025 students would react to
Will’s
pivot from birdwatching to people watching through his telescope. Is he a
voyeur, a peeping Tom, or does he have some other reason for his
actions? *That
telescope breaks him out of his difficulty to get beyond the cloud of
everydayness. (I think there are similarities to Dr. More's instrument in
"Love in the Ruins"--sorry to keep jumping ahead!)*



  • Re: [percy-l] From Leonard Hughes: Is Will's search an impossiblity in 2025?, Wade Riddick, 07/09/2025

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page