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

["Beck, David A" <dabeck AT iupui.edu>]

Tom More (LiR), I think.

David Beck
Senior Lecturer
English Department
Indiana University and Purdue University at Indianapolis
425 University Boulevard, CA 343-E
Indianapolis, IN 46202
317-278-2550

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From: Percy-L <percy-l-bounces+dabeck=iupui.edu AT lists.ibiblio.org> on behalf of Henry P. Mills <wppdirector AT gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2023 11:43 AM
To: Percy-L <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [External] [percy-l] Which Percy character spoke last week's quote?

 

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Dear Percy-L:

For those who guessed, the speaker behind the quote in the previous post is none other than Tom More in LiR.

"Suppose you ask God for a miracle and God says yes, very well. How do you live the rest of your life?”

Additional quotes from Tom follow below for those interested. Comments are welcome.

Thanks, Tom (and Walker Percy!),

Best wishes,

Henry

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More quotes from Tom in LiR:

"For the world is broken, sundered, busted down the middle, self ripped from self and man pasted back together as mythical monster, half angel, half beast, but no man...Some day a man will walk into my office as a ghost or beast or ghost-beast and walk out as a man, which is to say sovereign wanderer, lordly exile, worker and waiter and watcher."

"He registered a dizzy 7.6 mmv over Brodmann 32, the area of abstractive activity. Since that time I have learned that a reading over 6 generally means that a person has so abstracted himself from himself and from the world around him, seeing things as theories and himself as a shadow, that he cannot, so to speak, reenter the lovely ordinary world. Such a person, and there are millions, is destined to haunt the human condition like the Flying Dutchman."

"What needs to be discharged is the intolerable tenderness of the past, the past gone and grieved over and never made sense of. Music ransoms us from the past, declares an amnesty, brackets and sets aside the old puzzles. Sing a new song. Start a new life, get a girl, look into her shadowy eyes, smile."

"Lord, grant that my work increase knowledge and help other men. Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man’s destruction. Failing that, Lord, grant that my article in Brain be published before the destruction takes place."

-- Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins