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

[RHONDA MCDONNELL <rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com>]

Great question! I did a little sleuthing. Percy had The Orchard Keeper and Blood Meridian in his collection, which is now housed at the UNC-Chapel Hill Wilson library. I'm not yet living close enough to Chapel Hill to check whether there are indications that Percy read the books. I wonder if he ever mentioned McCarthy in his later interviews? As for McCarthy, in the article , "The Intertextual 'Suttree': Walker Percy, Cummings, and Community," Scott D. Yarborough argues that The Last Gentleman has a profound intertextual relationship to Suttree. That suggests that McCarthy read some Percy. I think they would have liked each other's work, but I can't be sure. Not without a lot more research. What does anyone else know?

Rhonda McDonnell

Member of the Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism

Texas Tech University

"You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." ~Walker Percy~
  

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From: Percy-L <percy-l-bounces+rhonda_mcdonnell=msn.com AT lists.ibiblio.org> on behalf of Michael Martin Serafin <michael_serafin AT hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, June 16, 2023 9:25 AM
To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [percy-l] Percy & McCarthy?

 

Lot of tributes poring in for Cormac McCarthy. Did Percy and McCarthy ever cross paths? Considering Percy and Flannery O'Connor knew each other, and dark violence was a large part of O'Connor's fictional world, as was McCarthy's, that is why I ask the question.

Michael Serafin