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

[RHONDA MCDONNELL <rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com>]

Thank you Chuck!! I guess I could have googled it, but I was going with the old-fashioned torture trying to remember on my own. Now I’m feeling as though Confederacy ought to be on my summer list. I haven’t read it in years!

Rhonda 

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 21, 2024, at 8:39 PM, lowry.charles AT gmail.com wrote:



The long-suffering mother is named Irene.  Here is an oddity of nomenclature in the book: Ignatius J. Reilly is a phrase that no doubt is burned into the literary consciousness of the vast majority of this list.  In only one place in the book do we learn that the J stands for Jacques, the name of Ignatius’ late father.

Why do I think that if Thelma had really written Confederacy, Irene would not be storing wine bottles in the oven……

Chuck Lowry

Brooklyn, NY

On Apr 21, 2024, at 8:00 PM, RHONDA MCDONNELL <rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com> wrote:

 Marcus, I had to grin at your conspiracy theory! You’d think if Thelma Toole had tweaked the mother character — what was her name? All my books are boxed — that she would have made the mother a more sympathetic character. But if she was as nutty as you say, maybe she’d have thought she did!

Rhonda 

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 21, 2024, at 1:47 PM, Marcus Smith <marcus AT loyno.edu> wrote:



Count me as an amused skeptic of the Percy authorship theory.  But I could get quickly enthusiastic about an argument that the " real author" is Toole's mother, Thelma.  She was nutty as a fruit cake, steel willed, vainglorious, and as narcissistic as Trump.  She had the MS of Confederacy in her possession for decades. And the one she handed to me (a second or third carbon copy) to hold for Percy (who missed his appointment with her) disappeared in the transcription process.  At the very least, Thelma must have tweaked herself in the figure of Ignatius's mother.

There it is.  The perfect literary forgery.  Walker would have loved it!

On Thu, Apr 18, 2024 at 11:00 AM <percy-l-request AT lists.ibiblio.org> wrote:

percy-l digest Thu, 18 Apr 2024

Table of contents:

* 1 - Re: [[percy-l] ] Is Percy Toole? - hughesl6363 AT aol.com
* 2 - [[percy-l] ] Call for Papers: SAMLA Nov. 15-17, 2024 - Karey Perkins
  <kareyperkins AT gmail.com>

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message-ID: <2128819116.433318.1713393167818 AT mail.yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 22:32:47 +0000 (UTC)
From: hughesl6363 AT aol.com
Subject: Re: [[percy-l] ] Is Percy Toole?

 I'd love to hear the speaker's argument. I think Percy's sense of humor is
often overlooked. He has such a playful, facetious attitude. Who hasn't
laughed out loud at places in Love in the Ruins? When Conde Nast Traveler
asked him to write a piece on Southern cuisine, he didn’t wax poetic about New
Orleans restaurants; instead, he couldn’t resist the opportunity to tell them
about his favorite eatery, the Covington-area Waffle House.

I discovered an extended case of his playfulness some years back when I began
to see in The Moviegoer many references to, of all things, The Great Gatsby,
despite his frequent remarks about his influences being mainly European.
(Check out the Mississippi Quarterly, Vol. 73, No. 4. Please!)

I thought about chasing down the possibility Percy may have written Toole’s
masterpiece myself, but I ran into skeptics, but consider the similarity of
these two images:

“There came Perry [Como], seventy years young and snowy-thatched but hale as
old Saint Nick himself, still wearing his open cardigan, color off a bit, face
orange, lips violet, but all in good 3-D.”—Love in the Ruins, p. 97.

“ ’Perry Como’s face is all green,’ Mrs. Levy said with great hostility. ‘He
looks like a corpse. You’d better take this set back to the shop.’ “—A
Confederacy of Dunces, p. 82.

Percy couldn’t have been alluding to Toole, since Love in the Ruins was
published before he ever saw Toole’s book. It just seems to me that such oddly
specific references have to be more than coincidental.

It’s not really hard to imagine the writer who sent Colonel Ringo’s sidekick
flying off that bridge astride his Harley-Davidson in Love in the Ruins might
have conjured up the comical antics of Ignatius Reilly.

--Leonard Hughes
Hyattsville, MD     On Tuesday, April 16, 2024 at 08:19:37 PM EDT, Karl M.
Terrell <kterrell AT stokeswagner.com> wrote:


I agree. Knowing Percy’s writing style and interests, it is hard to imagine
Percy sitting down to write Confederacy of Dunces.
Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 16, 2024, at 7:27 PM, RHONDA MCDONNELL <rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com>
wrote:



 Hmmm reminiscent of the Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare camp (but inverted)
or something like it?Confederacy of Dunces, to my remembrance, shares little
with Percy’s fiction stylistically or thematically. Nor was it Percy’s humor.
Percy was sly and clever typically, not scatalogical in the way Toole is with
Ignatius Reilly’s farting or broad in the way buffoonery is used to such
effect by Toole. What do all y’all think?
Rhonda  
Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 16, 2024, at 2:03 PM, Michael Martin Serafin
<michael_serafin AT hotmail.com> wrote:



I just saw that a featured speaker at the upcoming Percy Weekend event alleges
that Percy may have written "Confedeacy of Dunces" rather than Toole. Percy
supposedly hints at this in his archival papers. What to make of this?
Michael Martin SerafinChicopee, MA.
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------------------------------
Message-ID: <63C13C62-15FD-4C36-B144-40A4F7B50597 AT gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2024 10:57:31 -0400
From: Karey Perkins <kareyperkins AT gmail.com>
Subject: [[percy-l] ] Call for Papers: SAMLA Nov. 15-17, 2024

Hi Percy-lovers,

SAMLA’s Annual Meeting in November is hosting another Percy session; below is
the CFP.  We’d love submissions from you on either the conference theme or ANY
paper idea you may have percolating.  More information about the conference is
here: https://southatlanticmla.org/conference; CFP is here:

CALL FOR PAPERS on WALKER PERCY
SOUTH ATLANTIC MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION:
SAMLA 96: Seen and Unseen
Friday, November 15 to Sunday, November 17, 2024
Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront
Jacksonville, FL


Papers for this traditional session may focus on any aspect of Walker Percy’s
life and works, either fiction or non-fiction. Especially welcome are topics
relevant to the SAMLA 96 conference theme: Seen and Unseen.

Papers for this traditional session may focus on any aspect of Walker Percy’s
life and works, either fiction or non-fiction. Especially welcome are topics
relevant to the SAMLA 96 conference theme: Seen and Unseen.

Walker Percy’s writings focus on searches, clues, mysteries, and theories. He
was, above all else, a true interdisciplinary thinker whose broad interests
were marshaled in service of his worldview. Areas for consideration might
include such topics as:

How do these unseen forces inform his works? In what ways do his characters
function as searchers or seekers of the unseen? As detectives attempting to
solve mysteries? As theorists testing out ideas? Papers explore the
underpinnings of Percy’s fiction and nonfiction, particularly those that have
been under-explored in the past: How did various fields, such as medicine and
psychology, philosophy and anthropology combine in Percy’s works? In what way
did he serve as a culture critic of his time? Of the American soul? How did he
utilize Henry Veatch or Raymond Chandler, Jakob von Uexküll, Bronislaw
Malinowski, or other heretofore unexamined influences in his theories and
novels? What might you add to the exploration of his works?

Please send 300-word abstracts on these topics or ANY aspect of Percy’s
fiction or non-fiction (not just limited to conference theme) by July 1, 2024,
to Dr. Karey Perkins, South Carolina State University, to both
kperkin1 AT scsu.edu <mailto:kperkin1 AT scsu.edu>  and kareyperkins AT gmail.com
<mailto:kareyperkins AT gmail.com> . Please also include a brief bio and any A/V
requirements in your abstract.

Karey

Karey Perkins, M.A., M.A.T., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English
Faculty Senate Secretary
296A Turner Hall, South Carolina State University
Orangeburg, SC 29117
kperkin1 AT scsu.edu | 803-536-8986
www.scsu.edu
Member, Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX  79409-0002
kareperk AT ttu.edu | https://www.depts.ttu.edu/pragmaticism/
https://www.kareyperkins.net/


------------------------------

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