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  • From: Doug Brown <wply1223 AT gmail.com>
  • To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [percy-l] A Small Note
  • Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2025 16:36:11 -0400

Hey Chuck!

You might appreciate this. A week or so ago I posted a rather lengthy response to some of Janet's questions. At the end I added a note that I have enjoyed all the great comments from the group this summer. I rattled off a few names - and in my defense they were the names of people who had specifically responded to Janet's thread. But the next day I thought, "Aw, dang! I didn't include Charles. He's always full of great insights and fun."

This most recent "small note" from you is a perfect example.

Doug Brown
Asheville, NC


On Thu, Jul 24, 2025 at 10:45 AM <lowry.charles AT gmail.com> wrote:
There have been some profound and original reflections offered on Walker Percy generally and The Last Gentleman in particular, by several list members. 
My note here is about a small point raised by Janet: she hoped that someone would identify the scene in The Moviegoer which contains the “just try to do a little good and leave the world a better place” sentiment found near the end of The Last Gentleman.  In The Moviegoer, Binx is accosted by Nell Lovell, his cousin, who expounds to him on the topic of her new, meaningful life.

<<“Eddie and I have re-examined our values and found them pretty darn enduring.  To our utter amazement we have discovered that we both have the same life goal.  Do you know what it is?”

“No.”

“To make a contribution, however small, and leave the world just a little better off.”>>

She explains the mechanism: “—we gave the television to the kids and last night we turned on the hi-fi and sat by the fire and read The Prophet aloud.”

Three observations:

(I) The younger members of the list may without prejudice or judgment consult their elders to inquire what exactly a hi-fi is, or was.

(Ii) This passage is not without a serious point.  The obvious derision and satire expressed in this passage are clear indications of Percy’s horror of what Kierkegaard called “cheap grace,” what today’s cultural critics call “virtue signaling.”

(Iii) This passage contains a great example of a recurrent Percy technique, mentioning in a derogatory way phenomena of popular culture.  I graduated from high school in 1967, and I can affirm that in 1967 and for a year or two before that, every sensitive soul in the United States would not be caught dead without a visible copy of The Prophet.  It is even possible to imagine that cynical souls—oh the horror—carried visible copies for the sole purpose of engaging the attention of the sensitive souls.  Another example from The Moviegoer: “Monks have their Compline; I have ‘This We Believe.’”  In this example Percy abandons all subtlety as Binx openly ridicules the guests of “This We Believe .”  A more nuanced example of this technique, possibly passed over by more contemporary readers, occurs toward the beginning of Chapter 5 of The Last Gentleman, in Will’s conversation with Val.  Will reacts to Val’s meticulous attentions to the hawk: “It scandalized him slightly, like the Pope making a fuss over a canary.”  At the time of the publication of The Last Gentleman, Pope Pius XII had been dead eight years.  It was widely known (pictures are easily available on the internet even today) that Pius XII had several pet birds who were his only dinner companions.  No silliness was safe from Percy’s scorn.

Thanks again to everyone for a rewarding summer read. 

Chuck Lowry
Brooklyn, New York
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