Dear Percy-L: For your reading interest. All best, Henry Mills Percy-L Administrator -------Living as an Ex-Suicide by JESSICA HOOTEN WILSONJUNE 15, 2018 Opening paragraphs: “The only cure for depression is suicide.” Walker Percy was not joking when he penned this line. The author himself was a survivor of suicide—though he did not attempt it. His grandfather and father both shot themselves at home; his mother either intentionally or not drove off of a bridge and drowned; and the first American Percy, Charles Percy, tied a kettle to his neck and also drowned. Unlike his ancestors, Walker Percy lived a full life and died of prostate cancer at 74 years old. Why did they die but he lived? Because Percy chose to be a survivor, to find out not only why his father took his own life, but, as he put it, “to make damn sure it didn’t happen to [him].” This determination fueled his work. Percy wrote novel after novel trying to solve what Albert Camus called the only philosophical question, to be or not to be…. |
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