Walker Percy: Twenty Years Later
— Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 —
Twenty years ago—May 10, 1990—the corpse of the writer Walker Percy was pulled from his bed. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of that moment, then and now, is the absence of the smell of gunpowder.
Percy’s father and grandfather both ended their lives in suicide. The writer who is, arguably, best considered to be Percy’s literary heir, John Kennedy Toole, was dead by his own hand before Percy ever read the manuscript of his then-unpublished genius comedy, Confederacy of Dunces.
Percy’s writings are filled with a sense of melancholy, a melancholy that critics often tie together with his so-called “existentialist” themes.
But, twenty years ago, Percy went to be with his Lord, as a Christian bearing the ravages of sickness—not as a suicide statistic. Why?
Others have sought to argue that the difference for Walker Percy was medical or sociological or even historical (he didn’t bear as directly the regional loss of honor that came with the South’s defeat in the Civil War or the global loss of innocence that came with World War I). These probably all—in God’s providence—played a role, but more significant, I think, is Percy’s Christian appropriation of the interplay between life and death, hope and despair.
“Death makes honest men of all of us,” says a character in one of Percy’s novels. “It makes people happy to tell the truth after a lifetime of lying.”
Perhaps it was Percy’s lifetime exposure to death—as a childhood victim of suicide and as a doctor trained to serve bodies in progressive bondage to decay—that enabled the writer to speak honestly about the cultural and spiritual suicide all around us.
Much of what we see around us today Walker Percy already wrote about, because he saw them coming from his little room in Covington, Louisiana, long before they arrived. Current debates over embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and the attempt to bio-chemically alter human nature through medicines designed to numb sadness and to deaden guilt, they’re all there in Percy’s fiction. Thanatos Syndrome-like scientists are still feverishly at work in the search for a chemically-accessible Eden. Environmental degradation, political polarization, it’s all there in Percy.
And yet, Percy’s apocalyptic writing, whether fiction or non-fiction, sounds so much different than the faux-apocalypticism of so much contemporary Christian “culture war” rhetoric. It’s direct, yes, about human sin and human guilt. He wasn’t writing to raise money from those who would love to have a “your future is bright” imprimatur for the way things are.
But there’s a hopefulness there. Part of that is because Percy was writing for the human conscience, not to raise direct-mail money from the outraged.
But, more than that, I think Percy’s distinctiveness is partly because he always saw himself as a statistic that didn’t happen. Percy didn’t regard himself, like the praying Pharisee in Jesus’ story, as “above” the temptations he saw destroying his neighbors, and even his most loved ones. Percy walked, and wrote, as one who had received grace.
Perhaps it is appropriate for those who loved his life and work to thank God for giving us such a quirky prophet. Perhaps this month, twenty years after his death, would be a good time for those of us who have been shaped by Percy’s writings to give a copy of one of his books to a younger Christian. By my lights, The Moviegoer is the best of Percy’s fiction, and Signposts in a Strange Land is the best collection of his essays. The collection of letters between Percy and his best friend, the unbelieving but brilliant historian Shelby Foote, is also a good place to start to understand Percy the man.
Read some Percy. Then thank God for the good doctor’s reminder to us that even when there is a wasteland everywhere around us, there is love in the ruins still.
Just spent some “time” with Percy, via a lecture on southern literature, architecture and Scripture, entitiled “Place Matters.” Conclusion: it did to him and it should to us. You might find this exchange between him and Springsteen interesting, in case you have not seen it….
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/archives/2009/02/super_bowl_spri.php
In it, Walker references his friend, Savannah’s beloved Flannery O’Conner & Springsteen mentions your fiction pick, “The Moviegoer.”
@Char-La Fowler, I had not seen that. Fascinating. Percy and Eudora Welty were also both fans of the 1970s-era “Incredible Hulk” television series starring Lou Ferigno and Bill Bixby.
@Char-La Fowler,
Thanks for the link to that Percy/Springsteen exchange. That’s the trouble about writing to celebrities: you never know when of if they’ll get the message. Your mention of Flannery O’Connor reminds me about Ralph C. Wood (another very smart Baptist — from Waco, Texas — who knows a lot about a southern, Catholic writer). What is it with these Baptists and their Catholic subjects? By the way, I don’t think O’Connor should rightly be called “Savannah’s” — a minor point. Did Eudora Welty really watch “The Incredible Hulk,” as Walker did? Of course, Percy watched that because he said he would watch ANYthing. Did Welty do that, too? Seems odd for the lady….
@Char-La Fowler,
Thank you for the link to the Percy/Springsteen article. Interesting…. Your mention of Flannery O’Connor reminds me of another very smart Baptist who writes about a Catholic writer: Ralph C. Wood at Baylor in Waco, Texas. (By the way, I don’t think O’Connor can rightly be called “Savannah’s” — a minor point.) What is it with these Baptists and their interest in Catholic literary types? Walker Percy was an Incredible Hulk fan only, I think, because — by his own statement — he would watch ANYthing on TV. No discretion at all… Did Welty really watch that show? Seems odd…. Percy’s writing to Springsteen, on the other hand, seems completely normal. But writing to celebrities is a risky deal. You never know if the celeb got the message. I wish Bruce Springsteen could have met his admirer Walker Percy.
@Char-La Fowler, I am interested in listening to this “Place Matters” lecture. Is it available online?
Wonderful post. What a joy to read Percy! Would that ever pastor and priest in the land read him, as well. And truth be told, there’s a few arm-chair theologians who would do well to put down the latest theological polemic and dive in to Percy…
@Matt Stokes, as to the arm-chair theologians…Amen!
I read The Moviegoer and Love in the Ruins last summer as part of my resolution to read more Southern literature. What I loved about Love in the Ruins was how, as you pointed out, the resolution was of a sort that would be manifestly unpleasant to the genteel or liberal person–yet, there was a sense that virtue and peace had been discovered at last.
I am not writing in opposition to your main topic (I have a half dozen of Percy’s books on my shelf), but I feel I must respond to your comments on “The attempt to biochemically alter human nature”, if by that you are referring to medications used to treat clinical depression and anxiety disorders. Modern medications do not numb sadness and deaden guilt, and certainly do not lead to “a chemically-accessible Eden”. The aim is to restore normal brain functioning, just as eye-glasses correct as much as possible to “normal” vision. Success of such medications is usually substantial but not complete. There can be abuse and overuse, but your descriptions apply more accurately to opium in the 19th century and Valium and crude psychoactive chemicals in the 1960s, not to mention the perennially popular tobacco and alcohol.
There was a time when many people were outraged at the use of surgical anesthesia as an illicit escape from the human condition.
I’m unfamiliar with Walker Percy but as a former Roman Catholic I find it interesting that you view Walker Percy as a Believer. I guess my question comes from the online sources that said Walker Percy left Protestantism and defected to Roman Catholicism. Is this true? If this is another Walker Percy, then my apologies. If it is not a different WP, then why recommend reading him? (BTW, I read many secular books, but I don’t necessarily recommend them to people in my church). Thanks for your response.
@Tom McConnell,
Yes, Walker grew up at Independent Presbyterian Church in Birmingham. His mother’s people in Athens, Georgia, the Phinizys, had been Presbyterians for generations. Walker converted to Roman Catholicism in Sewanee, Tennessee — in the same place where his “Uncle” William Alexander Percy had converted much earlier from Catholicism to agnosticism.
This is actually @ Leonidas, but Percy did not attend Sewanee, which is an Episcopal School. He attended UNC-Chapel Hill and then Columbia Medical School. According to Paul Elie’s marvelous tome, The Life You Save May Be Your Own (curious about Dr. Moore’s thoughts on this book, btw), Percy came to faith via RCC while he was in New York (I’m almost 99% sure…maybe I’m thinking of Thomas Merton. Apologies if I’m mistaken).
The fun thing about living in Birmingham is meeting older families who knew Percy’s. There’s a lawyer here who is actually named for him - the guy’s grandfather, I believe, was friends with Percy’s father.
Matt, I did not mean that Walker went to the U. of the South, but he WAS in Sewanee off and on as he began to embrace Catholicism. He is a cousin of my mother’s — not too close a cousin. The families (Phinizys and Erwins) were good friends, so I think they thought of themselves more as “friends” in Athens, Georgia than “cousins,” actually. He was certainly an interesting man, wasn’t he, Matt?
Goodness, yes. I never get tired of reading about him. I hope to start reading Bertram Wyatt-Brown’s book on the Percy family sometime soon. A friend of mine once housesat for a family that lives in one of the houses where the Percys lived in Birmingham. An amazing man, to be sure.
Matt,
You know, Birmingham was a splitting-off place — the place the kept Walker from being “Old South.” He commented on the fact that at the end of Faulkner’s saga, the old family home was being town down to make way for a golf course. As bulldozers levelled new fairways, the “heirs” looked on (one of them a half-wit). By contrast, Walker said that he grew up in a B’hm house that was ON a fairway! No gnashing of teeth on Walker’s part, no longing for the “old order.” I saw Walker many times over the years. He was a cousin, but my best friend, Phinizy Spalding, was Walker’s first cousin. Phinizy, a University of Georgia historian (specializing in the colonial America era), and Walker were a lot alike in their very un-puffed-up gentlemanliness. Distinguished as the two men were, they could be plain as an old shoe in so many settings.
@Leonidas M. Leathers III, If Leonidas is stil around…shoot me an e-mail at lookagain@gmail.com