Walker Percy (1916-1990)

A brief biography with an emphasis on his interest in language

At the time of this biography's creation, Walker Percy's writings and ideas are increasingly becoming more esteemed and appreciated, especially since his death in 1990. Known primarily as a "philosophical novelist," Percy has to the credit of his name some six novels, in addition to three works of non-fiction. The last of these three non-fiction works, Signposts in a Strangeland (1991), is a posthumous publication of Percy's uncollected essays, and as a whole, it offers the broadest formal selection of Percy's ideas about fiction, science, language, and his image of himself as a thinker. Additionally, at this time, some thirty-odd books are available that treat him as a literary figure, with more new books on the way yearly.

Originally trained as an MD with interests in pathology and psychiatry, Percy contracted tuberculosis in 1942 at the age of twenty-six. Confined to the sanitarium for several following years, Percy began delving into literary and philosophical readings during his slow recovery. Especially taking an interest in Existentialism, with its concern for the "alienation" of the modern individual, Percy made this period of intense, sustained reading the foundation for all his writings to follow.

Indeed, nearly all of his novels are concerned with individuals who are on a "search" for a more "authentic" existence beyond the limited meaning given their lives by a techno-scientific culture. His first novel, The Moviegoer (1961), is one such treatment of character of a protagonist seeking to move beyond the "everydayness" of his life, and the novel won wide-spread acclaim when it received the National Book Award the following year. Nearly all Percy's books are filled with keen, witty insights into the banality of late 20th-century society, and therefore they challenge the reader on several levels at once, even as he or she is entertained by the often humorous situations that the novelist's characters find themselves in.

As for Percy's life-long interest in language (which culminated in his writing of some sixteen separate essays treating language directly), he recognized that the capacity to use symbolic language plays a more than definitive role in what we know as "consciousness." Percy's fascination with language led him to focus upon its striking character as a means for understanding our fundamental humanness, frailties and triumphs alike, which he explores so well in his novels. But he also recognized that language serves as a broad avenue away from the limitations of the prevalent modern scientific worldview that sees the human being simply as a "higher organism" not qualitatively different from other organisms. Percy argued that this worldview overlooked the more subtle predicaments of being human, predicaments which his studies in philosophy (if not his own life experience) had led him to appreciate.

No doubt another major impetus for Percy's interest in language finds its origin in the hearing-impaired condition of his daughter Ann Boyd, born in 1954. Discovered shortly after her birth, her disability kindled in Percy a concrete, if not daily, awareness of the invaluable nature of language. This personal challenge, in turn, brought Percy in contact with the writings of Helen Keller, who only furthered his appreciation for the role of language in human consciousness. Mentioning her "break" into language several times in the larger body of his essays, Percy probably gives the fullest account of Keller's influence on him in the latter half of his essay "The Delta Factor." (See Message in the Bottle, 1975). In the end, one and all would lead Percy to develop a profound sensitivity to language that he would express throughout his career as a novelist and thinker.

In sum, drawing from his training in medicine, his study of philosophy, and his personal experience, Percy offers the reader a rather unusual synthesis of ideas, binding, as he does, the scientific, the philosophic, and the artistic together. For these and other reasons, appreciation for the genius and astuteness of Dr. Percy, and the broad scope of his writings, has been steadily growing and will, with any good fortune, only continue to grow as people are further inspired and moved by Percy's unique vision.

For a more complete overview of Percy's life, see Jay Tolson's Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy (1992), which at this time is the only full-length biography available, though Patrick Samway's version is expected in the near future. For an overview of Percy's novels, Linda Whitney Hobson's Understanding Walker Percy(1988) is probably the best non-specialized, short book introduction to Percy's fiction that is currently available.

See elsewhere on this server for other essay-length treatments of Percy's fiction and philosophy. A complete bibliography of his works is given there also. All of the above referenced books are available through the Percy Project Bookstore.

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