Re: Let's try to make it a bit better

From: James L Piat (piat@JUNO.COM)
Date: Sat Aug 25 2001 - 23:46:31 EDT


On Wed, 22 Aug 2001 20:40:45 EDT Nikki Barranger <Nikkibar@AOL.COM>
writes:
> Dear Jim,
>
> When you ask "as what was Walker writing and to whom?" it seems to
> me that
> the dark spectre of deconstructionism is skulking in the question.
> Walker
> constantly deprecated his own work "qua Catholic" and was just as
> fond of
> admitting that he was rather a second rate one just as he was always
> irked at
> being characterized as a "SOUTHERN" writer. He thought of himself as
> a
> writer, an artist, a delver into the depths of philosophy and many
> other
> things but never an evangelist at any of these things. All of this
> is well
> documented in the essays and particulrly the two books of Interviews
> edited
> by Lawson.

Dear Nikki,

Thanks for the personal glimpse. You speak of a self effacing Percy that
shines though (for me) in his writing. I've not read the Lawson books.
I'll check them out on Amazon. Anyway, I can picture Percy (like
O'Connor) not being particularly pleased with some of his critics, but
what the hell that's too bad. Neither of them gets nor needs any of my
sympathy on that score --annoyance with hapless critics is part of
their irascible charm. We applaud it and egged them on. We shouldn't.

> He was particularly distressed at the disclosures of the Nazi roots
> of the
> deconstructionist movement beginning with Paul Deman.

I don't know anything about deconstructionism although I may be guilty of
it whatever it is. I'm just a humble self centered... Really I'm just
a reader (king of my own very small armchair) shooting my mouth off with
some cronies at the waffle house. I guess I shouldn't expect to shoot
my mouth off without being told off a bit myself.

> He would not I
> think,
> take it kindly to have his life and religious practices placed on a
> poster
> for his work,

I understand. Thanks for explaining that.

> except perhaps that his deep interest in the tertiary
> factors
> of communication became a point of focus as a result of his daily
> attention
> to teaching Ann to speak through her deafness.

I did not realize this.

>
> You raise through this dialogue the interesting question of whether
> it is
> right or appropriate to judge an artist -- or even fruitful to
> approach the
> work of an artist using the criteria of a literary method which that
> person
> would not have had any truck with. This may be a peeve personal to
> me; for
> myself and my own work, I would always rather play by the rules of
> the New
> Critics (as I think Walker would as well). Those were the criteria
> he used
> when he was writing by after all. I realize that this may lead to
> certain
> irrationalities as whe

I did not mean to cut off the last part of your comment. I wonder with
you and others who have commented. I don't know.

Cheers,
Jim



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