Re: The Importance of Ernest Being


Subject: Re: The Importance of Ernest Being
From: Rhonda McDonnell (rhonda_mcdonnell@HOTMAIL.COM)
Date: Tue Jul 20 1999 - 02:27:36 EDT


Thomas--I'm not sure how to take the idea of WP's characters corresponding
to "one and only one Kierkegaardian psychological state." Are you moving
out of the realm of Kierkegaard's stages, then? Otherwise I'd have to argue
that Binx clearly travels through all three stages, not reaching the
religious stage until the final Dostoevskian gesture. Furthermore, Binx's
journey isn't linear but a sort of one step up and two back throughout much
of the novel.

By the way, I'd like to suggest Oliver Platt as Binx.

Rhonda McDonnell
Arizona State University

>From: Thomas Dean <TSDean@SHERIN.COM>
>Reply-To: Walker Percy Literary and Philosophic Topics
><PERCY-L@listserv.lsu.edu>
>To: Multiple recipients of list PERCY-L <PERCY-L@listserv.lsu.edu>
>Subject: Re: The Importance of Ernest Being
>Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 16:59:12 -0400
>
>I should have stated my thought more narrowly in my earlier post. My
>thesis is not that Percy swallowed Kierkegaard whole, but rather that
>across WP's career his central characters always correspond to one and only
>one Kierkegaardian psychological state, and never emerge into real
>individuality.
>
>In the Last Gentlemen, Will Barrett is in feminine despair (potentiality
>struggling with actuality, of the transcendent failing to make reentry into
>the immanent) and in the Second Coming, he is in masculine despair (the
>immanent unable to attain the transcendent). But in neither book is Will
>Barrett much more than that. Lancelot, Sutter, Binx, Tom Moore, and Allie
>all have their roots more in The Sickness Unto Death than in the American
>south.
>

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