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THE WALKER PERCY PROJECT
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THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS
David Horace Harwell
Walker Percy (1916-1990), the reclusive southern author most famous for his 1961 novel The Moviegoer, spent much of his adult life in Covington, Louisiana. In the spirit of traditional southern storytelling, this biography of Percy takes its shape from candid interviews with his family, close friends, and acquaintances and may be considered a "community biography".
In thirteen interviews, we get to know Percy through his lifelong friend Shelby Foote, Percy's brothers LeRoy and Phin, his former priest, his housekeeper, and former teachers, among others — all in their own words. Over the course of the interviews, readers learn intimate details of Percy's writing process; his interaction with community members of different ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds; and his commitment to civil rights issues. What emerges is a multidimensional portrait of Percy as a man, a friend, and a family member.
Harwell does not attempt to reconcile the disparate views that emerge through the course of the interviews, for instance, of Percy's stance toward his adopted Catholicism or his relationship with his wife. Instead, he shows Percy from a variety of different vantage points, providing new material to better understand his existenial questionings and offering a more comprehensive treatment of the writer's character.
David Horace Harwell is the director of the Alabama Center for the Literary Arts at Alabama Southern College in Monroeville, AL.
Publication Date: 2006