[percy-l] Kramer's new book

Robert_Pauley at oxy.com Robert_Pauley at oxy.com
Mon Jun 27 22:00:54 EDT 2005


When I posited this idea I was thinking more about the list of annoying pop culture figures I've heard fatuously praise Percy (Bruce Springsteen, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Moby) than serious literary critics, who no one reads anyway. Percy as a darling of rich and rather sanctimonious left-leaning artists is kind of amusing. But I agree with Julio. What's interesting though is how many people who gush over Percy also, it would appear at least from the transcripts of their enthusiasm, get him wrong or inadequately. It is one thing to put down a Percy book before finishing it or dismiss him once you're done with it for the reasons of existential discomfort Julio cites, but it is another to embrace him passionately and still miss the point. An addition to the examples above would be Robert Coles. Percy, I believe, at one point, expressed a certain mild bewilderment at Coles' failure to grasp what he was about. I believe he once said (in his correspondence with Foote) something to the effect that Coles never understood his occasional impulse to tie a weighted bucket around his neck and throw himself into the bayou creek behind his house. But maybe somehow this paradox of interpretation is bound up in the paradox of expression. Percy's paradox, e.g., the "upside-downness" of modern life, feeling bad in so-called good environments, the assault of the "ravenous particles" of everydayness (as in Will Barrett's "seizure" at the Museum and Sutter Vaught's post-coital suicide attempt in the motel room), the deaths-head of despair that attends family holiday celebrations (the "Norman Rockwell paradox") and all the other many permutations of this idea may be hard to get. A lot of the people I've heard praising Percy talk more about his "humanism" than the dark involutions and ironies that lead him there, or to his splendid skewering of both the "good liberal life" with its zeal of compassion and good intentions as well as the country-club Republican life with its empty zeal of golf-course banter and GE Medallion homes. 

It's not as if the critiques I read are malicious or grossly wrong. They simply seem to miss a hemisphere of Percy's world. So be it. I am reminded of a moment in Jean Renoir's film "Grand Illusion" when the German commandant overhears a pseudo-intellectual prisoner express excited analytical praise for Pindar. The commandant shakes his head. "Poor Pindar," he mutters, and walks on. But Pindar will survive and so will Percy.

(Of course, perhaps they would say I'm the one getting him wrong)
-----Original Message-----
From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of J Rivas-Pita
Sent: Saturday, June 25, 2005 11:16 AM
To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion
Subject: Re: [percy-l] Kramer's new book


Let me venture a possible answer.
Percy is "gotten wrong" by people who'd rather get him wrong than
having to realize that they lead a wrong life -an unaunthentic life.
In kirkergaardian terms, familiar to most on this list, when you
realize that you lead a wrong life you have but two choices left:
repent and change (I'm not meaning those words in their
televangelistic meaning of course) or make a decision to go the wrong
way fully aware, taking responsability for your choice.
Much more comfortable to get Percy (or life) wrong...

Regards,
Julio

On 6/25/05, Bryon McLaughlin <BMclaughlin at nazarene.org> wrote:
> If Percy is often "gotten wrong," can someone on the list explain what areas is often gotten wrong, and possibly more importantly, WHY?  Why is he gotten wrong?  Is it that he is hard to understand, that he was at time cryptic?  Why?  Thanks.
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of Robert_Pauley at oxy.com
> Sent: Fri 6/24/2005 5:26 PM
> To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: RE: [percy-l] Kramer's new book
> 
> 
> "However, to me he gets Percy quite wrong."
> 
> Everybody does. Percy is the most "gotten wrong" writer in American letters. With the exception of this fine list, of course.
> 
>         -----Original Message-----
>         From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Robert Eckert
>         Sent: Friday, June 24, 2005 8:01 AM
>         To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org
>         Subject: [percy-l] Kramer's new book
> 
> 
>         Dear List,
> 
>         Peter Kramer, the author of _Listening to Prozac_, recently published _Against Depression_.
> 
>         The last chapter of _LP_ is "The Message in the Capsule" and deal extensively with Percy. Kramer corresponded with Percy at some point.
> 
>         However, to me he gets Percy quite wrong.
> 
>         On p.265 of _AG_ Kramer writes:
> 
>         "...Percy's position blurs distinctions we might want to make. It overstates the case only slightly to say that for Percy, there is no difference between treating epilepsy and treating
>         alienation. Both are best approached via faith and revelation, not technology."
> 
>         It amazes me that Kramer could have read Percy's nonfiction, which he states he has (e-mail), and miss Percy's use of the Dyadic/Triadic distinction, especially:
> 
>         "I can even visualize the hospital of the future in which the first signs the patient sees in the corridor do not read INTERNAL MEDICINE, SURGERY, OB-GYN, DERMATOLOGY, PSYCHIATRY UPSTAIRS, but rather two big signs just inside the front door, one pointing left, one right (I won't say which is which), but one reading DYADIC DISORDERS; the other, TRIADIC DISORDERS."
> 
>         To Percy, the distinction is so profound that he feels the very architecture of the hospitals of the future could be based upon it!
> 
>         It is a shame that Kramer has broadly disseminated such a profound and fundamental misreading of Percy's work.
> 
>         Robert Eckert
>         Rochester, New York
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________
> 
>         Yahoo! Sports
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> 
> --
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> 


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