From jeffballow at nycmail.com Sat Feb 16 15:35:41 2008 From: jeffballow at nycmail.com (Jeff Ballow) Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 15:35:41 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? Message-ID: <20080216203541.A7A011BF28D@ws1-1.us4.outblaze.com> Hi All - New to this list but a long-time fan of Percy. While I have read his novels and essays, I haven't really read any literary criticism on his work. Which books (or articles/essays even) should I start with? Many thanks.... -- Want an e-mail address like mine? Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com! From kfw1 at ntelos.net Sat Feb 16 17:08:04 2008 From: kfw1 at ntelos.net (Ken Wilson) Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 17:08:04 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? References: <20080216203541.A7A011BF28D@ws1-1.us4.outblaze.com> Message-ID: <001901c870e8$6f7066a0$90370cd8@user3c94fac3a2> Welcome, Jeff! I'm sure you'll receive some fine recommendations here. I can only recommend Linda Whitney Hobson's short primer "Understanding Walker Percy" published by University of South Carolina Press. But I'm really writing to recommend two other volumes -- neither of them literary criticism, but sure to be of interest to you -- published by University of Mississippi Press: "Conversations with Walker Percy" and "More Conversations with Walker Percy." Both contain numerous interviews with the man himself about his work and its themes. Ken ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeff Ballow" To: Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 3:35 PM Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? > Hi All - New to this list but a long-time fan of Percy. While I have read > his novels and essays, I haven't really read any literary criticism on his > work. Which books (or articles/essays even) should I start with? Many > thanks.... > > -- > Want an e-mail address like mine? > Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com! > > -- > An archive of all list discussion is available at > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ > > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > From hpmills3 at austin.rr.com Sat Feb 16 17:55:54 2008 From: hpmills3 at austin.rr.com (Henry Mills) Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 16:55:54 -0600 Subject: [percy-l] FW: Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? [Forwarded for Karey Perkins] In-Reply-To: <003701c870e2$539654e0$6401a8c0@Karey> Message-ID: Hi Jeff, Here's a list (see below) I've compiled of Percy works and Percy criticism - while it may not be comprehensive, it's pretty thorough and at least a place to start! If others on the list have more contributions, let us know! I'd love to know! Karey **Works by Walker Percy** Lancelot. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1977. The Last Gentleman. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1966. Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983. Love in the Ruins. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1971. The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1975. The Moviegoer. New York: Knopf, 1961. The Second Coming. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1980. Signposts in a Strange Land. Edited with an introduction by Patrick Samway. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1991. "Symbol and Existence: A Study of Meaning," unpublished manuscript of 318 pages compiled in 1960-61. in Percy collection at UNC-Chapel Hill. miscellaneous chapters published as essays. "Walker Percy Papers" #4294, Southern Historical Collection, Manuscripts Department, Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, 1991. [About 255 items]. The Thanatos Syndrome. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1987. **Interviews with and Letters of Percy** Lawson, Lewis A., and Victor A. Kramer. Conversations with Walker Percy. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1985. ----------. More Conversations with Walker Percy. Jackson: UP of Mississippi,1993 Samway, Patrick, S.J. A Thief of Peirce: The Letters of Kenneth Laine Ketner and Walker Percy. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1995. Tolson, Jay, ed. The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy. New York: Norton, 1997. **Bibliographies of Percy and the Percys** Baker, Lewis. The Percys of Mississippi: Politics and Literature in the New South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1983. In particular, see pp. 174-205. Bloom, Harold, ed. Walker Percy. New York: Chelsea House Publications, 1986. Samway, Patrick, S.J. Walker Percy: A Life. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997. Tolson, Jay. Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992. Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. The House of Percy: Honor, Melancholy, and Imagination in a Southern Family. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. The Literary Percys: Family History, Gender, and the Southern Imagination. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994. **Works about Percy: Books** Allen, William Rodney. Walker Percy: A Southern Wayfarer. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1986. Brinkmeyer, Robert H. Three Catholic Writers of the Modern South (Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, Walker Percy). Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1985, pp. 119-168. Broughton, Panthea Reid. The Art of Walker Percy: Strategems for Being. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1979. Ciuba, Gary. Walker Percy: Books of Revelation. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991. Coke, John Todd. Walker Percy's Model of Experience. Dissertation, Nashville: Vanderbilt U, 1991. Coles, Robert. Walker Percy: An American Search. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1978_ Crowley, J. Donald and Sue Mitchell Crowley. Critical Essays on Walker Percy. Boston: G.K. Hall 1989. Desmond, John F. At the Crossroads: Ethical and Religious Themes in the Writings of Walker Percy. Troy, N.Y.: Whitston Publishing Company, 1997. Desmond, John F. Walker Percy?s Search for Community. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2004. Dupuy, Edward. Autobiography in Walker Percy: Repetition, Recovery, and Redemption. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1996. Elliott, Carl, and John Lastos, eds. The Last Physician: Walker Percy and the Moral Life of Medicine. Durham, N.C.: Duke UP, 1999. Ertel, Karen Ruszler. Naming of the Desert: Communication in Walker Percy's The Second Coming. Thesis. Atlanta, GSU, 1984. Futtrell, Ann Mace. The Signs of Christianity in the Work of Walker Percy. San Francisco: Catholic Scholars Press, 1994. Gretlund, Jan Norby, and Karl Heinz Westarp. Walker Percy: Novelist and Philosopher. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1991. Hawkins, Peter S. The Language of Grace: Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and Iris Murdoch. Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 1983. Hardy, John Edward. The Fiction of Walker Percy. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Hobson, Linda Whitney. Understanding Walker Percy. Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1988. Hobson, Linda Whitney. Walker Percy: A Comprehensive Descriptive Bibliography. New Orleans: Faust, 1988. [Introduction by Walker Percy.] Howland, Mary Deems. The Gift of the Other: Gabriel Marcel's Concept of Intersubjec?tivity in Walker Percy's Novels. Pittsburgh: Dusquesne UP, 1989. Lawson, Lewis A. Following Percy: Essays on Walker Percy's Work. Troy, NY: Whitston, 1988. Lathy, Edward Daniel. Metaphor, Symbol, and Utterance: The Reality of Relation in Susanne Langer and Mikhail Bakhtin. Luschei, Martin. The Sovereign Wayfarer: Walker Percy's Diagnosis of the Malaise. Baton Rouge: Louisiana UP, 1972. Kobre, Michael. Walker Percy's Voices. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000. Lawson, Lewis A. Following Percy. Troy, N.Y.: Whitston Publishing Company, 1988. ----------. Still Following Percy. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1996. Lawson, Lewis A., and Elzbieta Oleksy. Walker Percy's Feminine Characters. Troy, N.Y.: Whitston Publishing Company, 1995. Madathiparampil, George. Prophecy in American Fiction: A Study of the Novels of Walker Percy. Changanacherry: Sandesanilayam Press, 1983. Nisly, L. Lamar. Impossible to Say: Representing Religious Mystery in Fiction by Malamud, Percy, Ozick, and O'Connor. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. Poteat, Patricia Lewis. Walker Percy and the Old Modern Age: Reflections on Language, Argument, and the Telling of Stories. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1985. Pridgen, Allen. Walker Percy's Sacramental Landscapes. Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna UP, 2000. Prochaska, Bernadette. The Myth of the Fall and Walker Percy's The Last Gentleman. New York: Peter Lang, 1992. Quinlan, Kieran. Walker Percy: The Last Catholic Novelist. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1996. Rudnicki, Robert N. Percyscapes: The Fugue State in Twentieth Century Southern Fic?tion. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1999. Sweeny, Mary K. Walker Percy and the Postmodern World. Chicago: Loyola UP, 1987. Tate, Allen. Collected Essays. Denver: Allen Swallow Press, 1959. Taylor, Jerome. In Search of Self Life, Death, and Walker Percy. Cambridge, MA: Cow?ley Publications, 1986. Tharpe, Jac, ed. Walker Percy, Art and Ethics. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1980. Tharpe, Jac. Walker Percy. New York: G.K. Hall and Co., 1983. (?) Tharpe, Jac. Walker Percy. Boston: Twayne, 1983. (?) ----------. Walker Percy's Heroes: A Kierkegaardian Analysis. New York: Seabury, 1983. Wood, Ralph C. The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists (O'Connor, Percy, Updike, DeVries). Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1988, pp. 133-177. Wright, Stuart T. Walker Percy, A Bibliography, 1930-1984: Based on the Collection of the Compiler, including Books, Pamphlets, Magazines, Journals, Newspapers, etc. Westport, CT: Meckler, 1986. Vaughan, Philip H. Perceptions of Time and Place: A Critique of Five Novels by Walker Percy. Bryn Mawr: Dorrance and Co., 1984. **Works about Percy: Articles and Dissertations** Archer, Emily "Naming in the Neighborhood of Being: O'Connor and Percy on Language" Studies-in-the-Literary-Imagination, Atlanta, GA (SLitI). 1987 Fall, 20:2, 97-108. Bertonneau, Thomas F. ?Saul Bellow and Walker Percy: Eulogists of the Soul.? Studies in American Jewish Literature, 1995. 14: 94-100. Bigger, Charles. "Language in the Work of Walker Percy." Faith & Culture (Baton Rouge, LA), Vol. 1, No. 3, Nov.-Dec., 1990, pp. 5-6. Bizup, Joseph. ?Hopkins' Influence on Percy's Love in the Ruins.? Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, 1994 Summer. 46 (4): 247-59. Brinkmeyer, Robert H., Jr."Walker Percy's Lancelot: Discovery through Dialogue" Renascence:-Essays-on-Value-in-Literature, Milwaukee, WI (Renascence). 1987 Fall, 40:1, 30-42. Browning, Preston "Walker Percy and Gabriel Marcel: The Dialectical Self in The Moviegoer" Renascence:-Essays-on-Value-in-Literature, Milwaukee, WI (Renascence). 1988 Summer, 40:4, 279-287. Churchill, John "Walker Percy, Wittgenstein's Tractatus, and the Lost Self" Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal (Knoxville) Fall, 1984, 67:3 267-282. Ciuba, Gary M. "The Fierce Nun of The Last Gentleman: Percy's Vision of Flannery O'Connor" The Flannery-O'Connor-Bulletin, Milledgeville, GA (FCB). 1986, 25, 57-66. Ciuba, Gary M. "Found in the Cosmos: Percy's First Self-Help Book" New Orleans Review (Loyola University), Winter, 1989, Vol. 16 No. 4 pp. 7-16. Ciuba, Gary M. "Lancelot's New World of Language" Notes-on-Mississippi-Writers, Hattiesburg, MS, 39406- 5037 (NMW). 1988, 20:1, 1-7. Derwin, Susan "Orality, Aggression, and Epistemology in Walker Percy's Second Coming" Arizona-Quarterly, Tucson, AZ (ArQ). 1989 Summer, 45:2, 63-99. Desmond, John "Walker Percy and T. S. Eliot: The Lancelot Andrewes Connection" The Southern-Review, Baton Rouge, LA (SoR). 1986 Summer, 22:3, 465-477. Desmond, John F. ?Walker Percy's Eucharistic Vision.? Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, 2000 Spring. 52 (3): 219-31. Desmond, John F. ?Walker Percy's Triad: Science, Literature, and Religion.? Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, 1994 Fall. 47 (1): 3-9 Edwards, Bruce L. "The Linguist as Castaway: A Meditation on Walker Percy's Semiotic Apologetics" Renascence (Milwaukee), Winter, 1987, Vol XL No. 2, pp. 129-144. Esposito, Joseph L. ?Lecture 8: Toward a Logic of Mutual Affection.? Peirce?s Theory of Semiosis: Toward a Logic of Mutual Affection. Open Semiotics Resource Center: Semiotics Institute On-Line [http://www.semioticon.com]. 1999. Retrieved December 1, 2006, from http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/srb/cyber/esp8.html Esposito, Joseph L. ?Synechism: The Keystone of Peirce?s Metaphysics.? >From Peirce Related Papers on Arisbe: The Peirce Gateway [http://www.cspeirce.com]. Retrieved December 1, 2006, from http://www.digitalpeirce.fee.unicamp.br/p-synesp.htm Gunter, Elizabeth Ellington "The Critical Response to Philosophical Ideas in Walker Percy's Novels" DAI 1986 July, 47:1, 178A. Hamner, Everett L. "Relieving Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea: Semiotics, Suicide, and the Search for God in Walker Percy's The Second Coming." Christianity and Literature, 2003 Winter. 52 (2): 181-202. Hardie, Joseph Keith, Jr. "Mouthers and Unmakers': Theories of Language in the Work of Flann O'Brien, Walker Percy, and Charles Tomlinson" DAI. 1984 May, 44:11, 3380A. Humble, Thomas Edward. "Language Play in Three Novels by Walker Percy" (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). DAI 1992 Jan, 52:7, 2553A. DAI No.: DA9135271. Humble, Thomas Edward. ?Language Play in Three Novels by Walker Percy.? Dissertation Abstracts International, 1992 Jan. 52 (7): 2553A. U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Jenkins, Bill. ?Language, Love, and the American Church in the Novels of Walker Percy.? Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South, 1993 Summer. 4 (2): 141-56. Jenkins, Bill. ?Walker Percy and Jacques Ellul: Technique and the Humiliated Word.? University of Dayton Review, 1993-1994 Winter. 22 (2): 89-99. Jenkins, William Thomas. ?Rescuing the Human Mystery: A Study of Walker Percy's Thought in His Fiction, 'Lost in the Cosmos,' and Other Writings.? Dissertation Abstracts International, 1994 Jan. 54 (7): 2579A-80A. U of Arkansas, 1992. Johnson, Elizabeth Dale. ?A Voice from the Bridge: A Study of Walker Percy's Early Nonfiction on Language, 1954-1961.? Dissertation Abstracts International, 1996 Sept. 57 (3): 1123A. U of Maryland, College Park, 1995. Kennedy, J. Gerald "The Semiotics of Memory: Suicide in The Second Coming" Delta:-Revue-du-Centre-d'Etudes-et-de-Recherche-sur-les-Ecrivains-du-Sud-aux -tats-Unis, 34032 Montpellier Cedex, France (DeltaES). 1981 Nov., 13, 103-125. Ketner, Kenneth Laine ?Novel Science: Or, How Contemporary Social Science Is Not Well and Why Literature and Semeiotic Provide a Cure.? Semiotica: Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies/Revue de l'Association Internationale de S?miotique, 1993. 93 (1-2): 33-59. Kobre, Michael Jeffrey. ?'A Quality of Consciousness': Walker Percy's Dialogic Art.? Dissertation Abstracts International, 1992 Nov. 53 (5): 1515A. Ohio U. Kramer, Victor A. ?Walker Percy: Three Studies.? Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Cultures, 1997-1998 Winter. 51 (1): 149-53. Lathy, Edward Daniel. Metaphor, Symbol, and Utterance: The Reality of Relation in Susanne Langer and Mikhail Bakhtin. Dissertation Information Service. Ohio State University, 1985. Lawler, Peter Augustine. ?Aliens Are Us? Walker Percy's Response to Carl Sagan on Wondering and Wandering.? pp. 43-57 IN: Edmondson, Henry T., III (ed. and introd.). The Moral of the Story: Literature and Public Ethics. Lanham, MD: Lexington. 2000. x, 261 pp. (book article) Lawler, Peter Augustine. ?Lost in the Cosmos: Walker Percy's Analysis of American Restlessness.? pp. 169-89 IN: Knippenberg, Joseph M. (ed.). Lawler, Peter Augustine (ed.). Poets, Princes, and Private Citizens: Literary Alternatives to Postmodern Politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 1996. xxiii, 310 pp. Lawson, Lewis A. ?The Cross and the Delta: Walker Percy's Anthropology.? pp. 3-12 IN: Gretlund, Jan Nordby (ed.). Westarp, Karl-Heinz (ed. & pref.). Percy, Walker (fwd.). Walker Percy: Novelist and Philosopher. Jackson: UP of Mississippi. 1991. xv, 256 pp. Lawson, Lewis. ?The Origin of Will Barrett's 'Exceptional States'.? Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Cultures, 1996-1997 Winter. 50 (1): 69-84. Martin, Richard T. ?Language Specificity as Pattern of Redemption in The Thanatos Syndrome.? Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, 1996 Spring. 48 (3): 208-23. McDonald, Harold Lawson, Jr. ?Toward a Triadic Theory of Walker Percy: A Semiotic Reading of the Novels.? Dissertation Abstracts International, 1993 Mar. 53 (9): 3214A. U of North Carolina, Greensboro. Mikolajczak, Michael A. ?'A Home That Is Hope': Lost Cove, Tennessee.? Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, 1998 Spring-Summer. 50 (3-4): 299-316. Mikolajezak, Michael Allen. "`A Home That Is Hope': Lost Cove, Tennessee" Renascence (Milwaukee), Winter, 1987, Vol XL No. 2, pp. 77-94. Mooneyham, Laura. ?The Origin of Consciousness, Gains and Losses: Walker Percy vs. Julian Jaynes.? Language & Communication: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 1993 July. 13 (3): 169-82. Nagel, Thomas. "Sin and Significance," (review of Message in the Bottle), The New York Review of Books, September 18, 1975, pp. 54-56. O'Gorman, Farrell. ?Languages Of Mystery: Walker Percy's Legacy In Contemporary Southern Fiction.? Southern Literary Journal, 2002 Spring. 34 (2): 97-119. Parker, Frank. "Walker Percy's Theory of Language: A Linguist's Assessment" Delta:-Revue-du- Centre-d'Etudes-et-de-Recherche-sur-les-Ecrivains-du-Sud-aux-Etats-Unis, 34032 Montpellier Cedex, France (DeltaES). 1981 Nov., 13, 145-167. Pearson, Michael. "Language and Love in Walker Percy's The Second Coming" Southern-Literary-Journal, Chapel Hill, NC (SLJ). 1987 Fall, 20:1, 89-100. Pearson, Michael. The Rhetoric of Symbolic Action: Walker Percy's Way of Knowing. Diss. Pennsylvania State U, 1977. Pitts, May Ellen. "Love in the Fragments: Percy's Dr. Thomas More and the Lacanian Triad" Studies in the Humanities (Indiana) June, 1989, Vol. 16 No.1, pp. 1-9. Pridgen, Allen. ?The Brownian Leaves: Sacramental Presence in Walker Percy's The Last Gentleman.? Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, 1996 Summer. 48 (4): 296-308. Pridgen, Allen. ?Nature as Sacrament in Walker Percy's The Second Coming.? Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Cultures, 1997-1998 Winter. 51 (1): 3-13. Pridgen, Allen. ?Up in His Head: Orbit and Sacrament in Walker Percy's The Thanatos Syndrome.? The Southern Quarterly: A Journal of the Arts in the South, 1995 Fall. 34 (1): 32-38. Quinlan, Kieran. "The Moviegoer: The Dilemma of Walker Percy's Scholastic Existentialism." in Young, Thomas Daniel (ed.). Modern American Fiction: Form and Function. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1989, pp. 213-224. Riehl, Robert Ellison. "The Ordeal of Naming: Walker Percy's Philosophy of Language and His Novels" (The University of Texas) 1975. Samway, Patrick, S.J. "Another Case of the Purloined Letter (In Walker Percy's Lancelot) New Orleans Review (Loyola University), Winter, 1989, Vol. 16 No. 4 pp. 37-44. Scullin-Esser, Kathleen "Art and Strategy in Walker Percy's 'Lancelot': Visiting the Region of the Dead" DAI. 1988 Oct., 49:4, 817A. Scullin-Esser, Kathleen "Connecting the Self with What Is Outside the Self in The Thanatos Syndrome" Renascence:-Essays-on-Value-in-Literature, Milwaukee, WI (Renascence). 1988 Winter, 40:2, 67-76 Smith, Tyler Przekop "Walker Percy's Fiction: The Vision of Distance" DAI 1985 Aug., 46:2, 426A-427A. Telotte, J. P. "Walker Percy's Language of Creation" Southern Quarterly 16, 1978 pp. 105-116. Westarp,-Karl-Heinz "Lost in the Cosmos: Place in Walker Percy." The Dolphin:-Publications-of-the-English-Department,-University-of-Aarhus, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark (Dolphin). 1991 Spring, 20, 108-17. Westarp, Karl-Heinz. Lost in the Cosmos: Place in Walker Percy. Dolphin: Publications of the English Department, University of Aarhus, 1991 Spring. 20: 108-17. Wulfsberg, Martha Montello "The Divided Self in the Fiction of Walker Percy" DAI . 1988 Feb., 48:8, 2064A. Zamora, Lois Parkinson "The Reader at the Movies: Semiotic Systems in Walker Percy's The Moviegoer and Manuel Puig's La traicion de Rita Hayworth" The American-Journal-of-Semiotics, Davis, CA (AJS). 1984, 3:1, 50-67. Zeugner, John F. "Walker Percy and Gabriel Marcel: The Castaway and the Wayfarer" Mississippi Quarterly 28 1975 pp. 21-53. -----Original Message----- From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Ballow Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 3:36 PM To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? Hi All - New to this list but a long-time fan of Percy. While I have read his novels and essays, I haven't really read any literary criticism on his work. Which books (or articles/essays even) should I start with? Many thanks.... ------ End of Forwarded Message From korrektiv at gmail.com Sat Feb 16 18:11:53 2008 From: korrektiv at gmail.com (Rufus McCain) Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 15:11:53 -0800 Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? In-Reply-To: <20080216203541.A7A011BF28D@ws1-1.us4.outblaze.com> References: <20080216203541.A7A011BF28D@ws1-1.us4.outblaze.com> Message-ID: <1329b480802161511p3da8ec79j2fa7aa9990f3c19b@mail.gmail.com> Jeff, Thanks for reviving the slumbering Percy-L. I wrote a master's thesis on Percy which you can find reproduced at http://www.korrektiv.org/1990/12/needles-eye-walker-percys-conception-of.html. I haven't really kept up on Percy criticism since then, but I read everything that was available at the time and two books particularly stood out. 1. Critical Essays on Walker Percy (J. Donald Crowley, ed.) 2. The Fiction of Walker Percy (John Hardy) Anything by Lewis Lawson or John Desmond will be quite excellent as well. Happy reading, Rufus McCain Spokane WA On 2/16/08, Jeff Ballow wrote: > > Hi All - New to this list but a long-time fan of Percy. While I have read > his novels and essays, I haven't really read any literary criticism on his > work. Which books (or articles/essays even) should I start with? Many > thanks.... > > -- > Want an e-mail address like mine? > Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com! > > -- > An archive of all list discussion is available at > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ > > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mitchdl at email.unc.edu Sun Feb 17 00:27:26 2008 From: mitchdl at email.unc.edu (Doug) Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:27:26 -0600 Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? References: <20080216203541.A7A011BF28D@ws1-1.us4.outblaze.com> Message-ID: <002501c87125$c8665f20$0300a8c0@Dougstudy> Ah, springtime! All the slumbering Percians emerging from their long dyadic dreams and reemerging into the bright triadic world, blinking bemusedly...Well timed, Jeff. Karey's list is a great help (thanks for sending that around, Karey). If you're wondering where to start, I would say Jay Tolson's biography (a well-written intellectual bio) and two relatively recent books: John Desmond's Walker Percy's Search for Community (great readings of all the novels and a sound intro to Percy's semiotics) and Farrell O'Gorman's Peculiar Crossroads (for Percy and O'Connor in relation to mid-century Catholic thought and southern letters generally). Best, Doug ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeff Ballow" To: Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 2:35 PM Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? > Hi All - New to this list but a long-time fan of Percy. While I have read > his novels and essays, I haven't really read any literary criticism on his > work. Which books (or articles/essays even) should I start with? Many > thanks.... > > -- > Want an e-mail address like mine? > Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com! > > -- > An archive of all list discussion is available at > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ > > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy From jjdominy at ufl.edu Sun Feb 17 10:21:51 2008 From: jjdominy at ufl.edu (Jordan Dominy) Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 10:21:51 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? In-Reply-To: <002501c87125$c8665f20$0300a8c0@Dougstudy> References: <20080216203541.A7A011BF28D@ws1-1.us4.outblaze.com> <002501c87125$c8665f20$0300a8c0@Dougstudy> Message-ID: Gary Ciuba has a book from last year that includes Percy as well as Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O'Connor, and Cormac McCarthy called Desire Violence, & Divinity in Modern Southern Fiction. It's out from the LSU Press. Jordan On Feb 17, 2008, at 12:27 AM, Doug wrote: > Ah, springtime! All the slumbering Percians emerging from their > long dyadic > dreams and reemerging into the bright triadic world, blinking > bemusedly...Well timed, Jeff. > > Karey's list is a great help (thanks for sending that around, > Karey). If > you're wondering where to start, I would say Jay Tolson's biography (a > well-written intellectual bio) and two relatively recent books: John > Desmond's Walker Percy's Search for Community (great readings of > all the > novels and a sound intro to Percy's semiotics) and Farrell O'Gorman's > Peculiar Crossroads (for Percy and O'Connor in relation to mid-century > Catholic thought and southern letters generally). > > Best, > Doug > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jeff Ballow" > To: > Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 2:35 PM > Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? > > >> Hi All - New to this list but a long-time fan of Percy. While I >> have read >> his novels and essays, I haven't really read any literary >> criticism on his >> work. Which books (or articles/essays even) should I start with? >> Many >> thanks.... >> >> -- >> Want an e-mail address like mine? >> Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com! >> >> -- >> An archive of all list discussion is available at >> http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ >> >> Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > > -- > An archive of all list discussion is available at http:// > lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ > > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > -- Jordan J. Dominy, M.A. GTA/Ph.D. Student University of Florida Department of English P. O. Box 117310 Gainesville, FL 32611-7310 jjdominy at ufl.edu http://plaza.ufl.edu/jjdominy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rhonda_mcdonnell at msn.com Wed Feb 20 20:22:02 2008 From: rhonda_mcdonnell at msn.com (RHONDA MCDONNELL) Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:22:02 -0700 Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? In-Reply-To: <002501c87125$c8665f20$0300a8c0@Dougstudy> References: <20080216203541.A7A011BF28D@ws1-1.us4.outblaze.com> <002501c87125$c8665f20$0300a8c0@Dougstudy> Message-ID: I thought you all died! Glad to know you were merely sleeping (as was I). Both Lawson books are tops, and most of what's out there adds to the critical conversation on Percy (I'd steer clear of the Poteat book, though. It's pretty far off course). The collections of letters--A Thief of Peirce--and the Walker Percy Shelby Foote letters are interesting for the insight they offer. And, give Lost in the Cosmos, by Percy, a read. It's the closest he came to setting down his philosophy in one place. --Rhonda "You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." Walker Percy > From: mitchdl at email.unc.edu> To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org> Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:27:26 -0600> Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start?> > Ah, springtime! All the slumbering Percians emerging from their long dyadic > dreams and reemerging into the bright triadic world, blinking > bemusedly...Well timed, Jeff.> > Karey's list is a great help (thanks for sending that around, Karey). If > you're wondering where to start, I would say Jay Tolson's biography (a > well-written intellectual bio) and two relatively recent books: John > Desmond's Walker Percy's Search for Community (great readings of all the > novels and a sound intro to Percy's semiotics) and Farrell O'Gorman's > Peculiar Crossroads (for Percy and O'Connor in relation to mid-century > Catholic thought and southern letters generally).> > Best,> Doug> > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jeff Ballow" > To: > Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 2:35 PM> Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start?> > > > Hi All - New to this list but a long-time fan of Percy. While I have read > > his novels and essays, I haven't really read any literary criticism on his > > work. Which books (or articles/essays even) should I start with? Many > > thanks....> >> > -- > > Want an e-mail address like mine?> > Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com!> >> > --> > An archive of all list discussion is available at > > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/> >> > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > > --> An archive of all list discussion is available at http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/> > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy _________________________________________________________________ Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. http://www.windowslive.com/share.html?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_sharelife_012008 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jeffballow at nycmail.com Wed Feb 20 21:16:34 2008 From: jeffballow at nycmail.com (Jeff Ballow) Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:16:34 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? Message-ID: <20080221021634.A701D1CE7C0@ws1-6.us4.outblaze.com> Thanks everyone for the feedback - much appreciated. Everyone seems to be hibernating -- at least here in the Northeast. So I figure what better way to shake off the mid-winter blues and celebrate Fat Tuesday than by re-reading The Moviegoer.... ----- Original Message ----- From: "RHONDA MCDONNELL" To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:22:02 -0700 I thought you all died! Glad to know you were merely sleeping (as was I). Both Lawson books are tops, and most of what's out there adds to the critical conversation on Percy (I'd steer clear of the Poteat book, though. It's pretty far off course). The collections of letters--A Thief of Peirce--and the Walker Percy Shelby Foote letters are interesting for the insight they offer. And, give Lost in the Cosmos, by Percy, a read. It's the closest he came to setting down his philosophy in one place. --Rhonda "You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." Walker Percy -------------------------------------------------------------------- > From: mitchdl at email.unc.edu > To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org > Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:27:26 -0600 > Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? > > Ah, springtime! All the slumbering Percians emerging from their long dyadic > dreams and reemerging into the bright triadic world, blinking > bemusedly...Well timed, Jeff. > > Karey's list is a great help (thanks for sending that around, Karey). If > you're wondering where to start, I would say Jay Tolson's biography (a > well-written intellectual bio) and two relatively recent books: John > Desmond's Walker Percy's Search for Community (great readings of all the > novels and a sound intro to Percy's semiotics) and Farrell O'Gorman's > Peculiar Crossroads (for Percy and O'Connor in relation to mid-century > Catholic thought and southern letters generally). > > Best, > Doug > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jeff Ballow" > To: > Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 2:35 PM > Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? > > > > Hi All - New to this list but a long-time fan of Percy. While I have read > > his novels and essays, I haven't really read any literary criticism on his > > work. Which books (or articles/essays even) should I start with? Many > > thanks.... > > > > -- > > Want an e-mail address like mine? > > Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com! > > > > -- > > An archive of all list discussion is available at > > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ > > > > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > > -- > An archive of all list discussion is available at http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ > > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy -------------------------------------------------------------------- Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. Get it now! -- An archive of all list discussion is available at http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy -- Want an e-mail address like mine? Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karey1 at charter.net Wed Feb 20 21:36:42 2008 From: karey1 at charter.net (Karey Perkins) Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:36:42 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? In-Reply-To: <20080221021634.A701D1CE7C0@ws1-6.us4.outblaze.com> Message-ID: <002d01c87432$986127f0$6401a8c0@Karey> I agree, Rhonda - "A Thief of Peirce" was simply a fascinating and great read - though not sure it was officially "criticism." Secondly, I loved Tolson's biography, which won numerous awards, even outside the Percy crowd - definitely worth reading. Didn't find that his Foote letters helped me much. Shelby Foote didn't understand (or was interested in) much of what Percy did/was, though they were great friends. Glad to see the list has raised it's sleeping head! Karey _____ From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Ballow Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 9:17 PM To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? Thanks everyone for the feedback - much appreciated. Everyone seems to be hibernating -- at least here in the Northeast. So I figure what better way to shake off the mid-winter blues and celebrate Fat Tuesday than by re-reading The Moviegoer.... ----- Original Message ----- From: "RHONDA MCDONNELL" To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:22:02 -0700 I thought you all died! Glad to know you were merely sleeping (as was I). Both Lawson books are tops, and most of what's out there adds to the critical conversation on Percy (I'd steer clear of the Poteat book, though. It's pretty far off course). The collections of letters--A Thief of Peirce--and the Walker Percy Shelby Foote letters are interesting for the insight they offer. And, give Lost in the Cosmos, by Percy, a read. It's the closest he came to setting down his philosophy in one place. --Rhonda "You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." Walker Percy _____ > From: mitchdl at email.unc.edu > To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org > Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:27:26 -0600 > Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? > > Ah, springtime! All the slumbering Percians emerging from their long dyadic > dreams and reemerging into the bright triadic world, blinking > bemusedly...Well timed, Jeff. > > Karey's list is a great help (thanks for sending that around, Karey). If > you're wondering where to start, I would say Jay Tolson's biography (a > well-written intellectual bio) and two relatively recent books: John > Desmond's Walker Percy's Search for Community (great readings of all the > novels and a sound intro to Percy's semiotics) and Farrell O'Gorman's > Peculiar Crossroads (for Percy and O'Connor in relation to mid-century > Catholic thought and southern letters generally). > > Best, > Doug > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jeff Ballow" > To: > Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 2:35 PM > Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? > > > > Hi All - New to this list but a long-time fan of Percy. While I have read > > his novels and essays, I haven't really read any literary criticism on his > > work. Which books (or articles/essays even) should I start with? Many > > thanks.... > > > > -- > > Want an e-mail address like mine? > > Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com! > > > > -- > > An archive of all list discussion is available at > > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ > > > > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > > -- > An archive of all list discussion is available at http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ > > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy _____ Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. Get it now! -- An archive of all list discussion is available at http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy -- Want an e-mail address like mine? Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com ! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rhonda_mcdonnell at msn.com Thu Feb 21 18:46:53 2008 From: rhonda_mcdonnell at msn.com (RHONDA MCDONNELL) Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:46:53 -0700 Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? In-Reply-To: <20080221021634.A701D1CE7C0@ws1-6.us4.outblaze.com> References: <20080221021634.A701D1CE7C0@ws1-6.us4.outblaze.com> Message-ID: Of late, I've been stricken with spring malaise, and find myself longing for a good rotation. Commiserating with Binx might be just the ticket. --Rhonda "You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." Walker Percy From: jeffballow at nycmail.comTo: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.orgDate: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:16:34 -0500Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? Thanks everyone for the feedback - much appreciated. Everyone seems to be hibernating -- at least here in the Northeast. So I figure what better way to shake off the mid-winter blues and celebrate Fat Tuesday than by re-reading The Moviegoer.... ----- Original Message -----From: "RHONDA MCDONNELL" To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start?Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:22:02 -0700I thought you all died! Glad to know you were merely sleeping (as was I). Both Lawson books are tops, and most of what's out there adds to the critical conversation on Percy (I'd steer clear of the Poteat book, though. It's pretty far off course). The collections of letters--A Thief of Peirce--and the Walker Percy Shelby Foote letters are interesting for the insight they offer. And, give Lost in the Cosmos, by Percy, a read. It's the closest he came to setting down his philosophy in one place. --Rhonda "You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." Walker Percy > From: mitchdl at email.unc.edu> To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org> Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:27:26 -0600> Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start?> > Ah, springtime! All the slumbering Percians emerging from their long dyadic > dreams and reemerging into the bright triadic world, blinking > bemusedly...Well timed, Jeff.> > Karey's list is a great help (thanks for sending that around, Karey). If > you're wondering where to start, I would say Jay Tolson's biography (a > well-written intellectual bio) and two relatively recent books: John > Desmond's Walker Percy's Search for Community (great readings of all the > novels and a sound intro to Percy's semiotics) and Farrell O'Gorman's > Peculiar Crossroads (for Percy and O'Connor in relation to mid-century > Catholic thought and southern letters generally).> > Best,> Doug> > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jeff Ballow" > To: > Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 2:35 PM> Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start?> > > > Hi All - New to this list but a long-time fan of Percy. While I have read > > his novels and essays, I haven't really read any literary criticism on his > > work. Which books (or articles/essays even) should I start with? Many > > thanks....> >> > -- > > Want an e-mail address like mine?> > Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com!> >> > --> > An archive of all list discussion is available at > > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/> >> > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > > --> An archive of all list discussion is available at http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/> > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. Get it now!--An archive of all list discussion is available at http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy-- Want an e-mail address like mine? Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com! _________________________________________________________________ Need to know the score, the latest news, or you need your Hotmail?-get your "fix". http://www.msnmobilefix.com/Default.aspx -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rhonda_mcdonnell at msn.com Thu Feb 21 18:51:04 2008 From: rhonda_mcdonnell at msn.com (RHONDA MCDONNELL) Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:51:04 -0700 Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? In-Reply-To: <002d01c87432$986127f0$6401a8c0@Karey> References: <20080221021634.A701D1CE7C0@ws1-6.us4.outblaze.com> <002d01c87432$986127f0$6401a8c0@Karey> Message-ID: You're right, Karey. Foote didn't get the language business that was so central to Percy. But what I found was revealing in their correspondence was the insight into Percy's process and his priorities. --Rhonda "You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." Walker Percy From: karey1 at charter.netTo: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.orgDate: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:36:42 -0500Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? I agree, Rhonda ? ?A Thief of Peirce? was simply a fascinating and great read ? though not sure it was officially ?criticism.? Secondly, I loved Tolson?s biography, which won numerous awards, even outside the Percy crowd ? definitely worth reading. Didn?t find that his Foote letters helped me much. Shelby Foote didn?t understand (or was interested in) much of what Percy did/was, though they were great friends. Glad to see the list has raised it?s sleeping head! Karey From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Jeff BallowSent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 9:17 PMTo: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical DiscussionSubject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? Thanks everyone for the feedback - much appreciated. Everyone seems to be hibernating -- at least here in the Northeast. So I figure what better way to shake off the mid-winter blues and celebrate Fat Tuesday than by re-reading The Moviegoer.... ----- Original Message -----From: "RHONDA MCDONNELL" To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start?Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:22:02 -0700I thought you all died! Glad to know you were merely sleeping (as was I). Both Lawson books are tops, and most of what's out there adds to the critical conversation on Percy (I'd steer clear of the Poteat book, though. It's pretty far off course). The collections of letters--A Thief of Peirce--and the Walker Percy Shelby Foote letters are interesting for the insight they offer. And, give Lost in the Cosmos, by Percy, a read. It's the closest he came to setting down his philosophy in one place. --Rhonda "You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." Walker Percy > From: mitchdl at email.unc.edu> To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org> Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:27:26 -0600> Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start?> > Ah, springtime! All the slumbering Percians emerging from their long dyadic > dreams and reemerging into the bright triadic world, blinking > bemusedly...Well timed, Jeff.> > Karey's list is a great help (thanks for sending that around, Karey). If > you're wondering where to start, I would say Jay Tolson's biography (a > well-written intellectual bio) and two relatively recent books: John > Desmond's Walker Percy's Search for Community (great readings of all the > novels and a sound intro to Percy's semiotics) and Farrell O'Gorman's > Peculiar Crossroads (for Percy and O'Connor in relation to mid-century > Catholic thought and southern letters generally).> > Best,> Doug> > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jeff Ballow" > To: > Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 2:35 PM> Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start?> > > > Hi All - New to this list but a long-time fan of Percy. While I have read > > his novels and essays, I haven't really read any literary criticism on his > > work. Which books (or articles/essays even) should I start with? Many > > thanks....> >> > -- > > Want an e-mail address like mine?> > Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com!> >> > --> > An archive of all list discussion is available at > > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/> >> > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > > --> An archive of all list discussion is available at http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/> > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. Get it now!--An archive of all list discussion is available at http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy -- Want an e-mail address like mine? Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com! _________________________________________________________________ Helping your favorite cause is as easy as instant messaging.?You IM, we give. http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Home/?source=text_hotmail_join -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From RGray at montreat.edu Fri Feb 22 15:52:48 2008 From: RGray at montreat.edu (Gray, Rich) Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:52:48 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? Message-ID: <3FE19AF0B946EE4D8FAB89F9F1159F4C01061C93@e3kmail.montreat.edu> I nominate John Sykes' FLANNERY O'CONNOR, WALKER PERCY, AND THE AESTHETIC OF REVELATION, U Missouri P, 2007. Rich Gray ________________________________ From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of RHONDA MCDONNELL Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2008 6:47 PM To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? Of late, I've been stricken with spring malaise, and find myself longing for a good rotation. Commiserating with Binx might be just the ticket. --Rhonda "You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." Walker Percy ________________________________ From: jeffballow at nycmail.com To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:16:34 -0500 Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? Thanks everyone for the feedback - much appreciated. Everyone seems to be hibernating -- at least here in the Northeast. So I figure what better way to shake off the mid-winter blues and celebrate Fat Tuesday than by re-reading The Moviegoer.... ----- Original Message ----- From: "RHONDA MCDONNELL" To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:22:02 -0700 I thought you all died! Glad to know you were merely sleeping (as was I). Both Lawson books are tops, and most of what's out there adds to the critical conversation on Percy (I'd steer clear of the Poteat book, though. It's pretty far off course). The collections of letters--A Thief of Peirce--and the Walker Percy Shelby Foote letters are interesting for the insight they offer. And, give Lost in the Cosmos, by Percy, a read. It's the closest he came to setting down his philosophy in one place. your Hotmail(r)-get your "fix". Check it out. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rgeckert at yahoo.com Sat Feb 23 19:54:44 2008 From: rgeckert at yahoo.com (Robert Eckert) Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2008 16:54:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <850040.5119.qm@web30505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hello All, In one interview, Percy, when asked a question concerning something about living at another time, said he would like to sit on a park bench in NYC in the year 2050 to see how we were doing. To see if we made it. Will we? Percy's questions concerning human destiny are still relevant. Even more so in a post 9/11 age. Bad people possess the capability to inflict inordinate damage upon you and everything you know. Imagine a well orchistrated bioviolent attack involving Soviet bioweapon technology. Imagine an attack involving genetically engineered versions of small pox. Imagine a dissemination of a contagious deadly disease against which we have no immunity. What will Percy find during his fifteen minute 2050 visit? ? CPL Robert Eckert 172 Chemical Co Ft. Riley, KS 66442 .hmmessage P { margin:0px; padding:0px } body.hmmessage { FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY:Tahoma } You're right, Karey. Foote didn't get the language business that was so central to Percy. But what I found was revealing in their correspondence was the insight into Percy's process and his priorities. --Rhonda "You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." Walker Percy --------------------------------- From: karey1 at charter.net To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:36:42 -0500 Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? .ExternalClass .EC_shape {;} .ExternalClass EC_p.MsoNormal, .ExternalClass EC_li.MsoNormal, .ExternalClass EC_div.MsoNormal {margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';} .ExternalClass a:link, .ExternalClass EC_span.MsoHyperlink {color:blue;text-decoration:underline;} .ExternalClass a:visited, .ExternalClass EC_span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:blue;text-decoration:underline;} .ExternalClass EC_span.EmailStyle18 {font-family:Arial;color:blue;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none none;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in;} .ExternalClass EC_div.Section1 {page:Section1;} I agree, Rhonda ? ?A Thief of Peirce? was simply a fascinating and great read ? though not sure it was officially ?criticism.? Secondly, I loved Tolson?s biography, which won numerous awards, even outside the Percy crowd ? definitely worth reading. Didn?t find that his Foote letters helped me much. Shelby Foote didn?t understand (or was interested in) much of what Percy did/was, though they were great friends. Glad to see the list has raised it?s sleeping head! Karey --------------------------------- From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Ballow Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 9:17 PM To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? Thanks everyone for the feedback - much appreciated. Everyone seems to be hibernating -- at least here in the Northeast. So I figure what better way to shake off the mid-winter blues and celebrate Fat Tuesday than by re-reading The Moviegoer.... ----- Original Message ----- From: "RHONDA MCDONNELL" To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:22:02 -0700 I thought you all died! Glad to know you were merely sleeping (as was I). Both Lawson books are tops, and most of what's out there adds to the critical conversation on Percy (I'd steer clear of the Poteat book, though. It's pretty far off course). The collections of letters--A Thief of Peirce--and the Walker Percy Shelby Foote letters are interesting for the insight they offer. And, give Lost in the Cosmos, by Percy, a read. It's the closest he came to setting down his philosophy in one place. --Rhonda "You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." Walker Percy --------------------------------- > From: mitchdl at email.unc.edu > To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org > Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:27:26 -0600 > Subject: Re: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? > > Ah, springtime! All the slumbering Percians emerging from their long dyadic > dreams and reemerging into the bright triadic world, blinking > bemusedly...Well timed, Jeff. > > Karey's list is a great help (thanks for sending that around, Karey). If > you're wondering where to start, I would say Jay Tolson's biography (a > well-written intellectual bio) and two relatively recent books: John > Desmond's Walker Percy's Search for Community (great readings of all the > novels and a sound intro to Percy's semiotics) and Farrell O'Gorman's > Peculiar Crossroads (for Percy and O'Connor in relation to mid-century > Catholic thought and southern letters generally). > > Best, > Doug > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jeff Ballow" > To: > Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 2:35 PM > Subject: [percy-l] Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? > > > > Hi All - New to this list but a long-time fan of Percy. While I have read > > his novels and essays, I haven't really read any literary criticism on his > > work. Which books (or articles/essays even) should I start with? Many > > thanks.... > > > > -- > > Want an e-mail address like mine? > > Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com! > > > > -- > > An archive of all list discussion is available at > > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ > > > > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > > -- > An archive of all list discussion is available at http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ > > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy --------------------------------- Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. Get it now! -- An archive of all list discussion is available at http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy -- Want an e-mail address like mine? Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com! --------------------------------- Helping your favorite cause is as easy as instant messaging. You IM, we give. Learn more. -- An archive of all list discussion is available at http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jhforest at gmail.com Sun Feb 24 06:50:12 2008 From: jhforest at gmail.com (Jim Forest) Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2008 12:50:12 +0100 Subject: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? Message-ID: <53c59b0c0802240350u6479ffa2g1add5dee141b4c6f@mail.gmail.com> An extract from Robert Eckert's posting: >> In one interview, Percy, when asked a question concerning something about living at another time, said he would like to sit on a park bench in NYC in the year 2050 to see how we were doing. To see if we made it. >> Will we? >> Percy's questions concerning human destiny are still relevant. >> Even more so in a post 9/11 age. >> Bad people possess the capability to inflict inordinate damage upon you and everything you know. I have a feeling that, if Walker Percy were still with us and could respond, he might point out that it's not only the bad people (Them) but the good people (Us) who all too often inflict inordinate damage upon a great many people. My guess is that his response would be along the same lines as something Thomas Merton (a writer Percy greatly admired) wrote while the Vietnam War was gaining momentum. Having read Hannah Arendt's book about the trial in Jerusalem of Adolph Eichmann, the chief bureaucrat of the Holocaust. Merton was inspired to write an essay: "A Devout Meditation in Memory of Adolf Eichmann." Eichmann, Merton noted, had been declared sane by examining psychiatrists. This sane man who had been involved in the death of millions seemed to Merton an archetype of all those who were brilliant perfecters of new technologies of killing. They were simply doing their job, following orders, being good citizens, etc. Merton wrote: "The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared.... No one suspects the sane, and the sane ones will have perfectly good reasons, logical, well-adjusted reasons, for firing the shot. They will be obeying sane orders that have come sanely down the chain of command." [Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable (New York: New Directions, 1966), 45-53.] Of course we regard ourselves as sane, not to mention good and decent and even God-fearing. In the Hollywood movie we make of ourselves, we're never the bad guys. Jim Forest * * * Jim & Nancy Forest Kanisstraat 5 1811 GJ Alkmaar The Netherlands personal web site: www.incommunion.org/forest-flier/ *recently published: "Silent as a Stone," a children's book about a community of rescuers in Nazi-occupied Paris:* http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/silent-as-a-stone-mother-maria-of-paris-and-the-trash-can-rescue/ *another new book: "The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life":* http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/the-road-to-emmaus-pilgrimage-as-a-way-of-life/ * * * Nancy and I have been keeping a journal that follows our recent kidney transplant. A blog has been set up for this purpose -- A Tale of Two Kidneys. See: http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/ * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From robert.g.eckert at us.army.mil Sun Feb 24 11:45:26 2008 From: robert.g.eckert at us.army.mil (Eckert, Robert G SPC MIL USA FORSCOM) Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2008 10:45:26 -0600 Subject: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? In-Reply-To: <53c59b0c0802240350u6479ffa2g1add5dee141b4c6f@mail.gmail.com> References: <53c59b0c0802240350u6479ffa2g1add5dee141b4c6f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Jim is right, of course. Scientists like Dr. Ken Alibek, M.D. who developed bioweapons for the Soviet Union are good people. I would still argue that the sort of killer who would use an agent like small pox in an attack is not the same type of killer as a soldier who engages insurgents firing on a convoy just hit by an i.e.d.. The insurgent or the soldier may be your hero. But, who could have as their hero, who could conceive any possible good in the use of a deadly contagious disease to indiscriminately inflict harm? CPL Robert Eckert ----- Original Message ----- From: Jim Forest Date: Sunday, February 24, 2008 5:50 Subject: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? To: Walker Percy List > An extract from Robert Eckert's posting: > > >> In one interview, Percy, when asked a question concerning > something about living at another time, said he would like to sit > on a > park bench in NYC in the year 2050 to see how we were doing. > To see if we made it. > >> Will we? > >> Percy's questions concerning human destiny are still relevant. > >> Even more so in a post 9/11 age. > >> Bad people possess the capability to inflict inordinate damage > upon you and everything you know. > > I have a feeling that, if Walker Percy were still with us and could > respond, he might point out that it's not only the bad people (Them) > but the good people (Us) who all too often inflict inordinate damage > upon a great many people. > > My guess is that his response would be along the same lines as > something Thomas Merton (a writer Percy greatly admired) wrote > while the Vietnam War was gaining momentum. > > Having read Hannah Arendt's book about the trial in Jerusalem of > Adolph Eichmann, the chief bureaucrat of the Holocaust. Merton was > inspired to write an essay: "A Devout Meditation in Memory of > Adolf Eichmann." > > Eichmann, Merton noted, had been declared sane by examining > psychiatrists. This sane man who had been involved in the death of > millions seemed to Merton an archetype of all those who were > brilliant perfecters of new technologies of killing. They were simply > doing their job, following orders, being good citizens, etc. > > Merton wrote: > > "The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense > of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love > and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world > to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it > begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the > most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can > without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the > buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that > they, the > sane ones, have prepared.... No one suspects the sane, and the sane > ones will have perfectly good reasons, logical, well-adjusted reasons, > for firing the shot. They will be obeying sane orders that have come > sanely down the chain of command." [Thomas Merton, Raids on the > Unspeakable (New York: New Directions, 1966), 45-53.] > > Of course we regard ourselves as sane, not to mention good and > decent and even God-fearing. In the Hollywood movie we make of > ourselves, we're never the bad guys. > > Jim Forest > > * * * > Jim & Nancy Forest > Kanisstraat 5 > 1811 GJ Alkmaar > The Netherlands > personal web site: www.incommunion.org/forest-flier/ > *recently published: > "Silent as a Stone," a children's book about a community of > rescuers in > Nazi-occupied Paris:* > http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/silent-as-a-stone-mother- > maria-of-paris-and-the-trash-can-rescue/ > *another new book: > "The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life":* > http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/the-road-to-emmaus- > pilgrimage-as-a-way-of-life/ > > * * * > Nancy and I have been keeping a journal that follows our recent kidney > transplant. A blog has > been set up for this purpose -- A Tale of Two Kidneys. See: > http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/ > * * * > From jhforest at gmail.com Mon Feb 25 05:44:11 2008 From: jhforest at gmail.com (Jim Forest) Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 11:44:11 +0100 Subject: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? In-Reply-To: References: <53c59b0c0802240350u6479ffa2g1add5dee141b4c6f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <53c59b0c0802250244i549b0444ma96e02d2c17b8dd4@mail.gmail.com> Thanks, Robert. God knows you're right about the pure horror of inflicting indiscriminate harm, whether by bio-weapons or any of the numerous other methods that have been developed as a means of mass murder. Developments in killing methods this half century or so make Genghis Kahn look like Elmer Fudd. When I was a US Navy meteorologist working with a Navy unit at the Weather Bureau headquarters just outside of Washington, DC, one of our daily exercises was to plot fallout patterns over 12-hour intervals should a 20-megaton nuclear explosion occur over the capitol. It was a sobering task, as you can imagine.Of course all the meteorologists at the Weather Bureau would be among the instant dead if it were the real thing. I wonder what Walker Percy would have to say about the word "hero"? Was it a topic that ever came up in the numerous interviews that were done with him? One group's hero is very often another groups icon of evil. But there are heroes who are beloved across borders. Saints. Now there's an interesting word, one that meant a great deal to Walker Percy. Friendly greetings, Jim On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 5:45 PM, Eckert, Robert G SPC MIL USA FORSCOM < robert.g.eckert at us.army.mil> wrote: > Jim is right, of course. > > Scientists like Dr. Ken Alibek, M.D. who developed bioweapons for the > Soviet Union are good people. > > I would still argue that the sort of killer who would use an agent like > small pox in an attack is not the same type of killer as a soldier who > engages insurgents firing on a convoy just hit by an i.e.d.. > > The insurgent or the soldier may be your hero. > > But, who could have as their hero, who could conceive any possible good in > the use of a deadly contagious disease to indiscriminately inflict harm? > > CPL Robert Eckert > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Jim Forest > Date: Sunday, February 24, 2008 5:50 > Subject: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? > To: Walker Percy List > > > An extract from Robert Eckert's posting: > > > > >> In one interview, Percy, when asked a question concerning > > something about living at another time, said he would like to sit > > on a > > park bench in NYC in the year 2050 to see how we were doing. > > To see if we made it. > > >> Will we? > > >> Percy's questions concerning human destiny are still relevant. > > >> Even more so in a post 9/11 age. > > >> Bad people possess the capability to inflict inordinate damage > > upon you and everything you know. > > > > I have a feeling that, if Walker Percy were still with us and could > > respond, he might point out that it's not only the bad people (Them) > > but the good people (Us) who all too often inflict inordinate damage > > upon a great many people. > > > > My guess is that his response would be along the same lines as > > something Thomas Merton (a writer Percy greatly admired) wrote > > while the Vietnam War was gaining momentum. > > > > Having read Hannah Arendt's book about the trial in Jerusalem of > > Adolph Eichmann, the chief bureaucrat of the Holocaust. Merton was > > inspired to write an essay: "A Devout Meditation in Memory of > > Adolf Eichmann." > > > > Eichmann, Merton noted, had been declared sane by examining > > psychiatrists. This sane man who had been involved in the death of > > millions seemed to Merton an archetype of all those who were > > brilliant perfecters of new technologies of killing. They were simply > > doing their job, following orders, being good citizens, etc. > > > > Merton wrote: > > > > "The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense > > of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love > > and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world > > to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it > > begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the > > most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can > > without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the > > buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that > > they, the > > sane ones, have prepared.... No one suspects the sane, and the sane > > ones will have perfectly good reasons, logical, well-adjusted reasons, > > for firing the shot. They will be obeying sane orders that have come > > sanely down the chain of command." [Thomas Merton, Raids on the > > Unspeakable (New York: New Directions, 1966), 45-53.] > > > > Of course we regard ourselves as sane, not to mention good and > > decent and even God-fearing. In the Hollywood movie we make of > > ourselves, we're never the bad guys. > > > > Jim Forest > > > > * * * > > Jim & Nancy Forest > > Kanisstraat 5 > > 1811 GJ Alkmaar > > The Netherlands > > personal web site: www.incommunion.org/forest-flier/ > > *recently published:* > > *"Silent as a Stone," a children's book about a community of* > > *rescuers in Nazi-occupied Paris:* > > http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/silent-as-a-stone-mother- > > maria-of-paris-and-the-trash-can-rescue/ > > *another new book: > > "The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life":** > > http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/the-road-to-emmaus- > > pilgrimage-as-a-way-of-life/ > > > > * * * > > Nancy and I have been keeping a journal that follows our recent kidney > > transplant. A blog has > > been set up for this purpose -- A Tale of Two Kidneys. See: > > http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/ > > * * * > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steve.petrica at gmail.com Mon Feb 25 07:57:10 2008 From: steve.petrica at gmail.com (Steve Petrica) Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:57:10 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? In-Reply-To: <53c59b0c0802240350u6479ffa2g1add5dee141b4c6f@mail.gmail.com> References: <53c59b0c0802240350u6479ffa2g1add5dee141b4c6f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <29de60a0802250457xa565436n8ef107719f20dbe6@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 6:50 AM, Jim Forest wrote: > An extract from Robert Eckert's posting: > > >> In one interview, Percy, when asked a question concerning something > about living at another time, said he would like to sit on a park bench in > NYC in the year 2050 to see how we were doing. To see if we made it. > >> Will we? > >> Percy's questions concerning human destiny are still relevant. > >> Even more so in a post 9/11 age. > >> Bad people possess the capability to inflict inordinate damage upon you > and everything you know. > > I have a feeling that, if Walker Percy were still with us and could > respond, he might point out that it's not only the bad people (Them) > but the good people (Us) who all too often inflict inordinate damage upon > a great many people. > > My guess is that his response would be along the same lines as something > Thomas Merton (a writer Percy greatly admired) wrote > while the Vietnam War was gaining momentum. > Well, yes and no. Percy -- like most any good novelist -- was at home with the idea of moral complexity and ambiguity. But I don't think he'd buy into the notion of moral equivalence. Whatever his admiration for Merton, Percy was no pacifist, nor did he (if I recall correctly) denounce the war in Vietnam. Steve -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jhforest at gmail.com Mon Feb 25 09:16:27 2008 From: jhforest at gmail.com (Jim Forest) Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:16:27 +0100 Subject: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? In-Reply-To: <29de60a0802250457xa565436n8ef107719f20dbe6@mail.gmail.com> References: <53c59b0c0802240350u6479ffa2g1add5dee141b4c6f@mail.gmail.com> <29de60a0802250457xa565436n8ef107719f20dbe6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <53c59b0c0802250616k65613168ue9946dfda2e89e@mail.gmail.com> Dear Steve, >> Percy -- like most any good novelist -- was at home with the idea of moral complexity and ambiguity. But I don't think he'd buy into the notion of moral equivalence. Whatever his admiration for Merton, Percy was no pacifist, nor did he (if I recall correctly) denounce the war in Vietnam. << I'd love to know more about what Walker Percy had to say about the Vietnam War. He was a supporter of that war at least for several years. Did his thoughts change as the war dragged on? I wonder what he thought of the Pentagon Papers, once they became public? It's helpful looking at the various references re the Vietnam War in Jay Tolson's well-indexed biography. Percy, Tolson reminds me, was a passionate supporter of Lyndon Johnson (at one point he actually put an LBJ bumper sticker on his car, which he said was tantamount in Louisiana to identifying himself as an "agitator") and was outraged at the (mainly northern) liberals who refused to recognize Johnson's basic decency and treated him with absolute scorn, no doubt in part simply because he was a southerner. Percy was also strongly anti-communist, and apparently regarded the Vietnam War -- at least in the war's early years -- as a sad but necessary task in the effort to prevent yet another expansion of communism's borders on the world map. I would be grateful if those on the List who were close to Percy could tell me more. Another comment re the first part of your comment: >> Percy -- like most any good novelist -- was at home with the idea of moral complexity and ambiguity. But I don't think he'd buy into the notion of moral equivalence. << I'm not sure Percy was "at home" (in the sense of being comfortable) with moral complexity and ambiguity, but he certainly had a deep if probably uncomfortable sense of moral complexity and ambiguity. This didn't, however, lead him to see everything in shades of grey, as one sees so vividly in his last novel, "The Thanatos Syndrome." Here his rage about euthanasia and chemical fixes of pathological tendencies was not unlike a lava flow. Friendly greetings, Jim Forest * * * On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 1:57 PM, Steve Petrica wrote: > > > On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 6:50 AM, Jim Forest wrote: > > > An extract from Robert Eckert's posting: > > > > >> In one interview, Percy, when asked a question concerning something > > about living at another time, said he would like to sit on a park bench in > > NYC in the year 2050 to see how we were doing. To see if we made it. > > >> Will we? > > >> Percy's questions concerning human destiny are still relevant. > > >> Even more so in a post 9/11 age. > > >> Bad people possess the capability to inflict inordinate damage upon > > you and everything you know. > > > > I have a feeling that, if Walker Percy were still with us and could > > respond, he might point out that it's not only the bad people (Them) > > but the good people (Us) who all too often inflict inordinate damage > > upon a great many people. > > > > My guess is that his response would be along the same lines as something > > Thomas Merton (a writer Percy greatly admired) wrote > > while the Vietnam War was gaining momentum. > > > > Well, yes and no. Percy -- like most any good novelist -- was at home > with the idea of moral complexity and ambiguity. But I don't think he'd buy > into the notion of moral equivalence. Whatever his admiration for Merton, > Percy was no pacifist, nor did he (if I recall correctly) denounce the war > in Vietnam. > > Steve > > -- > An archive of all list discussion is available at > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ > > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > > -- Jim & Nancy Forest Kanisstraat 5 1811 GJ Alkmaar The Netherlands Jim: jhforest at gmail.com Nancy: forestflier at gmail.com phone: (072) 515-4180 (int'l: 00-31-72-515-4180) personal web site: www.incommunion.org/forest-flier/ Orthodox Peace Fellowship web site: www.incommunion.org photos: www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/ *recently published: "Silent as a Stone," a children's book about a community of rescuers in Nazi-occupied Paris:* http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/silent-as-a-stone-mother-maria-of-paris-and-the-trash-can-rescue/ *another new book: "The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life":* http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/the-road-to-emmaus-pilgrimage-as-a-way-of-life/ * * * * Nancy and I have been keeping a journal that follows our recent kidney transplant. A blog has been set up for this purpose -- A Tale of Two Kidneys. See: http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/* * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From robert.g.eckert at us.army.mil Mon Feb 25 13:39:05 2008 From: robert.g.eckert at us.army.mil (Eckert, Robert G SPC MIL USA FORSCOM) Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:39:05 -0600 Subject: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? In-Reply-To: <53c59b0c0802250244i549b0444ma96e02d2c17b8dd4@mail.gmail.com> References: <53c59b0c0802240350u6479ffa2g1add5dee141b4c6f@mail.gmail.com> <53c59b0c0802250244i549b0444ma96e02d2c17b8dd4@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: I wonder if Percy ever read DeChardin's "The Great Monad", written in 1918 when he was with his regiment in Champagne. Even during the horror of that war DeChardin found something positive that I believe applies to this current clash: "Mankind in armed conflict with itself is a Mankind in process of solidification.... The whole of history teaches us this lesson, that after every revolution and after every war Mankind has always emerged a little more self-cohesive, a little more unified, because the links that hold its organism together are more firmly locked together and hope of a common emancipation has become strengthened." (p.184, The Heart of Matter) In a peculiar way, war is how we get to know other cultures. Americans know much more about Islam now than they did in August of 2001. We can hope that this struggle will settle, that Jewish, Muslim and Christian people will learn to live together peacefully. If we can survive the initial clash, we can converge. CPL Robert Eckert "What's so funny about peace, love and understanding" - Elvis Costello ----- Original Message ----- From: Jim Forest Date: Monday, February 25, 2008 5:00 Subject: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" > Thanks, Robert. God knows you're right about the pure horror of > inflicting indiscriminate harm, whether by bio-weapons or any of the > numerous other methods that have been developed as a means of mass > murder. Developments in killing methods this half century or so make > Genghis Kahn look like Elmer Fudd. > > When I was a US Navy meteorologist working with a Navy unit at the > Weather Bureau headquarters just outside of Washington, DC, one of > our daily exercises was to plot fallout patterns over 12-hour > intervalsshould a 20-megaton nuclear explosion occur over the > capitol. It was a > sobering task, as you can imagine.Of course all the meteorologists at > the Weather Bureau would be among the instant dead if it were the real > thing. > > I wonder what Walker Percy would have to say about the word "hero"? > Was it a topic that ever came up in the numerous interviews that were > done with him? > > One group's hero is very often another groups icon of evil. But there > are heroes who are beloved across borders. Saints. Now there's an > interesting word, one that meant a great deal to Walker Percy. > > Friendly greetings, > > Jim > > On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 5:45 PM, Eckert, Robert G SPC MIL USA > FORSCOM < > robert.g.eckert at us.army.mil> wrote: > > > Jim is right, of course. > > > > Scientists like Dr. Ken Alibek, M.D. who developed bioweapons > for the > > Soviet Union are good people. > > > > I would still argue that the sort of killer who would use an > agent like > > small pox in an attack is not the same type of killer as a > soldier who > > engages insurgents firing on a convoy just hit by an i.e.d.. > > > > The insurgent or the soldier may be your hero. > > > > But, who could have as their hero, who could conceive any > possible good in > > the use of a deadly contagious disease to indiscriminately > inflict harm? > > > > CPL Robert Eckert > > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: Jim Forest > > Date: Sunday, February 24, 2008 5:50 > > Subject: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? > > To: Walker Percy List > > > > > An extract from Robert Eckert's posting: > > > > > > >> In one interview, Percy, when asked a question concerning > > > something about living at another time, said he would like to sit > > > on a > > > park bench in NYC in the year 2050 to see how we were doing. > > > To see if we made it. > > > >> Will we? > > > >> Percy's questions concerning human destiny are still relevant. > > > >> Even more so in a post 9/11 age. > > > >> Bad people possess the capability to inflict inordinate damage > > > upon you and everything you know. > > > > > > I have a feeling that, if Walker Percy were still with us and > could> > respond, he might point out that it's not only the bad > people (Them) > > > but the good people (Us) who all too often inflict inordinate > damage> > upon a great many people. > > > > > > My guess is that his response would be along the same lines as > > > something Thomas Merton (a writer Percy greatly admired) wrote > > > while the Vietnam War was gaining momentum. > > > > > > Having read Hannah Arendt's book about the trial in Jerusalem of > > > Adolph Eichmann, the chief bureaucrat of the Holocaust. Merton was > > > inspired to write an essay: "A Devout Meditation in Memory of > > > Adolf Eichmann." > > > > > > Eichmann, Merton noted, had been declared sane by examining > > > psychiatrists. This sane man who had been involved in the > death of > > > millions seemed to Merton an archetype of all those who were > > > brilliant perfecters of new technologies of killing. They were > simply> > doing their job, following orders, being good citizens, etc. > > > > > > Merton wrote: > > > > > > "The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a > sense> > of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the > capacity to love > > > and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the > world> > to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And > now it > > > begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who > are the > > > most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, > who can > > > without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the > > > buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that > > > they, the > > > sane ones, have prepared.... No one suspects the sane, and the > sane> > ones will have perfectly good reasons, logical, well- > adjusted reasons, > > > for firing the shot. They will be obeying sane orders that > have come > > > sanely down the chain of command." [Thomas Merton, Raids on the > > > Unspeakable (New York: New Directions, 1966), 45-53.] > > > > > > Of course we regard ourselves as sane, not to mention good and > > > decent and even God-fearing. In the Hollywood movie we make of > > > ourselves, we're never the bad guys. > > > > > > Jim Forest > > > > > > * * * > > > Jim & Nancy Forest > > > Kanisstraat 5 > > > 1811 GJ Alkmaar > > > The Netherlands > > > personal web site: www.incommunion.org/forest-flier/ > > > *recently published:* > > > *"Silent as a Stone," a children's book about a community of* > > > *rescuers in Nazi-occupied Paris:* > > > http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/silent-as-a-stone- > mother- > > > maria-of-paris-and-the-trash-can-rescue/ > > > *another new book: > > > "The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life":** > > > http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/the-road-to-emmaus- > > > pilgrimage-as-a-way-of-life/ > > > > > > * * * > > > Nancy and I have been keeping a journal that follows our > recent kidney > > > transplant. A blog has > > > been set up for this purpose -- A Tale of Two Kidneys. See: > > > http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/ > > > * * * > > > From kterrell at sheastokes.com Mon Feb 25 17:08:18 2008 From: kterrell at sheastokes.com (Karl M. Terrell) Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:08:18 -0800 Subject: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? In-Reply-To: References: <53c59b0c0802240350u6479ffa2g1add5dee141b4c6f@mail.gmail.com><53c59b0c0802250244i549b0444ma96e02d2c17b8dd4@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On reading the quote below, I found myself thinking about one of the characters in Dr. Strangelove: the Air Force pilot with the nuclear payload played by Slim Pickens, who, after he gets the signal to drop The Big One, can hardly contain his joy. He puts on his cowboy hat, lets out a yodel, and rides that bomb down rodeo-style all the way to the target. With his one free hand, he happily waves his hat back and forth on his way to blowing up 'the Rooskies.' Percy wrote about how the prospect of bad things happening -- like an impending war, or perhaps an approaching category-5 hurricane -- do not cause dread or anxiety. We are instead filled with excitement. We couldn't be happier. By contrast, WP saw a man who has everything going for him, sitting in his fine home in, say, Short Hills, N.J. on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon, with no identifiable problems on the horizon, but who nonetheless finds himself ..... unsettled, anxious. The subtitle of Dr. Strangelove was "How I Learned to Stopped Worrying and Love the Bomb." The quote below speaks of war in positive terms, as a means of delivering 'solidification' and the 'hope of a common emancipation.' It seems to me that what's really going on is the pull of the death wish that we all share. Isn't that what Percy was talking about? Karl -----Original Message----- From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Eckert, Robert G SPC MIL USA FORSCOM Sent: Monday, February 25, 2008 1:39 PM To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion Subject: Re: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? I wonder if Percy ever read DeChardin's "The Great Monad", written in 1918 when he was with his regiment in Champagne. Even during the horror of that war DeChardin found something positive that I believe applies to this current clash: "Mankind in armed conflict with itself is a Mankind in process of solidification.... The whole of history teaches us this lesson, that after every revolution and after every war Mankind has always emerged a little more self-cohesive, a little more unified, because the links that hold its organism together are more firmly locked together and hope of a common emancipation has become strengthened." (p.184, The Heart of Matter) In a peculiar way, war is how we get to know other cultures. Americans know much more about Islam now than they did in August of 2001. We can hope that this struggle will settle, that Jewish, Muslim and Christian people will learn to live together peacefully. If we can survive the initial clash, we can converge. CPL Robert Eckert "What's so funny about peace, love and understanding" - Elvis Costello ----- Original Message ----- From: Jim Forest Date: Monday, February 25, 2008 5:00 Subject: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" > Thanks, Robert. God knows you're right about the pure horror of > inflicting indiscriminate harm, whether by bio-weapons or any of the > numerous other methods that have been developed as a means of mass > murder. Developments in killing methods this half century or so make > Genghis Kahn look like Elmer Fudd. > > When I was a US Navy meteorologist working with a Navy unit at the > Weather Bureau headquarters just outside of Washington, DC, one of our > daily exercises was to plot fallout patterns over 12-hour > intervalsshould a 20-megaton nuclear explosion occur over the capitol. > It was a sobering task, as you can imagine.Of course all the > meteorologists at the Weather Bureau would be among the instant dead > if it were the real thing. > > I wonder what Walker Percy would have to say about the word "hero"? > Was it a topic that ever came up in the numerous interviews that were > done with him? > > One group's hero is very often another groups icon of evil. But there > are heroes who are beloved across borders. Saints. Now there's an > interesting word, one that meant a great deal to Walker Percy. > > Friendly greetings, > > Jim > > On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 5:45 PM, Eckert, Robert G SPC MIL USA FORSCOM > < robert.g.eckert at us.army.mil> wrote: > > > Jim is right, of course. > > > > Scientists like Dr. Ken Alibek, M.D. who developed bioweapons > for the > > Soviet Union are good people. > > > > I would still argue that the sort of killer who would use an > agent like > > small pox in an attack is not the same type of killer as a > soldier who > > engages insurgents firing on a convoy just hit by an i.e.d.. > > > > The insurgent or the soldier may be your hero. > > > > But, who could have as their hero, who could conceive any > possible good in > > the use of a deadly contagious disease to indiscriminately > inflict harm? > > > > CPL Robert Eckert > > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: Jim Forest > > Date: Sunday, February 24, 2008 5:50 > > Subject: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? > > To: Walker Percy List > > > > > An extract from Robert Eckert's posting: > > > > > > >> In one interview, Percy, when asked a question concerning > > > something about living at another time, said he would like to sit > > > on a park bench in NYC in the year 2050 to see how we were doing. > > > To see if we made it. > > > >> Will we? > > > >> Percy's questions concerning human destiny are still relevant. > > > >> Even more so in a post 9/11 age. > > > >> Bad people possess the capability to inflict inordinate damage > > > upon you and everything you know. > > > > > > I have a feeling that, if Walker Percy were still with us and > could> > respond, he might point out that it's not only the bad > people (Them) > > > but the good people (Us) who all too often inflict inordinate > damage> > upon a great many people. > > > > > > My guess is that his response would be along the same lines as > > > something Thomas Merton (a writer Percy greatly admired) wrote > > > while the Vietnam War was gaining momentum. > > > > > > Having read Hannah Arendt's book about the trial in Jerusalem of > > > Adolph Eichmann, the chief bureaucrat of the Holocaust. Merton was > > > inspired to write an essay: "A Devout Meditation in Memory of > > > Adolf Eichmann." > > > > > > Eichmann, Merton noted, had been declared sane by examining > > > psychiatrists. This sane man who had been involved in the > death of > > > millions seemed to Merton an archetype of all those who were > > > brilliant perfecters of new technologies of killing. They were > simply> > doing their job, following orders, being good citizens, etc. > > > > > > Merton wrote: > > > > > > "The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a > sense> > of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the > capacity to love > > > and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the > world> > to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And > now it > > > begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who > are the > > > most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, > who can > > > without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the > > > buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that > > > they, the sane ones, have prepared.... No one suspects the sane, > > > and the > sane> > ones will have perfectly good reasons, logical, well- > adjusted reasons, > > > for firing the shot. They will be obeying sane orders that > have come > > > sanely down the chain of command." [Thomas Merton, Raids on the > > > Unspeakable (New York: New Directions, 1966), 45-53.] > > > > > > Of course we regard ourselves as sane, not to mention good and > > > decent and even God-fearing. In the Hollywood movie we make of > > > ourselves, we're never the bad guys. > > > > > > Jim Forest > > > > > > * * * > > > Jim & Nancy Forest > > > Kanisstraat 5 > > > 1811 GJ Alkmaar > > > The Netherlands > > > personal web site: www.incommunion.org/forest-flier/ *recently > > > published:* *"Silent as a Stone," a children's book about a > > > community of* *rescuers in Nazi-occupied Paris:* > > > http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/silent-as-a-stone- > mother- > > > maria-of-paris-and-the-trash-can-rescue/ > > > *another new book: > > > "The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life":** > > > http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/the-road-to-emmaus- > > > pilgrimage-as-a-way-of-life/ > > > > > > * * * > > > Nancy and I have been keeping a journal that follows our > recent kidney > > > transplant. A blog has > > > been set up for this purpose -- A Tale of Two Kidneys. See: > > > http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/ > > > * * * > > > -- An archive of all list discussion is available at http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy ********************************************************* PRIVILEGED COMMUNICATION This e-mail and any attachments transmitted are legally privileged and confidential, and are intended only for the individual or entity to whom it is directed. If you are not the intended recipient, this email was sent to you strictly inadvertently. You are not to read, copy or distribute this email, and instead should delete this email and all copies and backups thereof. Thank you. ********************************************************* From sldye at bluegrass.org Mon Feb 25 19:33:55 2008 From: sldye at bluegrass.org (Dye, Steve) Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:33:55 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? References: <53c59b0c0802240350u6479ffa2g1add5dee141b4c6f@mail.gmail.com><53c59b0c0802250244i549b0444ma96e02d2c17b8dd4@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Well put. One can just occasionally channel surf on to the History Channel and catch any number of "shows" about the relationship between Japan and the USA since 1930 as an example....and one might even venture to say that the relationship (and emotion) between those countries was even more volatile and "visceral" then between the USA and the Muslim world today....interesting how history "turns out". ________________________________ From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of Eckert, Robert G SPC MIL USA FORSCOM Sent: Mon 2/25/2008 1:39 PM To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion Subject: Re: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? I wonder if Percy ever read DeChardin's "The Great Monad", written in 1918 when he was with his regiment in Champagne. Even during the horror of that war DeChardin found something positive that I believe applies to this current clash: "Mankind in armed conflict with itself is a Mankind in process of solidification.... The whole of history teaches us this lesson, that after every revolution and after every war Mankind has always emerged a little more self-cohesive, a little more unified, because the links that hold its organism together are more firmly locked together and hope of a common emancipation has become strengthened." (p.184, The Heart of Matter) In a peculiar way, war is how we get to know other cultures. Americans know much more about Islam now than they did in August of 2001. We can hope that this struggle will settle, that Jewish, Muslim and Christian people will learn to live together peacefully. If we can survive the initial clash, we can converge. CPL Robert Eckert "What's so funny about peace, love and understanding" - Elvis Costello ----- Original Message ----- From: Jim Forest Date: Monday, February 25, 2008 5:00 Subject: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" > Thanks, Robert. God knows you're right about the pure horror of > inflicting indiscriminate harm, whether by bio-weapons or any of the > numerous other methods that have been developed as a means of mass > murder. Developments in killing methods this half century or so make > Genghis Kahn look like Elmer Fudd. > > When I was a US Navy meteorologist working with a Navy unit at the > Weather Bureau headquarters just outside of Washington, DC, one of > our daily exercises was to plot fallout patterns over 12-hour > intervalsshould a 20-megaton nuclear explosion occur over the > capitol. It was a > sobering task, as you can imagine.Of course all the meteorologists at > the Weather Bureau would be among the instant dead if it were the real > thing. > > I wonder what Walker Percy would have to say about the word "hero"? > Was it a topic that ever came up in the numerous interviews that were > done with him? > > One group's hero is very often another groups icon of evil. But there > are heroes who are beloved across borders. Saints. Now there's an > interesting word, one that meant a great deal to Walker Percy. > > Friendly greetings, > > Jim > > On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 5:45 PM, Eckert, Robert G SPC MIL USA > FORSCOM < > robert.g.eckert at us.army.mil> wrote: > > > Jim is right, of course. > > > > Scientists like Dr. Ken Alibek, M.D. who developed bioweapons > for the > > Soviet Union are good people. > > > > I would still argue that the sort of killer who would use an > agent like > > small pox in an attack is not the same type of killer as a > soldier who > > engages insurgents firing on a convoy just hit by an i.e.d.. > > > > The insurgent or the soldier may be your hero. > > > > But, who could have as their hero, who could conceive any > possible good in > > the use of a deadly contagious disease to indiscriminately > inflict harm? > > > > CPL Robert Eckert > > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: Jim Forest > > Date: Sunday, February 24, 2008 5:50 > > Subject: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? > > To: Walker Percy List > > > > > An extract from Robert Eckert's posting: > > > > > > >> In one interview, Percy, when asked a question concerning > > > something about living at another time, said he would like to sit > > > on a > > > park bench in NYC in the year 2050 to see how we were doing. > > > To see if we made it. > > > >> Will we? > > > >> Percy's questions concerning human destiny are still relevant. > > > >> Even more so in a post 9/11 age. > > > >> Bad people possess the capability to inflict inordinate damage > > > upon you and everything you know. > > > > > > I have a feeling that, if Walker Percy were still with us and > could> > respond, he might point out that it's not only the bad > people (Them) > > > but the good people (Us) who all too often inflict inordinate > damage> > upon a great many people. > > > > > > My guess is that his response would be along the same lines as > > > something Thomas Merton (a writer Percy greatly admired) wrote > > > while the Vietnam War was gaining momentum. > > > > > > Having read Hannah Arendt's book about the trial in Jerusalem of > > > Adolph Eichmann, the chief bureaucrat of the Holocaust. Merton was > > > inspired to write an essay: "A Devout Meditation in Memory of > > > Adolf Eichmann." > > > > > > Eichmann, Merton noted, had been declared sane by examining > > > psychiatrists. This sane man who had been involved in the > death of > > > millions seemed to Merton an archetype of all those who were > > > brilliant perfecters of new technologies of killing. They were > simply> > doing their job, following orders, being good citizens, etc. > > > > > > Merton wrote: > > > > > > "The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a > sense> > of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the > capacity to love > > > and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the > world> > to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And > now it > > > begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who > are the > > > most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, > who can > > > without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the > > > buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that > > > they, the > > > sane ones, have prepared.... No one suspects the sane, and the > sane> > ones will have perfectly good reasons, logical, well- > adjusted reasons, > > > for firing the shot. They will be obeying sane orders that > have come > > > sanely down the chain of command." [Thomas Merton, Raids on the > > > Unspeakable (New York: New Directions, 1966), 45-53.] > > > > > > Of course we regard ourselves as sane, not to mention good and > > > decent and even God-fearing. In the Hollywood movie we make of > > > ourselves, we're never the bad guys. > > > > > > Jim Forest > > > > > > * * * > > > Jim & Nancy Forest > > > Kanisstraat 5 > > > 1811 GJ Alkmaar > > > The Netherlands > > > personal web site: www.incommunion.org/forest-flier/ > > > *recently published:* > > > *"Silent as a Stone," a children's book about a community of* > > > *rescuers in Nazi-occupied Paris:* > > > http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/silent-as-a-stone- > mother- > > > maria-of-paris-and-the-trash-can-rescue/ > > > *another new book: > > > "The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life":** > > > http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/the-road-to-emmaus- > > > pilgrimage-as-a-way-of-life/ > > > > > > * * * > > > Nancy and I have been keeping a journal that follows our > recent kidney > > > transplant. A blog has > > > been set up for this purpose -- A Tale of Two Kidneys. See: > > > http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/ > > > * * * > > > -- An archive of all list discussion is available at http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: winmail.dat Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 11721 bytes Desc: not available URL: From steve.petrica at gmail.com Tue Feb 26 13:17:51 2008 From: steve.petrica at gmail.com (Steve Petrica) Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:17:51 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Re Lit Crit on Percy - Where to Start? In-Reply-To: <53c59b0c0802250616k65613168ue9946dfda2e89e@mail.gmail.com> References: <53c59b0c0802240350u6479ffa2g1add5dee141b4c6f@mail.gmail.com> <29de60a0802250457xa565436n8ef107719f20dbe6@mail.gmail.com> <53c59b0c0802250616k65613168ue9946dfda2e89e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <29de60a0802261017y715b17fi7854f95da98b9131@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 9:16 AM, Jim Forest wrote: >> Percy -- like most any good novelist -- was at home with the idea of > moral complexity and ambiguity. But I don't think he'd buy into the notion > of moral equivalence. << > > I'm not sure Percy was "at home" (in the sense of being comfortable) with > moral complexity and ambiguity, but he certainly had a deep if probably > uncomfortable sense of moral complexity and ambiguity. This didn't, however, > lead him to see everything in shades of grey, as one sees so vividly in his > last novel, "The Thanatos Syndrome." Here his rage about euthanasia and > chemical fixes of pathological > tendencies was not unlike a lava flow. I take your point that "at home" (in the sense of being comfortable with) may not be the best way to describe Percy's apprehension of moral complexity and ambiguity. Perhaps "reconciled to the fact of" moral complexity and ambiguity gets at it better. We agree that he didn't duck the problem by resorting to shades of moral grey. Steve -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Mlarson at SOUTHEASTMN.EDU Tue Feb 26 21:03:23 2008 From: Mlarson at SOUTHEASTMN.EDU (Michael Larson) Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:03:23 -0600 Subject: [percy-l] On the end of all things References: Message-ID: <3920C4B0B41025479F39D775289D7AA03F700E@wa-SEex.Southeasttech.edu> Robert Eckert's Percy-question regarding the future: >>In one interview, Percy, when asked a question concerning something about living at another time, said he would like to sit on a park bench in NYC in the year 2050 to see how we were doing. To see if we made it. Will we?<< My guess is that Percy is not actually wondering here whether the human race will avoid annihilation or even whether it will somehow find its own way out of this modern malaise. I suspect rather that he means, underneath the nonchalance of his answer, to remind the interviewer (and of course the readers of the interview) that ours is a tenuous existence, that our sustenance is well beyond our own powers, and that the time is likely to be later than we think. Regarding de Chardin: >>I wonder if Percy ever read DeChardin's "The Great Monad", written in 1918 when he was with his regiment in Champagne. Even during the horror of that war DeChardin found something positive that I believe applies to this current clash: "Mankind in armed conflict with itself is a Mankind in process of solidification.... The whole of history teaches us this lesson, that after every revolution and after every war Mankind has always emerged a little more self-cohesive, a little more unified, because the links that hold its organism together are more firmly locked together and hope of a common emancipation has become strengthened." (p.184, The Heart of Matter)<< I would be surprised if Percy followed closely the ideas of de Chardin, whose works were officially condemned by the Church in 1962. The above quotation, for instance, is indicative of the fundamental conflict between de Chardin's notion that the perfection of mankind is an evolutionary process achievable at some future point by the race itself as a whole, and the Church's doctrine that perfection is attainable only through the conscious cooperation of one's will with the salvific work of Christ, which has already been completed in the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection. Regarding peace: >>In a peculiar way, war is how we get to know other cultures. Americans know much more about Islam now than they did in August of 2001. We can hope that this struggle will settle, that Jewish, Muslim and Christian people will learn to live together peacefully. If we can survive the initial clash, we can converge.<< Christ again is the stumbling block. If he is God, as the Church claims (and as Percy affirms), then his kingship is universal. Jews and Muslims cannot simultaneously accept this and remain Jews and Muslims. Multiple religions may be able to coexist in some circumstances, but they cannot converge. And the separate peace they sometimes share is often merely pragmatic, always tenuous, and inevitably temporary. Regarding methods of killing: Robert Eckert: >>I would still argue that the sort of killer who would use an agent like small pox in an attack is not the same type of killer as a soldier who engages insurgents firing on a convoy just hit by an i.e.d.. The insurgent or the soldier may be your hero. But, who could have as their hero, who could conceive any possible good in the use of a deadly contagious disease to indiscriminately inflict harm?<< Jim Forest: >>Thanks, Robert. God knows you're right about the pure horror of inflicting indiscriminate harm, whether by bio-weapons or any of the numerous other methods that have been developed as a means of mass murder. Developments in killing methods this half century or so make Genghis Kahn look like Elmer Fudd.<< Robert makes a poignant distinction. The soldier, especially if he is fighting a just war, evokes our respect and admiration because of his sacrifice. He puts himself in harm's way for the sake of others. The designers of bio-weapons (as well as other weapons of mass destruction) and the decision-makers who deploy them, however, kill largely without personal risk or sacrifice, without discrimination, and therefore without responsibility. True heroism, if not always a direct act of love, at least reminds us of some higher realm, some sacred virtue. By contrast, workers of iniquity--whether on the material or the immaterial plane--render the world desolate with love's privation. Jim Forest: >>... there are heroes who are beloved across borders. Saints. Now there's an interesting word, one that meant a great deal to Walker Percy.<< Yes. Heroes, every one. Merton regarding Eichmann: >>"The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared.... No one suspects the sane, and the sane ones will have perfectly good reasons, logical, well-adjusted reasons, for firing the shot. They will be obeying sane orders that have come sanely down the chain of command." [Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable (New York: New Directions, 1966), 45-53.]<< Jim Forest: >>Of course we regard ourselves as sane, not to mention good and decent and even God-fearing. In the Hollywood movie we make of ourselves, we're never the bad guys.<< But in Thomas Merton's Hollywood movie of how the world ends, the sane ARE the bad guys. Percy did love to play with the malleable idea of sanity. He often posed the question: Who is actually crazy? The inmates or the attending psychiatrist? And it's true: many of those we perceive, by all outward appearances, to be sane, are not. Likewise many who, by societal standards, could be labeled crazy are actually in touch with a precious piece of reality. So the question is, What is sanity? And whose definition of it is to be trusted? Karl Terrell: >>Percy wrote about how the prospect of bad things happening -- like an impending war, or perhaps an approaching category-5 hurricane -- do not cause dread or anxiety. We are instead filled with excitement. We couldn't be happier. By contrast, WP saw a man who has everything going for him, sitting in his fine home in, say, Short Hills, N.J. on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon, with no identifiable problems on the horizon, but who nonetheless finds himself ..... unsettled, anxious. The subtitle of Dr. Strangelove was "How I Learned to Stopped Worrying and Love the Bomb." The quote below [de Chardin] speaks of war in positive terms, as a means of delivering 'solidification' and the 'hope of a common emancipation.' It seems to me that what's really going on is the pull of the death wish that we all share. Isn't that what Percy was talking about?<< I think it's not a wish for death per se but for truth, for the underlying heart of the matter. If death is necessary to see it, well, then so be it. But when a storm whips up suddenly on the horizon and we feel a surge of fear mixed oddly with hope, it is not death that we long for first. Rather, we wish to see what lies underneath, and we fancy that the storm might reveal it. We have come to know, perhaps without even realizing it, that the ordinary life we live Wednesday after Wednesday (and all the days in between) is but an intimation of some greater reality. When the storm arises, we are momentarily awakened from the malaise. There appears across the valley a symbolic threat that today of all days, the truth--and all its attendant beauty--might finally prevail, might finally wreck what's left of our illusory structures, lay waste to all that is false, and, last of all, break our hearts for Good. Thanks to Robert Eckert for posing the great question, which has sparked much discussion of interest. Best regards to all, Michael Larson -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: winmail.dat Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 7185 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jhforest at gmail.com Wed Feb 27 05:42:58 2008 From: jhforest at gmail.com (Jim Forest) Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:42:58 +0100 Subject: [percy-l] On the end of all things In-Reply-To: <3920C4B0B41025479F39D775289D7AA03F700E@wa-SEex.Southeasttech.edu> References: <3920C4B0B41025479F39D775289D7AA03F700E@wa-SEex.Southeasttech.edu> Message-ID: <53c59b0c0802270242x7a4ebfeudbfb4f091d3f4b61@mail.gmail.com> I appreciated your posting, Michael, and would only take issue on this portion of it: >> Jim Forest [wrote]: >> Of course we regard ourselves as sane, not to mention good and decent and even God-fearing. In the Hollywood movie we make of ourselves, we're never the bad guys. <<< To which you responded: >> But in Thomas Merton's Hollywood movie of how the world ends, the sane ARE the bad guys. Percy did love to play with the malleable idea of sanity. He often posed the question: Who is actually crazy? The inmates or the attending psychiatrist? And it's true: many of those we perceive, by all outward appearances, to be sane, are not. Likewise many who, by societal standards, could be labeled crazy are actually in touch with a precious piece of reality. So the question is, What is sanity? And whose definition of it is to be trusted? Please re-read the passage Merton passage I quoted. He is not saying the sane are the bad guys, only that people whom we regard as perfectly sane are quite capable of initiating actions, or assisting in them, which may take the lives of vast numbers of people. Perhaps one might say Merton also raises a question -- I expect Percy would as well -- whether our definition of what constitutes sanity is adequate. In any event, sanity is not a synonym for sanctity. Friendly greetings, Jim Forest On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 3:03 AM, Michael Larson wrote: > Robert Eckert's Percy-question regarding the future: > >>In one interview, Percy, when asked a question concerning something > about living at another time, said he would like to sit on a park bench in > NYC in the year 2050 to see how we were doing. To see if we made it. > > Will we?<< > > My guess is that Percy is not actually wondering here whether the human > race will avoid annihilation or even whether it will somehow find its own > way out of this modern malaise. I suspect rather that he means, underneath > the nonchalance of his answer, to remind the interviewer (and of course the > readers of the interview) that ours is a tenuous existence, that our > sustenance is well beyond our own powers, and that the time is likely to be > later than we think. > > Regarding de Chardin: > >>I wonder if Percy ever read DeChardin's "The Great Monad", written in > 1918 when he was with his regiment in Champagne. Even during the horror of > that war DeChardin found something positive that I believe applies to this > current clash: > > "Mankind in armed conflict with itself is a Mankind in process of > solidification.... The whole of history teaches us this lesson, that after > every revolution and after every war Mankind has always emerged a little > more self-cohesive, a little more unified, because the links that hold its > organism together are more firmly locked together and hope of a common > emancipation has become strengthened." (p.184, The Heart of Matter)<< > > I would be surprised if Percy followed closely the ideas of de Chardin, > whose works were officially condemned by the Church in 1962. The above > quotation, for instance, is indicative of the fundamental conflict between > de Chardin's notion that the perfection of mankind is an evolutionary > process achievable at some future point by the race itself as a whole, and > the Church's doctrine that perfection is attainable only through the > conscious cooperation of one's will with the salvific work of Christ, which > has already been completed in the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the > Resurrection. > > Regarding peace: > >>In a peculiar way, war is how we get to know other cultures. Americans > know much more about Islam now than they did in August of 2001. We can hope > that this struggle will settle, that Jewish, Muslim and Christian people > will learn to live together peacefully. > > If we can survive the initial clash, we can converge.<< > > Christ again is the stumbling block. If he is God, as the Church claims > (and as Percy affirms), then his kingship is universal. Jews and Muslims > cannot simultaneously accept this and remain Jews and Muslims. Multiple > religions may be able to coexist in some circumstances, but they cannot > converge. And the separate peace they sometimes share is often merely > pragmatic, always tenuous, and inevitably temporary. > > Regarding methods of killing: > Robert Eckert: > >>I would still argue that the sort of killer who would use an agent like > small pox in an attack is not the same type of killer as a soldier who > engages insurgents firing on a convoy just hit by an i.e.d.. The insurgent > or the soldier may be your hero. But, who could have as their hero, who > could conceive any possible good in the use of a deadly contagious disease > to indiscriminately inflict harm?<< > > Jim Forest: > >>Thanks, Robert. God knows you're right about the pure horror of > inflicting indiscriminate harm, whether by bio-weapons or any of the > numerous other methods that have been developed as a means of mass murder. > Developments in killing methods this half century or so make Genghis Kahn > look like Elmer Fudd.<< > > Robert makes a poignant distinction. The soldier, especially if he is > fighting a just war, evokes our respect and admiration because of his > sacrifice. He puts himself in harm's way for the sake of others. The > designers of bio-weapons (as well as other weapons of mass destruction) and > the decision-makers who deploy them, however, kill largely without personal > risk or sacrifice, without discrimination, and therefore without > responsibility. > > True heroism, if not always a direct act of love, at least reminds us of > some higher realm, some sacred virtue. By contrast, workers of > iniquity--whether on the material or the immaterial plane--render the world > desolate with love's privation. > > Jim Forest: > >>... there are heroes who are beloved across borders. Saints. Now there's > an interesting word, one that meant a great deal to Walker Percy.<< > > Yes. Heroes, every one. > > Merton regarding Eichmann: > >>"The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense of > justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and > understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve > it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us > that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous. It is the > sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea > aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival > of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared.... No one suspects > the sane, and the sane ones will have perfectly good reasons, logical, > well-adjusted reasons, for firing the shot. They will be obeying sane orders > that have come sanely down the chain of command." [Thomas Merton, Raids on > the Unspeakable (New York: New Directions, 1966), 45-53.]<< > > Jim Forest: > >>Of course we regard ourselves as sane, not to mention good and decent > and even God-fearing. In the Hollywood movie we make of ourselves, we're > never the bad guys.<< > > But in Thomas Merton's Hollywood movie of how the world ends, the sane ARE > the bad guys. Percy did love to play with the malleable idea of sanity. He > often posed the question: Who is actually crazy? The inmates or the > attending psychiatrist? And it's true: many of those we perceive, by all > outward appearances, to be sane, are not. Likewise many who, by societal > standards, could be labeled crazy are actually in touch with a precious > piece of reality. So the question is, What is sanity? And whose definition > of it is to be trusted? > > Karl Terrell: > >>Percy wrote about how the prospect of bad things happening -- like an > impending war, or perhaps an approaching category-5 hurricane -- do not > cause dread or anxiety. We are instead filled with excitement. We couldn't > be happier. > > By contrast, WP saw a man who has everything going for him, sitting in his > fine home in, say, Short Hills, N.J. on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon, > with no identifiable problems on the horizon, but who nonetheless finds > himself ..... unsettled, anxious. > > The subtitle of Dr. Strangelove was "How I Learned to Stopped Worrying and > Love the Bomb." > > The quote below [de Chardin] speaks of war in positive terms, as a means > of delivering 'solidification' and the 'hope of a common emancipation.' It > seems to me that what's really going on is the pull of the death wish that > we all share. > > Isn't that what Percy was talking about?<< > > I think it's not a wish for death per se but for truth, for the underlying > heart of the matter. If death is necessary to see it, well, then so be it. > But when a storm whips up suddenly on the horizon and we feel a surge of > fear mixed oddly with hope, it is not death that we long for first. Rather, > we wish to see what lies underneath, and we fancy that the storm might > reveal it. We have come to know, perhaps without even realizing it, that the > ordinary life we live Wednesday after Wednesday (and all the days in > between) is but an intimation of some greater reality. When the storm > arises, we are momentarily awakened from the malaise. There appears across > the valley a symbolic threat that today of all days, the truth--and all its > attendant beauty--might finally prevail, might finally wreck what's left of > our illusory structures, lay waste to all that is false, and, last of all, > break our hearts for Good. > > > Thanks to Robert Eckert for posing the great question, which has sparked > much discussion of interest. > > Best regards to all, > Michael Larson > > -- > An archive of all list discussion is available at > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ > > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > > -- Jim & Nancy Forest Kanisstraat 5 1811 GJ Alkmaar The Netherlands Forest-Flier web site: www.incommunion.org/forest-flier/ Orthodox Peace Fellowship web site: www.incommunion.org photos: www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/ recently published: "Silent as a Stone," a children's book about a community of rescuers in Nazi-occupied Paris: http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/silent-as-a-stone-mother-maria-of-paris-and-the-trash-can-rescue/ another new book: "The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life": http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/the-road-to-emmaus-pilgrimage-as-a-way-of-life/ * * * Nancy and I have been keeping a journal that follows our recent kidney transplant. A blog has been set up for this purpose -- A Tale of Two Kidneys. See: http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/ * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Mlarson at SOUTHEASTMN.EDU Wed Feb 27 08:32:43 2008 From: Mlarson at SOUTHEASTMN.EDU (Michael Larson) Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 07:32:43 -0600 Subject: [percy-l] Can the sane be bad? References: Message-ID: <3920C4B0B41025479F39D775289D7AA03F7010@wa-SEex.Southeasttech.edu> Jim Forest wrote: >>Please re-read the passage Merton passage I quoted. He is not saying the sane are the bad guys, only that people whom we regard as perfectly sane are quite capable of initiating actions, or assisting in them, which may take the lives of vast numbers of people.<< In the passage you quoted, Merton implies that it is often sane men who carry out evil actions. When they do so, when they "initiate the great festival of destruction," is he not dubbing them "bad guys," in the colloquial sense of that phrase? >>Perhaps one might say Merton also raises a question -- I expect Percy would as well -- whether our definition of what constitutes sanity is adequate.<< Yes! Exactly what I was trying to say, though perhaps not very clearly. Best regards, Michael Larson Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:42:58 +0100 From: "Jim Forest" Subject: Re: [percy-l] On the end of all things To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" Message-ID: <53c59b0c0802270242x7a4ebfeudbfb4f091d3f4b61 at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" I appreciated your posting, Michael, and would only take issue on this portion of it: >> Jim Forest [wrote]: >> Of course we regard ourselves as sane, not to mention good and decent and even God-fearing. In the Hollywood movie we make of ourselves, we're never the bad guys. <<< To which you responded: >> But in Thomas Merton's Hollywood movie of how the world ends, the sane ARE the bad guys. Percy did love to play with the malleable idea of sanity. He often posed the question: Who is actually crazy? The inmates or the attending psychiatrist? And it's true: many of those we perceive, by all outward appearances, to be sane, are not. Likewise many who, by societal standards, could be labeled crazy are actually in touch with a precious piece of reality. So the question is, What is sanity? And whose definition of it is to be trusted? Please re-read the passage Merton passage I quoted. He is not saying the sane are the bad guys, only that people whom we regard as perfectly sane are quite capable of initiating actions, or assisting in them, which may take the lives of vast numbers of people. Perhaps one might say Merton also raises a question -- I expect Percy would as well -- whether our definition of what constitutes sanity is adequate. In any event, sanity is not a synonym for sanctity. Friendly greetings, Jim Forest On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 3:03 AM, Michael Larson wrote: > Robert Eckert's Percy-question regarding the future: > >>In one interview, Percy, when asked a question concerning something > about living at another time, said he would like to sit on a park bench in > NYC in the year 2050 to see how we were doing. To see if we made it. > > Will we?<< > > My guess is that Percy is not actually wondering here whether the human > race will avoid annihilation or even whether it will somehow find its own > way out of this modern malaise. I suspect rather that he means, underneath > the nonchalance of his answer, to remind the interviewer (and of course the > readers of the interview) that ours is a tenuous existence, that our > sustenance is well beyond our own powers, and that the time is likely to be > later than we think. > > Regarding de Chardin: > >>I wonder if Percy ever read DeChardin's "The Great Monad", written in > 1918 when he was with his regiment in Champagne. Even during the horror of > that war DeChardin found something positive that I believe applies to this > current clash: > > "Mankind in armed conflict with itself is a Mankind in process of > solidification.... The whole of history teaches us this lesson, that after > every revolution and after every war Mankind has always emerged a little > more self-cohesive, a little more unified, because the links that hold its > organism together are more firmly locked together and hope of a common > emancipation has become strengthened." (p.184, The Heart of Matter)<< > > I would be surprised if Percy followed closely the ideas of de Chardin, > whose works were officially condemned by the Church in 1962. The above > quotation, for instance, is indicative of the fundamental conflict between > de Chardin's notion that the perfection of mankind is an evolutionary > process achievable at some future point by the race itself as a whole, and > the Church's doctrine that perfection is attainable only through the > conscious cooperation of one's will with the salvific work of Christ, which > has already been completed in the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the > Resurrection. > > Regarding peace: > >>In a peculiar way, war is how we get to know other cultures. Americans > know much more about Islam now than they did in August of 2001. We can hope > that this struggle will settle, that Jewish, Muslim and Christian people > will learn to live together peacefully. > > If we can survive the initial clash, we can converge.<< > > Christ again is the stumbling block. If he is God, as the Church claims > (and as Percy affirms), then his kingship is universal. Jews and Muslims > cannot simultaneously accept this and remain Jews and Muslims. Multiple > religions may be able to coexist in some circumstances, but they cannot > converge. And the separate peace they sometimes share is often merely > pragmatic, always tenuous, and inevitably temporary. > > Regarding methods of killing: > Robert Eckert: > >>I would still argue that the sort of killer who would use an agent like > small pox in an attack is not the same type of killer as a soldier who > engages insurgents firing on a convoy just hit by an i.e.d.. The insurgent > or the soldier may be your hero. But, who could have as their hero, who > could conceive any possible good in the use of a deadly contagious disease > to indiscriminately inflict harm?<< > > Jim Forest: > >>Thanks, Robert. God knows you're right about the pure horror of > inflicting indiscriminate harm, whether by bio-weapons or any of the > numerous other methods that have been developed as a means of mass murder. > Developments in killing methods this half century or so make Genghis Kahn > look like Elmer Fudd.<< > > Robert makes a poignant distinction. The soldier, especially if he is > fighting a just war, evokes our respect and admiration because of his > sacrifice. He puts himself in harm's way for the sake of others. The > designers of bio-weapons (as well as other weapons of mass destruction) and > the decision-makers who deploy them, however, kill largely without personal > risk or sacrifice, without discrimination, and therefore without > responsibility. > > True heroism, if not always a direct act of love, at least reminds us of > some higher realm, some sacred virtue. By contrast, workers of > iniquity--whether on the material or the immaterial plane--render the world > desolate with love's privation. > > Jim Forest: > >>... there are heroes who are beloved across borders. Saints. Now there's > an interesting word, one that meant a great deal to Walker Percy.<< > > Yes. Heroes, every one. > > Merton regarding Eichmann: > >>"The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense of > justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and > understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve > it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us > that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous. It is the > sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea > aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival > of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared.... No one suspects > the sane, and the sane ones will have perfectly good reasons, logical, > well-adjusted reasons, for firing the shot. They will be obeying sane orders > that have come sanely down the chain of command." [Thomas Merton, Raids on > the Unspeakable (New York: New Directions, 1966), 45-53.]<< > > Jim Forest: > >>Of course we regard ourselves as sane, not to mention good and decent > and even God-fearing. In the Hollywood movie we make of ourselves, we're > never the bad guys.<< > > But in Thomas Merton's Hollywood movie of how the world ends, the sane ARE > the bad guys. Percy did love to play with the malleable idea of sanity. He > often posed the question: Who is actually crazy? The inmates or the > attending psychiatrist? And it's true: many of those we perceive, by all > outward appearances, to be sane, are not. Likewise many who, by societal > standards, could be labeled crazy are actually in touch with a precious > piece of reality. So the question is, What is sanity? And whose definition > of it is to be trusted? > > Karl Terrell: > >>Percy wrote about how the prospect of bad things happening -- like an > impending war, or perhaps an approaching category-5 hurricane -- do not > cause dread or anxiety. We are instead filled with excitement. We couldn't > be happier. > > By contrast, WP saw a man who has everything going for him, sitting in his > fine home in, say, Short Hills, N.J. on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon, > with no identifiable problems on the horizon, but who nonetheless finds > himself ..... unsettled, anxious. > > The subtitle of Dr. Strangelove was "How I Learned to Stopped Worrying and > Love the Bomb." > > The quote below [de Chardin] speaks of war in positive terms, as a means > of delivering 'solidification' and the 'hope of a common emancipation.' It > seems to me that what's really going on is the pull of the death wish that > we all share. > > Isn't that what Percy was talking about?<< > > I think it's not a wish for death per se but for truth, for the underlying > heart of the matter. If death is necessary to see it, well, then so be it. > But when a storm whips up suddenly on the horizon and we feel a surge of > fear mixed oddly with hope, it is not death that we long for first. Rather, > we wish to see what lies underneath, and we fancy that the storm might > reveal it. We have come to know, perhaps without even realizing it, that the > ordinary life we live Wednesday after Wednesday (and all the days in > between) is but an intimation of some greater reality. When the storm > arises, we are momentarily awakened from the malaise. There appears across > the valley a symbolic threat that today of all days, the truth--and all its > attendant beauty--might finally prevail, might finally wreck what's left of > our illusory structures, lay waste to all that is false, and, last of all, > break our hearts for Good. > > > Thanks to Robert Eckert for posing the great question, which has sparked > much discussion of interest. > > Best regards to all, > Michael Larson > > -- > An archive of all list discussion is available at > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ > > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > > -- Jim & Nancy Forest Kanisstraat 5 1811 GJ Alkmaar The Netherlands Forest-Flier web site: www.incommunion.org/forest-flier/ Orthodox Peace Fellowship web site: www.incommunion.org photos: www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/ recently published: "Silent as a Stone," a children's book about a community of rescuers in Nazi-occupied Paris: http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/silent-as-a-stone-mother-maria-of-paris-and-the-trash-can-rescue/ another new book: "The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life": http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/the-road-to-emmaus-pilgrimage-as-a-way-of-life/ * * * Nancy and I have been keeping a journal that follows our recent kidney transplant. A blog has been set up for this purpose -- A Tale of Two Kidneys. See: http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/ * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20080227/abbbc571/attachment.htm ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Percy-L mailing list Percy-L at lists.ibiblio.org http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/percy-l End of Percy-L Digest, Vol 52, Issue 8 ************************************** -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: winmail.dat Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 9533 bytes Desc: not available URL: From robert.g.eckert at us.army.mil Wed Feb 27 21:57:16 2008 From: robert.g.eckert at us.army.mil (Eckert, Robert G SPC MIL USA FORSCOM) Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:57:16 -0600 Subject: [percy-l] On the end of all things In-Reply-To: <3920C4B0B41025479F39D775289D7AA03F700E@wa-SEex.Southeasttech.edu> References: <3920C4B0B41025479F39D775289D7AA03F700E@wa-SEex.Southeasttech.edu> Message-ID: As a military man, I hope peace comes before religious unification. These eternal religious questions will not soon be resolved. Human humility must bow down before such unknowns. Do not shoot at me because we do not agree who God is. Let us form some sort of human community even in our confusion. Together we can struggle toward this unknown. All things that rise must converge. - CPL Robert Eckert ----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Larson Date: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 20:05 Subject: [percy-l] On the end of all things To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org > Robert Eckert's Percy-question regarding the future: > >>In one interview, Percy, when asked a question concerning > something about living at another time, said he would like to sit > on a park bench in NYC in the year 2050 to see how we were doing. > To see if we made it. > > Will we?<< > > My guess is that Percy is not actually wondering here whether the > human race will avoid annihilation or even whether it will somehow > find its own way out of this modern malaise. I suspect rather that > he means, underneath the nonchalance of his answer, to remind the > interviewer (and of course the readers of the interview) that ours > is a tenuous existence, that our sustenance is well beyond our own > powers, and that the time is likely to be later than we think. > > Regarding de Chardin: > >>I wonder if Percy ever read DeChardin's "The Great Monad", > written in 1918 when he was with his regiment in Champagne. Even > during the horror of that war DeChardin found something positive > that I believe applies to this current clash: > > "Mankind in armed conflict with itself is a Mankind in process of > solidification.... The whole of history teaches us this lesson, > that after every revolution and after every war Mankind has always > emerged a little more self-cohesive, a little more unified, > because the links that hold its organism together are more firmly > locked together and hope of a common emancipation has become > strengthened." (p.184, The Heart of Matter)<< > > I would be surprised if Percy followed closely the ideas of de > Chardin, whose works were officially condemned by the Church in > 1962. The above quotation, for instance, is indicative of the > fundamental conflict between de Chardin's notion that the > perfection of mankind is an evolutionary process achievable at > some future point by the race itself as a whole, and the Church's > doctrine that perfection is attainable only through the conscious > cooperation of one's will with the salvific work of Christ, which > has already been completed in the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, > and the Resurrection. > > Regarding peace: > >>In a peculiar way, war is how we get to know other cultures. > Americans know much more about Islam now than they did in August > of 2001. We can hope that this struggle will settle, that Jewish, > Muslim and Christian people will learn to live together peacefully. > > If we can survive the initial clash, we can converge.<< > > Christ again is the stumbling block. If he is God, as the Church > claims (and as Percy affirms), then his kingship is universal. > Jews and Muslims cannot simultaneously accept this and remain Jews > and Muslims. Multiple religions may be able to coexist in some > circumstances, but they cannot converge. And the separate peace > they sometimes share is often merely pragmatic, always tenuous, > and inevitably temporary. > > Regarding methods of killing: > Robert Eckert: > >>I would still argue that the sort of killer who would use an > agent like small pox in an attack is not the same type of killer > as a soldier who engages insurgents firing on a convoy just hit by > an i.e.d.. The insurgent or the soldier may be your hero. But, who > could have as their hero, who could conceive any possible good in > the use of a deadly contagious disease to indiscriminately inflict > harm?<< > Jim Forest: > >>Thanks, Robert. God knows you're right about the pure horror of > inflicting indiscriminate harm, whether by bio-weapons or any of > the numerous other methods that have been developed as a means of > mass murder. Developments in killing methods this half century or > so make Genghis Kahn look like Elmer Fudd.<< > > Robert makes a poignant distinction. The soldier, especially if he > is fighting a just war, evokes our respect and admiration because > of his sacrifice. He puts himself in harm's way for the sake of > others. The designers of bio-weapons (as well as other weapons of > mass destruction) and the decision-makers who deploy them, > however, kill largely without personal risk or sacrifice, without > discrimination, and therefore without responsibility. > > True heroism, if not always a direct act of love, at least reminds > us of some higher realm, some sacred virtue. By contrast, workers > of iniquity--whether on the material or the immaterial plane-- > render the world desolate with love's privation. > > Jim Forest: > >>... there are heroes who are beloved across borders. Saints. Now > there's an interesting word, one that meant a great deal to Walker > Percy.<< > Yes. Heroes, every one. > > Merton regarding Eichmann: > >>"The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a > sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the > capacity to love and understand other people. We rely on the sane > people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, > destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely > the sane ones who are the most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the > well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim > the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great > festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have > prepared.... No one suspects the sane, and the sane ones will have > perfectly good reasons, logical, well-adjusted reasons, for firing > the shot. They will be obeying sane orders that have come sanely > down the chain of command." [Thomas Merton, Raids on the > Unspeakable (New York: New Directions, 1966), 45-53.]<< > > Jim Forest: > >>Of course we regard ourselves as sane, not to mention good and > decent and even God-fearing. In the Hollywood movie we make of > ourselves, we're never the bad guys.<< > > But in Thomas Merton's Hollywood movie of how the world ends, the > sane ARE the bad guys. Percy did love to play with the malleable > idea of sanity. He often posed the question: Who is actually > crazy? The inmates or the attending psychiatrist? And it's true: > many of those we perceive, by all outward appearances, to be sane, > are not. Likewise many who, by societal standards, could be > labeled crazy are actually in touch with a precious piece of > reality. So the question is, What is sanity? And whose definition > of it is to be trusted? > > Karl Terrell: > >>Percy wrote about how the prospect of bad things happening -- > like an impending war, or perhaps an approaching category-5 > hurricane -- do not cause dread or anxiety. We are instead filled > with excitement. We couldn't be happier. > > By contrast, WP saw a man who has everything going for him, > sitting in his fine home in, say, Short Hills, N.J. on an ordinary > Wednesday afternoon, with no identifiable problems on the horizon, > but who nonetheless finds himself ..... unsettled, anxious. > > The subtitle of Dr. Strangelove was "How I Learned to Stopped > Worrying and Love the Bomb." > > The quote below [de Chardin] speaks of war in positive terms, as a > means of delivering 'solidification' and the 'hope of a common > emancipation.' It seems to me that what's really going on is the > pull of the death wish that we all share. > > Isn't that what Percy was talking about?<< > > I think it's not a wish for death per se but for truth, for the > underlying heart of the matter. If death is necessary to see it, > well, then so be it. But when a storm whips up suddenly on the > horizon and we feel a surge of fear mixed oddly with hope, it is > not death that we long for first. Rather, we wish to see what lies > underneath, and we fancy that the storm might reveal it. We have > come to know, perhaps without even realizing it, that the ordinary > life we live Wednesday after Wednesday (and all the days in > between) is but an intimation of some greater reality. When the > storm arises, we are momentarily awakened from the malaise. There > appears across the valley a symbolic threat that today of all > days, the truth--and all its attendant beauty--might finally > prevail, might finally wreck what's left of our illusory > structures, lay waste to all that is false, and, last of all, > break our hearts for Good. > > > Thanks to Robert Eckert for posing the great question, which has > sparked much discussion of interest. > > Best regards to all, > Michael Larson > From Nikkibar at aol.com Thu Feb 28 01:32:44 2008 From: Nikkibar at aol.com (Nikkibar at aol.com) Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:32:44 EST Subject: [percy-l] Can the sane be bad? Message-ID: Mr. Larson is right about Walker's nervousness over Tielhard du Chardin. I tried to get him to read the later works on a number of occasions and he seemed uninterested although I secretly suspected that he might have dipped into the earlier works but didn't want to waste talking time on the matter. I never discussed Monad with him as that was one I missed myself. Nikki Barranger **************Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duffy/ 2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jhforest at gmail.com Thu Feb 28 08:22:37 2008 From: jhforest at gmail.com (Jim Forest) Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:22:37 +0100 Subject: [percy-l] Can the sane be bad? In-Reply-To: <3920C4B0B41025479F39D775289D7AA03F7010@wa-SEex.Southeasttech.edu> References: <3920C4B0B41025479F39D775289D7AA03F7010@wa-SEex.Southeasttech.edu> Message-ID: <53c59b0c0802280522g6240874fr48590450f72dd652@mail.gmail.com> Dear Michael, I enjoy this exchange and am learning from it. I had written: >> Please re-read the passage Merton passage I quoted. He is not saying the sane are the bad guys, only that people whom we regard as perfectly sane are quite capable of initiating actions, or assisting in them, which may take the lives of vast numbers of people. Your replied: >> In the passage you quoted, Merton implies that it is often sane men who carry out evil actions. When they do so, when they "initiate the great festival of destruction," is he not dubbing them "bad guys," in the colloquial sense of that phrase? Merton -- probably Walker Percy too -- wasn't drawn to the grouping certain people into the category "bad guys." As he died in 1968, he didn't live long enough to read Percy's last novel, "The Thanatos Syndrome," but he would have greatly appreciated Percy's approach to the problem of evil, seen not on the level of good-guys-versus-bad- guys of the classical Hollywood western, but rather the gradual shifting of a border between good and evil within each human heart, the greatest of all battlefields. Both Percy and Merton, while certainly not agreeing on everything, had a great deal in common. Among other things, both were acutely aware that evil actions are often performed by the most upstanding, respected, normal and altogether "sane" people, whether it be the elimination of "defectives" in the Germany in the 30s and early 40s, or the mass killing of Jews, homosexuals and others in concentration camps, or the fire bombing of whole cities during World War II, or the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or any of the acts of mass destruction that we more-or-less sane people may yet commit in the future. This is not to overlook the danger posed by the insane and pathological, but on the whole their acts of destruction tend to occur on a smaller scale. (My step-mother was shot and killed by such a person as she waited for a bus in San Francisco on her way home from work one day.) Finally, in a more dangerous category, there are those people who are so ideologically driven that, though they may be perceived as sane in a society similarly deranged, are -- were it possible to evaluate them by some objective measure -- truly mad as hatters. (It was an issue Merton addressed in another of his essays, one of his finest, "Rain and the Rhinoceros.") friendly greetings, Jim Forest PS I should mention that, though I have been a Percy reader for many years, I know a good deal more about Merton, having written a biography of him ("Living With Wisdom"). I knew Percy only by correspondence, and only during the last year or so of his life. * * * On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 2:32 PM, Michael Larson wrote: > Jim Forest wrote: > >>Please re-read the passage Merton passage I quoted. He is not saying the > sane are the bad guys, only that people whom we regard > as perfectly sane are quite capable of initiating actions, or assisting in > them, which may take the lives of vast numbers of people.<< > > In the passage you quoted, Merton implies that it is often sane men who > carry out evil actions. When they do so, when they "initiate the great > festival of destruction," is he not dubbing them "bad guys," in the > colloquial sense of that phrase? > > >>Perhaps one might say Merton also raises a question -- I expect Percy > would as well -- whether our definition of what constitutes sanity is > adequate.<< > > Yes! Exactly what I was trying to say, though perhaps not very clearly. > > Best regards, > Michael Larson > -- Jim & Nancy Forest Kanisstraat 5 1811 GJ Alkmaar The Netherlands Forest-Flier web site: www.incommunion.org/forest-flier/ Orthodox Peace Fellowship web site: www.incommunion.org photos: www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/ recently published: "Silent as a Stone," a children's book about a community of rescuers in Nazi-occupied Paris: http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/silent-as-a-stone-mother-maria-of-paris-and-the-trash-can-rescue/ another new book: "The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life": http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/the-road-to-emmaus-pilgrimage-as-a-way-of-life/ * * * Nancy and I have been keeping a journal that follows our recent kidney transplant. A blog has been set up for this purpose -- A Tale of Two Kidneys. See: http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/ * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jhforest at gmail.com Thu Feb 28 08:44:35 2008 From: jhforest at gmail.com (Jim Forest) Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:44:35 +0100 Subject: [percy-l] Re On the end of all things Message-ID: <53c59b0c0802280544k3badc6dax1e8cd81b2cc5d52a@mail.gmail.com> Dear Robert, You wrote: >> As a military man, I hope peace comes before religious unification. As it says in an Old Book: "Without vision, the people perish." >> These eternal religious questions will not soon be resolved. No, surely they won't. But at least there is a significant process of Christian-Muslim dialogue now occurring, while productive Jewish- Christian dialogue has been going on since soon after the end of World War II. >> Human humility must bow down before such unknowns. Yes. >> Do not shoot at me because we do not agree who God is. The problem is that very often we shoot each other precisely for that reason, and not just across major religious borders but even minor ones. However it's astonishing that -- apart from the Balkans -- Europe, the battleground of so many wars, many of which had a religious component, hasn't been a place of war for 63 years. This surely is in part thanks to the efforts made here to gradually create a European Union. It is far from perfect, but we are not killing each other. (As an American living in Europe, I am one of the immediate beneficiaries.) >> Let us form some sort of human community even in our confusion. >> Together we can struggle toward this unknown. >> All things that rise must converge. The last phrase reminds me of Christ's words, which I paraphrase: "If I be lifted up, I shall draw things unto myself." Jim Forest -- Jim & Nancy Forest Kanisstraat 5 1811 GJ Alkmaar The Netherlands Forest-Flier web site: www.incommunion.org/forest-flier/ Orthodox Peace Fellowship web site: www.incommunion.org photos: www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/ recently published: "Silent as a Stone," a children's book about a community of rescuers in Nazi-occupied Paris: http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/silent-as-a-stone-mother-maria-of-paris-and-the-trash-can-rescue/ another new book: "The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life": http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/the-road-to-emmaus-pilgrimage-as-a-way-of-life/ * * * Nancy and I have been keeping a journal that follows our recent kidney transplant. A blog has been set up for this purpose -- A Tale of Two Kidneys. See: http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/ * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From armstron at ohiou.edu Thu Feb 28 12:37:04 2008 From: armstron at ohiou.edu (Ken Armstrong) Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:37:04 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Can the sane be bad? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20080228120047.05e40940@oak.cats.ohiou.edu> At 01:32 AM 2/28/2008, Nikkibar at aol.com wrote: >Mr. Larson is right about Walker's nervousness over Tielhard du Chardin. I >tried to get him to read the later works on a number of occasions and he >seemed uninterested although I secretly suspected that he might have >dipped into the earlier works but didn't want to waste talking time on the >matter. I never discussed Monad with him as that was one I missed myself. I read Teilhard 30 years ago whilst riding buses to & from work in San Francisco. Had never heard of him prior, but found his books in those wonderful Bay Area book stores. McLuhan, apparently like Percy, was also seriously skeptical of Teilhard de Chardin. For myself, his understanding of evolution only made sense. Ever since I've not understood the need to draw an opposition between science and religion based on evolution, or I should say I don't accept it. It seems a naivete on both sides. Nice to see Percy-L percolating again. Ken A From korrektiv at gmail.com Thu Feb 28 14:52:51 2008 From: korrektiv at gmail.com (Rufus McCain) Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:52:51 -0800 Subject: [percy-l] Can the sane be bad? In-Reply-To: <6.2.1.2.2.20080228120047.05e40940@oak.cats.ohiou.edu> References: <6.2.1.2.2.20080228120047.05e40940@oak.cats.ohiou.edu> Message-ID: <1329b480802281152t4b9e7b36u7a0aaa6e92a89ae3@mail.gmail.com> Then there's Percy's kindred spirit in artful Catholic orthodoxy, Flannery O'Connor, who favorably reviewed several of Teilhard's books and derived her title, "Everything That Rises Must Converge," from Teilhard. In an article in *American Scholar* in 1961, O'Connor included *The Phenomenon of Man* in a list of outstanding books of the previous three decades, saying, it was "a scientific expression of what the poet attempts to do: penetrate matter until spirit is revealed in it." Just a small tidbit for the discussion -- and to say I'm enjoying the give and take here. Wouldn't it be nice to be having this discussion over a Dixie beer and some crawfish. Rufus McCain Spokane, WA On 2/28/08, Ken Armstrong wrote: > > At 01:32 AM 2/28/2008, Nikkibar at aol.com wrote: > >Mr. Larson is right about Walker's nervousness over Tielhard du Chardin. > I > >tried to get him to read the later works on a number of occasions and he > >seemed uninterested although I secretly suspected that he might have > >dipped into the earlier works but didn't want to waste talking time on > the > >matter. I never discussed Monad with him as that was one I missed myself. > > I read Teilhard 30 years ago whilst riding buses to & from work in San > Francisco. Had never heard of him prior, but found his books in those > wonderful Bay Area book stores. McLuhan, apparently like Percy, was also > seriously skeptical of Teilhard de Chardin. For myself, his understanding > of evolution only made sense. Ever since I've not understood the need to > draw an opposition between science and religion based on evolution, or I > should say I don't accept it. It seems a naivete on both sides. > > Nice to see Percy-L percolating again. > > Ken A > > -- > An archive of all list discussion is available at > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/ > > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Mlarson at SOUTHEASTMN.EDU Thu Feb 28 22:31:26 2008 From: Mlarson at SOUTHEASTMN.EDU (Michael Larson) Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:31:26 -0600 Subject: [percy-l] War and Peace In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3920C4B0B41025479F39D775289D7AA003336209@wa-SEex.Southeasttech.edu> CPL Eckert writes: "As a military man, I hope peace comes before religious unification. These eternal religious questions will not soon be resolved. Human humility must bow down before such unknowns. Do not shoot at me because we do not agree who God is. Let us form some sort of human community even in our confusion. Together we can struggle toward this unknown. All things that rise must converge." Yes, everything that rises must indeed converge. But the very word, "convergence," denotes unity. And there is no lasting unity apart from truth. So any who would rise must give way, in the rising, to whatever is true. Therefore, they only are together who are abandoned to truth. The rest must endlessly divide. Jim Forest writes: "Merton -- probably Walker Percy too -- wasn't drawn to the grouping certain people into the category 'bad guys.'" Nor did I mean to imply that either of them--Merton or Percy--were drawn to such. I was only commenting on Merton's end-of-the-world scenario: in it, he describes how it will be the "sanest" of men who will "sanely" go about the business of annihilation. In that little picture that Merton paints for us, it is ironically the so-called sane man who plays the villain. As you have noted, we should not construe from this that Merton was typecasting all sane men as "bad guys." Not at all. What he is asserting, however, is that "bad guys" (as in men who do bad things) can be, and often are, those whom we perceive to be sane. Jim Forest goes on to write: "As he died in 1968, he didn't live long enough to read Percy's last novel, "The Thanatos Syndrome," but he would have greatly appreciated Percy's approach to the problem of evil, seen not on the level of good-guys-versus-bad- guys of the classical Hollywood western, but rather the gradual shifting of a border between good and evil within each human heart, the greatest of all battlefields." Yes, well put. Yet while it is true that both Merton and Percy understood human nature (and therefore any individual human) to be fallen, I don't think either of them assumed an egalitarian human morality, wherein everyone behaves equally good and bad. That is to say, they both understood there to be whole range of human responses to Grace: some rejecting it entirely, others cooperating willingly and wholeheartedly with it, and the vast multitude of others falling in various places between the two extremes. Robert Eckert, then Jim Forest: >> "These eternal religious questions will not soon be resolved. No, surely they won't." We don't know when the religious questions will be resolved among the human race as a whole. It could be a thousand years. Could be this summer. Robert Eckert, then Jim Forest: >> "Human humility must bow down before such unknowns. Yes." No. It is not humility to insist that religious truths are unknown. Perhaps they are unknown to a given individual, but that individual cannot speak for the race on such matters. Robert Eckert, then Jim Forest: >> "Do not shoot at me because we do not agree who God is. The problem is that very often we shoot each other precisely for that reason, and not just across major religious borders but even minor ones. However it's astonishing that -- apart from the Balkans -- Europe, the battleground of so many wars, many of which had a religious component, hasn't been a place of war for 63 years. This surely is in part thanks to the efforts made here to gradually create a European Union. It is far from perfect, but we are not killing each other. (As an American living in Europe, I am one of the immediate beneficiaries.)" I am truly glad that you're not killing each other, but is a secular Europe united allegedly by pluralism more palatable than the one that was united by Christendom? And are there not worse things even than war--such as, for instance, a pallid and faithless peace? Percy often said as much, I think. Thanks much, Robert and Jim, for the ongoing discussion. Best regards, Michael Larson -----Original Message----- From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of percy-l-request at lists.ibiblio.org Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2008 7:57 AM To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org Subject: Percy-L Digest, Vol 52, Issue 10 Send Percy-L mailing list submissions to percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/percy-l or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to percy-l-request at lists.ibiblio.org You can reach the person managing the list at percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Percy-L digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: On the end of all things (Eckert, Robert G SPC MIL USA FORSCOM) 2. Re: Can the sane be bad? (Nikkibar at aol.com) 3. Re: Can the sane be bad? (Jim Forest) 4. Re On the end of all things (Jim Forest) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:57:16 -0600 From: "Eckert, Robert G SPC MIL USA FORSCOM" Subject: Re: [percy-l] On the end of all things To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii As a military man, I hope peace comes before religious unification. These eternal religious questions will not soon be resolved. Human humility must bow down before such unknowns. Do not shoot at me because we do not agree who God is. Let us form some sort of human community even in our confusion. Together we can struggle toward this unknown. All things that rise must converge. - CPL Robert Eckert ----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Larson Date: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 20:05 Subject: [percy-l] On the end of all things To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org > Robert Eckert's Percy-question regarding the future: > >>In one interview, Percy, when asked a question concerning > something about living at another time, said he would like to sit > on a park bench in NYC in the year 2050 to see how we were doing. > To see if we made it. > > Will we?<< > > My guess is that Percy is not actually wondering here whether the > human race will avoid annihilation or even whether it will somehow > find its own way out of this modern malaise. I suspect rather that > he means, underneath the nonchalance of his answer, to remind the > interviewer (and of course the readers of the interview) that ours > is a tenuous existence, that our sustenance is well beyond our own > powers, and that the time is likely to be later than we think. > > Regarding de Chardin: > >>I wonder if Percy ever read DeChardin's "The Great Monad", > written in 1918 when he was with his regiment in Champagne. Even > during the horror of that war DeChardin found something positive > that I believe applies to this current clash: > > "Mankind in armed conflict with itself is a Mankind in process of > solidification.... The whole of history teaches us this lesson, > that after every revolution and after every war Mankind has always > emerged a little more self-cohesive, a little more unified, > because the links that hold its organism together are more firmly > locked together and hope of a common emancipation has become > strengthened." (p.184, The Heart of Matter)<< > > I would be surprised if Percy followed closely the ideas of de > Chardin, whose works were officially condemned by the Church in > 1962. The above quotation, for instance, is indicative of the > fundamental conflict between de Chardin's notion that the > perfection of mankind is an evolutionary process achievable at > some future point by the race itself as a whole, and the Church's > doctrine that perfection is attainable only through the conscious > cooperation of one's will with the salvific work of Christ, which > has already been completed in the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, > and the Resurrection. > > Regarding peace: > >>In a peculiar way, war is how we get to know other cultures. > Americans know much more about Islam now than they did in August > of 2001. We can hope that this struggle will settle, that Jewish, > Muslim and Christian people will learn to live together peacefully. > > If we can survive the initial clash, we can converge.<< > > Christ again is the stumbling block. If he is God, as the Church > claims (and as Percy affirms), then his kingship is universal. > Jews and Muslims cannot simultaneously accept this and remain Jews > and Muslims. Multiple religions may be able to coexist in some > circumstances, but they cannot converge. And the separate peace > they sometimes share is often merely pragmatic, always tenuous, > and inevitably temporary. > > Regarding methods of killing: > Robert Eckert: > >>I would still argue that the sort of killer who would use an > agent like small pox in an attack is not the same type of killer > as a soldier who engages insurgents firing on a convoy just hit by > an i.e.d.. The insurgent or the soldier may be your hero. But, who > could have as their hero, who could conceive any possible good in > the use of a deadly contagious disease to indiscriminately inflict > harm?<< > Jim Forest: > >>Thanks, Robert. God knows you're right about the pure horror of > inflicting indiscriminate harm, whether by bio-weapons or any of > the numerous other methods that have been developed as a means of > mass murder. Developments in killing methods this half century or > so make Genghis Kahn look like Elmer Fudd.<< > > Robert makes a poignant distinction. The soldier, especially if he > is fighting a just war, evokes our respect and admiration because > of his sacrifice. He puts himself in harm's way for the sake of > others. The designers of bio-weapons (as well as other weapons of > mass destruction) and the decision-makers who deploy them, > however, kill largely without personal risk or sacrifice, without > discrimination, and therefore without responsibility. > > True heroism, if not always a direct act of love, at least reminds > us of some higher realm, some sacred virtue. By contrast, workers > of iniquity--whether on the material or the immaterial plane-- > render the world desolate with love's privation. > > Jim Forest: > >>... there are heroes who are beloved across borders. Saints. Now > there's an interesting word, one that meant a great deal to Walker > Percy.<< > Yes. Heroes, every one. > > Merton regarding Eichmann: > >>"The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a > sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the > capacity to love and understand other people. We rely on the sane > people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, > destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely > the sane ones who are the most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the > well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim > the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great > festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have > prepared.... No one suspects the sane, and the sane ones will have > perfectly good reasons, logical, well-adjusted reasons, for firing > the shot. They will be obeying sane orders that have come sanely > down the chain of command." [Thomas Merton, Raids on the > Unspeakable (New York: New Directions, 1966), 45-53.]<< > > Jim Forest: > >>Of course we regard ourselves as sane, not to mention good and > decent and even God-fearing. In the Hollywood movie we make of > ourselves, we're never the bad guys.<< > > But in Thomas Merton's Hollywood movie of how the world ends, the > sane ARE the bad guys. Percy did love to play with the malleable > idea of sanity. He often posed the question: Who is actually > crazy? The inmates or the attending psychiatrist? And it's true: > many of those we perceive, by all outward appearances, to be sane, > are not. Likewise many who, by societal standards, could be > labeled crazy are actually in touch with a precious piece of > reality. So the question is, What is sanity? And whose definition > of it is to be trusted? > > Karl Terrell: > >>Percy wrote about how the prospect of bad things happening -- > like an impending war, or perhaps an approaching category-5 > hurricane -- do not cause dread or anxiety. We are instead filled > with excitement. We couldn't be happier. > > By contrast, WP saw a man who has everything going for him, > sitting in his fine home in, say, Short Hills, N.J. on an ordinary > Wednesday afternoon, with no identifiable problems on the horizon, > but who nonetheless finds himself ..... unsettled, anxious. > > The subtitle of Dr. Strangelove was "How I Learned to Stopped > Worrying and Love the Bomb." > > The quote below [de Chardin] speaks of war in positive terms, as a > means of delivering 'solidification' and the 'hope of a common > emancipation.' It seems to me that what's really going on is the > pull of the death wish that we all share. > > Isn't that what Percy was talking about?<< > > I think it's not a wish for death per se but for truth, for the > underlying heart of the matter. If death is necessary to see it, > well, then so be it. But when a storm whips up suddenly on the > horizon and we feel a surge of fear mixed oddly with hope, it is > not death that we long for first. Rather, we wish to see what lies > underneath, and we fancy that the storm might reveal it. We have > come to know, perhaps without even realizing it, that the ordinary > life we live Wednesday after Wednesday (and all the days in > between) is but an intimation of some greater reality. When the > storm arises, we are momentarily awakened from the malaise. There > appears across the valley a symbolic threat that today of all > days, the truth--and all its attendant beauty--might finally > prevail, might finally wreck what's left of our illusory > structures, lay waste to all that is false, and, last of all, > break our hearts for Good. > > > Thanks to Robert Eckert for posing the great question, which has > sparked much discussion of interest. > > Best regards to all, > Michael Larson > ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:32:44 EST From: Nikkibar at aol.com Subject: Re: [percy-l] Can the sane be bad? To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mr. Larson is right about Walker's nervousness over Tielhard du Chardin. I tried to get him to read the later works on a number of occasions and he seemed uninterested although I secretly suspected that he might have dipped into the earlier works but didn't want to waste talking time on the matter. I never discussed Monad with him as that was one I missed myself. Nikki Barranger **************Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campo s-duffy/ 2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20080228/395e7eed /attachment-0001.htm ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:22:37 +0100 From: "Jim Forest" Subject: Re: [percy-l] Can the sane be bad? To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" Message-ID: <53c59b0c0802280522g6240874fr48590450f72dd652 at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Dear Michael, I enjoy this exchange and am learning from it. I had written: >> Please re-read the passage Merton passage I quoted. He is not saying the sane are the bad guys, only that people whom we regard as perfectly sane are quite capable of initiating actions, or assisting in them, which may take the lives of vast numbers of people. Your replied: >> In the passage you quoted, Merton implies that it is often sane men who carry out evil actions. When they do so, when they "initiate the great festival of destruction," is he not dubbing them "bad guys," in the colloquial sense of that phrase? Merton -- probably Walker Percy too -- wasn't drawn to the grouping certain people into the category "bad guys." As he died in 1968, he didn't live long enough to read Percy's last novel, "The Thanatos Syndrome," but he would have greatly appreciated Percy's approach to the problem of evil, seen not on the level of good-guys-versus-bad- guys of the classical Hollywood western, but rather the gradual shifting of a border between good and evil within each human heart, the greatest of all battlefields. Both Percy and Merton, while certainly not agreeing on everything, had a great deal in common. Among other things, both were acutely aware that evil actions are often performed by the most upstanding, respected, normal and altogether "sane" people, whether it be the elimination of "defectives" in the Germany in the 30s and early 40s, or the mass killing of Jews, homosexuals and others in concentration camps, or the fire bombing of whole cities during World War II, or the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or any of the acts of mass destruction that we more-or-less sane people may yet commit in the future. This is not to overlook the danger posed by the insane and pathological, but on the whole their acts of destruction tend to occur on a smaller scale. (My step-mother was shot and killed by such a person as she waited for a bus in San Francisco on her way home from work one day.) Finally, in a more dangerous category, there are those people who are so ideologically driven that, though they may be perceived as sane in a society similarly deranged, are -- were it possible to evaluate them by some objective measure -- truly mad as hatters. (It was an issue Merton addressed in another of his essays, one of his finest, "Rain and the Rhinoceros.") friendly greetings, Jim Forest PS I should mention that, though I have been a Percy reader for many years, I know a good deal more about Merton, having written a biography of him ("Living With Wisdom"). I knew Percy only by correspondence, and only during the last year or so of his life. * * * On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 2:32 PM, Michael Larson wrote: > Jim Forest wrote: > >>Please re-read the passage Merton passage I quoted. He is not saying the > sane are the bad guys, only that people whom we regard > as perfectly sane are quite capable of initiating actions, or assisting in > them, which may take the lives of vast numbers of people.<< > > In the passage you quoted, Merton implies that it is often sane men who > carry out evil actions. When they do so, when they "initiate the great > festival of destruction," is he not dubbing them "bad guys," in the > colloquial sense of that phrase? > > >>Perhaps one might say Merton also raises a question -- I expect Percy > would as well -- whether our definition of what constitutes sanity is > adequate.<< > > Yes! Exactly what I was trying to say, though perhaps not very clearly. > > Best regards, > Michael Larson > -- Jim & Nancy Forest Kanisstraat 5 1811 GJ Alkmaar The Netherlands Forest-Flier web site: www.incommunion.org/forest-flier/ Orthodox Peace Fellowship web site: www.incommunion.org photos: www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/ recently published: "Silent as a Stone," a children's book about a community of rescuers in Nazi-occupied Paris: http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/silent-as-a-stone-mother-maria -of-paris-and-the-trash-can-rescue/ another new book: "The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life": http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/the-road-to-emmaus-pilgrimage- as-a-way-of-life/ * * * Nancy and I have been keeping a journal that follows our recent kidney transplant. A blog has been set up for this purpose -- A Tale of Two Kidneys. See: http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/ * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20080228/d9bf6dc2 /attachment-0001.htm ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:44:35 +0100 From: "Jim Forest" Subject: [percy-l] Re On the end of all things To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" Message-ID: <53c59b0c0802280544k3badc6dax1e8cd81b2cc5d52a at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Dear Robert, You wrote: >> As a military man, I hope peace comes before religious unification. As it says in an Old Book: "Without vision, the people perish." >> These eternal religious questions will not soon be resolved. No, surely they won't. But at least there is a significant process of Christian-Muslim dialogue now occurring, while productive Jewish- Christian dialogue has been going on since soon after the end of World War II. >> Human humility must bow down before such unknowns. Yes. >> Do not shoot at me because we do not agree who God is. The problem is that very often we shoot each other precisely for that reason, and not just across major religious borders but even minor ones. However it's astonishing that -- apart from the Balkans -- Europe, the battleground of so many wars, many of which had a religious component, hasn't been a place of war for 63 years. This surely is in part thanks to the efforts made here to gradually create a European Union. It is far from perfect, but we are not killing each other. (As an American living in Europe, I am one of the immediate beneficiaries.) >> Let us form some sort of human community even in our confusion. >> Together we can struggle toward this unknown. >> All things that rise must converge. The last phrase reminds me of Christ's words, which I paraphrase: "If I be lifted up, I shall draw things unto myself." Jim Forest -- Jim & Nancy Forest Kanisstraat 5 1811 GJ Alkmaar The Netherlands Forest-Flier web site: www.incommunion.org/forest-flier/ Orthodox Peace Fellowship web site: www.incommunion.org photos: www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/ recently published: "Silent as a Stone," a children's book about a community of rescuers in Nazi-occupied Paris: http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/silent-as-a-stone-mother-maria -of-paris-and-the-trash-can-rescue/ another new book: "The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life": http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/the-road-to-emmaus-pilgrimage- as-a-way-of-life/ * * * Nancy and I have been keeping a journal that follows our recent kidney transplant. A blog has been set up for this purpose -- A Tale of Two Kidneys. See: http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/ * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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