[percy-l] Thank you for all the kind replies.

D.E. Pierce leftatthegate at gmail.com
Tue Feb 24 11:35:37 EST 2009


Hey y'all -

Thanks for all the kind replies to my introductory post last week. I'm sorry
it's taken me as long as it has to respond - I've been taking a few
"media-free" days and steering somewhat clear of the web.

To answer a few of the questions asked:

I've read all of the novels. Were I to be forced to pick a favorite, it'd
probably be The Last Gentleman, as it hit closest to home. My reaction to
passages in that novel were exactly those of the alienated commuter from
"The Man on the Train": "I'll be damned if that's not precisely the way it
is!"

I've also read the two collections of essays, the Tolson and Samway
biographies, and Paul Elie's wonderful book about Percy, O'Connor, Merton,
and Day.

More recently I read the two "Conversations..." volumes published at Ole
Miss.

In specific response to Karl and Chuck: I had a similar experience in
discovering Ford. I was in a used bookstore in DC about ten years ago and
picked up a copy of The Sportswriter. (It was an early pressing, and had a
small blurb from Percy on the cover.) I think I just liked the title and the
use of a sportswriter as a sort of "everyman". When I think of the two of
them together - Percy and Ford - what jumps out at me immediately is a
similarity in technique, at least where The Moveiegoer and the Bascombe
novels are concerned. That is, the use of first person present tense and the
carrying-on of an almost constant interior monologue.

A technical question: how does one go about replying to individual posts?

Hope everyone has a safe and happy Mardi Gras. Tomorrow I'll be sitting
around with ashes on my forehead watching Tiger tee it up for the first time
in what seems like forever. (Watching sports on television is not among my
Lenten sacrifices, which likely says something about my rather half-assed
piety.)

Y'all take care.

e.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20090224/87bec12a/attachment.html>


More information about the Percy-L mailing list