From janetcantor37 at yahoo.com Tue Jul 3 15:23:24 2012 From: janetcantor37 at yahoo.com (janet cantor) Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2012 12:23:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [percy-l] question Message-ID: <1341343404.81986.YahooMailClassic@web125903.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> I hope someone knows the answer to this one. At the end of The Thanatos Syndrome, Ellen tells Tom that a rich Jewish princess is coming in for a consultation. Who does she mean? The only one who comes in is one of his old patients and the book ends with Well, well, well. I missed something. I always love Percy's endings and I didn't get this one. Incidentally for those who have read it only, others are not to look ahead, my favorite thing in Lancelot is the last word. Janet Cantor -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From janetcantor37 at yahoo.com Sat Jul 7 22:22:20 2012 From: janetcantor37 at yahoo.com (janet cantor) Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2012 19:22:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [percy-l] The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts Message-ID: <1341714140.22561.YahooMailClassic@web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> If you have not read this book, do not read this. If you have read it and preferably twice, see what you think of my musings so far. I am constructing my discussion of The Thanatos Syndrome for a discussion of it with my book group in September early. ?I am discovering new things as I prepare. The first time I read it I wanted to take a scalpel to it and knew just where. The second time, when I read it more carefully to take notes and construct what I will use, I found very little to edit out. The repetitions and over lengthy scenes this time, instead of being annoying, were funny, and okay with me. They were there for a reason. Or so it seemed to me. One example. I kept seeing similar lines interjected page after page about a shaft of sunlight going through the trees that dissolved into the dark underbrush and variations of that. On first reading I thought they were gratuitous and unoriginal and even annoying in their repetition. On second reading I came up with a perfect rationale for them. Light dissolving into or being swallowed up by darkness. White and black, as in whites and negroes in the south, Well, that's obvious. But that's not all. On a fishing trip, when Van Dorn wants to catch a certain fish and asks why they don't trim some of the branches, Tom tells him then the sunfish would leave. "You don't dare mess with light and shade." Tom says. On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" And he answers,..." to the gas chamber". The do gooders of this book have the best of intentions but, as the line says, every pre conceived utopia needs a police state to keep it running. So in my mind I took all of these shafts of light and reflections of silvery light fighting to get through and all those darknesses swallowing them up, to represent the forces of good and evil. Percy knew what he was doing. By inserting these phrases so often out of nowhere into his descriptive passages he was subliminally undergirding his main theme. People must not try to play G-d. They must respect free will of individuals because no matter what good intentions they have, in the end they interfere with people's personhood. No matter what mistakes people make while using free will, that is better than do gooders trying to manipulate the world to be a more perfect one. All tenderness leads to the gas chambers. And by having it all come from Father Smith, the moralist, to Tom, our everyman, the reader's surrogate, and thus from Percy, psychiatrist to the world, he is, not subtly this time, in his last novel, making his case. At the end of the book is that wonderful paragraph where Percy lets us know that the? 20th century was the most murderous in history and where was G-d. All He had to do was stand back and not interfere and allow man to do what he did and the devil could laugh while it went on. Light fights the dark and the dark seems to be winning. I will play for my book group the last three minutes of Percy's talk to Notre Dame so they can hear him in person giving the warning. Another great joke is that in any mystery part of the tension comes from delaying the solution. So all through as Tom is constantly anxious to get going, Father Smith keeps saying "one more thing". The first time, I found it irritating. This time I found it very funny and it added to the tension as well. Or Dr. Comeaux grabs his arm as he's ready to bolt and keeps him back. Lucy, Van Dorn, so many others keep Tom trapped for a time. I will read lots of things that I consider funny. And show them examples of Percy's vivid descriptive passages, his interest in language, Hudeen, a marvelous creation. My overall goal is not to discuss the story or the characters, but to talk about Percy, his writing, why it works on me, his themes. I intend to show how this book represents a recapitulation of the history of his whole thinking life. Scientist,? Psychiatrist,? philosopher, semioticist, drinker, Catholic, moralist, and finally story teller. Two things left to ponder over. I am not convinced that the book is improved by making the do gooders sex offenders. It would have been a more ambitious book if they were more ambiguously wrong instead of obviously evil. I did love the way they were all placed in their jobs at the end, especially the ape teaching the person how to communicate again. And, speaking of the end, I have a theory of what that "Well, well, well" means, but I don't know yet if I'm correct. In September's discussion, I will tape it to hear how it sounds. Janet Cantor -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at loyno.edu Sun Jul 8 13:31:29 2012 From: marcus at loyno.edu (marcus at loyno.edu) Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2012 12:31:29 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Janet Cantor writes, "On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" And he answers,..." to the gas chamber"." I think Percy told somone he was paraphasing a remark by Flannery O'Connor. I argued with Percy about this epigraph more than once. My reply was that tenderness (romantic secular sentimentality, kitsch, etc.) may have been involved in the cultural roots of the Holocaust, but plain old nasty anti-semitism burrowing through centuries of the "Christian West" was the primary agent driving the catastrophe. I don't recall that we ever concluded our discussion. By the way, the original title of Lady Chatterly's Lover was, of course, "Tenderness." Marcus Smith > 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. The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts (janet cantor) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2012 19:22:20 -0700 (PDT) > From: janet cantor > Subject: [percy-l] The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts > To: percy lists > Message-ID: > <1341714140.22561.YahooMailClassic at web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > If you have not read this book, do not read this. If you have read it and > preferably twice, see what you think of my musings so far. > > I am constructing my discussion of The Thanatos Syndrome for a discussion > of it with my book group in September early. > > ?I am discovering new things as I prepare. > > The first time I read it I wanted to take a scalpel to it and knew just > where. The second time, when I read it more carefully to take notes and > construct what I will use, I found very little to edit out. The > repetitions and over lengthy scenes this time, instead of being annoying, > were funny, and okay with me. They were there for a reason. Or so it > seemed to me. > > One example. I kept seeing similar lines interjected page after page about > a shaft of sunlight going through the trees that dissolved into the dark > underbrush and variations of that. On > first reading I thought they were gratuitous and unoriginal and even > annoying in their repetition. > On second reading I came up with a perfect rationale for them. Light > dissolving into or being swallowed up by darkness. White and black, as in > whites and negroes in the south, Well, that's obvious. But that's not all. > On a fishing trip, when Van Dorn wants to catch a certain fish and asks > why they don't trim some of the branches, Tom tells him then the sunfish > would leave. "You don't dare mess with light and shade." Tom says. > On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" And > he answers,..." to the gas chamber". > The do gooders of this book have the best of intentions but, as the line > says, every pre conceived utopia needs a police state to keep it running. > So in my mind I took all of these shafts of light and reflections of > silvery light fighting to get through and all those darknesses swallowing > them up, to represent > the forces of good and evil. Percy knew what he was doing. By inserting > these phrases so often out of nowhere into his descriptive passages he > was subliminally undergirding his main theme. People must not try to play > G-d. They must respect free will of individuals because no matter what > good intentions they have, in the end they interfere with people's > personhood. No matter what mistakes people make while using free will, > that is better than do gooders trying to manipulate the world to be a > more perfect one. All tenderness leads to the gas chambers. > And by having it all come from Father Smith, the moralist, to Tom, our > everyman, the reader's surrogate, and thus from Percy, psychiatrist to the > world, he is, not subtly this time, in his last novel, making his case. > At the end of the book is that wonderful paragraph where Percy lets us > know that the? 20th century was the most murderous in history and where > was G-d. All He had to do was stand > back and not interfere and allow man to do what he did and the devil > could laugh while it went on. Light fights the dark and the dark seems to > be winning. > I will play for my book group the last three minutes of Percy's talk to > Notre Dame so they can hear him in person giving the warning. > > Another great joke is that in any mystery part of the tension comes from > delaying the solution. So all through as Tom is constantly anxious to get > going, Father Smith keeps saying "one more thing". The first time, I found > it irritating. This time I found it very funny and it added to the tension > as well. Or Dr. Comeaux grabs his arm as he's ready to bolt and keeps him > back. Lucy, Van Dorn, so many others keep Tom trapped for a time. > > I will read lots of things that I consider funny. And show them examples > of Percy's vivid descriptive passages, his interest in language, Hudeen, a > marvelous creation. > > My overall goal is not to discuss the story or > the characters, but to talk about Percy, his writing, why it works on me, > his themes. I intend to show how this book represents a recapitulation of > the history of his whole thinking life. Scientist,? Psychiatrist,? > philosopher, semioticist, drinker, Catholic, moralist, and finally story > teller. > > Two things left to ponder over. I am not convinced that the book is > improved by making the do gooders sex offenders. It would have been a more > ambitious book if they were more ambiguously wrong instead of obviously > evil. I did love the way they were all placed in their jobs at the end, > especially the ape teaching the person how to communicate again. > And, speaking of the end, I have a theory of what that "Well, well, well" > means, but I don't know yet if I'm correct. > > In September's discussion, I will tape it to hear how it sounds. > > Janet Cantor > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20120707/6d144e00/attachment-0001.html > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Percy-L mailing list > Percy-L at lists.ibiblio.org > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/percy-l > > > End of Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 > ************************************** > From kathena1 at aol.com Sun Jul 8 15:13:39 2012 From: kathena1 at aol.com (kathena1) Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2012 15:13:39 -0400 Subject: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <002a01cd5d3d$c88f11a0$59ad34e0$@com> >From Flannery O'Connor's collection of essays: Mystery and Manners; in particular, the essay "A Memoir for Mary Ann." With the toppling of monarchies in latter part of the 18th century, the sentimentalism that was permeating Western culture/European consciousness entered a growing religious void and gave birth to the Romantic movement, but also fostered a sentimental attachment and loyalty to, and identification with, one's national identity, as the nation now was the unifying structure for the people - no longer church and king. So nationalism, a kind of religious manifestation of patriotism and country, arose. Extreme nationalism rejected and demonized the "other" (in Germany's case, you see it manifested in its extreme, of course). So you can see Percy's point - this sentimental nationalism replaces true religion, true God, and makes an idol of country, and leads to all kinds of evils. But he sees that it is true of any sentimentalism (tenderness). The sentimental emotional experience (not only of loyalty to nation, but any sentimentalism attachment) is not an indicator of "good," god, or right. Percy's reading of Gabriel Marcel, who was wary of mass movements and causes, also informed him on this topic. Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death" discusses the mistake of devotion to a cause ("causa sui") further if you're interested in reading more about it - Becker says any time one's cause is not transcendent, it is in danger of demonizing the other, and in that attempt, it attempts to eradicate the other, creating an even greater evil than they think they are fighting (besides the fact that one's "god" is not really god - that one is mistaken about god.) But don't know if Percy read Becker - but Percy was so well-read that he must have. Karey Karey L. Perkins, M.A.T., Ph.D. Lead Faculty, English, Westwood College Writer and editor, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies Master's candidate, Department of Philosophy Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303 kareyperkins at gmail.com 404-513-1460 -----Original Message----- From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of marcus at loyno.edu Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2012 1:31 PM To: Percy list Subject: Re: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 Janet Cantor writes, "On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" And he answers,..." to the gas chamber"." I think Percy told somone he was paraphasing a remark by Flannery O'Connor. I argued with Percy about this epigraph more than once. My reply was that tenderness (romantic secular sentimentality, kitsch, etc.) may have been involved in the cultural roots of the Holocaust, but plain old nasty anti-semitism burrowing through centuries of the "Christian West" was the primary agent driving the catastrophe. I don't recall that we ever concluded our discussion. By the way, the original title of Lady Chatterly's Lover was, of course, "Tenderness." Marcus Smith > 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. The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts (janet cantor) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2012 19:22:20 -0700 (PDT) > From: janet cantor > Subject: [percy-l] The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts > To: percy lists > Message-ID: > <1341714140.22561.YahooMailClassic at web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > If you have not read this book, do not read this. If you have read it > and preferably twice, see what you think of my musings so far. > > I am constructing my discussion of The Thanatos Syndrome for a > discussion of it with my book group in September early. > > ?I am discovering new things as I prepare. > > The first time I read it I wanted to take a scalpel to it and knew > just where. The second time, when I read it more carefully to take > notes and construct what I will use, I found very little to edit out. > The repetitions and over lengthy scenes this time, instead of being > annoying, were funny, and okay with me. They were there for a reason. > Or so it seemed to me. > > One example. I kept seeing similar lines interjected page after page > about a shaft of sunlight going through the trees that dissolved into > the dark underbrush and variations of that. On first reading I > thought they were gratuitous and unoriginal and even annoying in their > repetition. > On second reading I came up with a perfect rationale for them. Light > dissolving into or being swallowed up by darkness. White and black, as > in whites and negroes in the south, Well, that's obvious. But that's not all. > On a fishing trip, when Van Dorn wants to catch a certain fish and > asks why they don't trim some of the branches, Tom tells him then the > sunfish would leave. "You don't dare mess with light and shade." Tom says. > On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" > And he answers,..." to the gas chamber". > The do gooders of this book have the best of intentions but, as the > line says, every pre conceived utopia needs a police state to keep it running. > So in my mind I took all of these shafts of light and reflections of > silvery light fighting to get through and all those darknesses > swallowing them up, to represent the forces of good and evil. Percy > knew what he was doing. By inserting these phrases so often out of > nowhere into his descriptive passages he was subliminally undergirding > his main theme. People must not try to play G-d. They must respect > free will of individuals because no matter what good intentions they > have, in the end they interfere with people's personhood. No matter > what mistakes people make while using free will, that is better than > do gooders trying to manipulate the world to be a more perfect one. > All tenderness leads to the gas chambers. > And by having it all come from Father Smith, the moralist, to Tom, our > everyman, the reader's surrogate, and thus from Percy, psychiatrist to > the world, he is, not subtly this time, in his last novel, making his case. > At the end of the book is that wonderful paragraph where Percy lets us > know that the? 20th century was the most murderous in history and > where was G-d. All He had to do was stand back and not interfere and > allow man to do what he did and the devil could laugh while it went > on. Light fights the dark and the dark seems to be winning. > I will play for my book group the last three minutes of Percy's talk > to Notre Dame so they can hear him in person giving the warning. > > Another great joke is that in any mystery part of the tension comes > from delaying the solution. So all through as Tom is constantly > anxious to get going, Father Smith keeps saying "one more thing". The > first time, I found it irritating. This time I found it very funny and > it added to the tension as well. Or Dr. Comeaux grabs his arm as he's > ready to bolt and keeps him back. Lucy, Van Dorn, so many others keep Tom trapped for a time. > > I will read lots of things that I consider funny. And show them > examples of Percy's vivid descriptive passages, his interest in > language, Hudeen, a marvelous creation. > > My overall goal is not to discuss the story or the characters, but to > talk about Percy, his writing, why it works on me, his themes. I > intend to show how this book represents a recapitulation of the > history of his whole thinking life. Scientist,? Psychiatrist,? > philosopher, semioticist, drinker, Catholic, moralist, and finally > story teller. > > Two things left to ponder over. I am not convinced that the book is > improved by making the do gooders sex offenders. It would have been a > more ambitious book if they were more ambiguously wrong instead of > obviously evil. I did love the way they were all placed in their jobs > at the end, especially the ape teaching the person how to communicate again. > And, speaking of the end, I have a theory of what that "Well, well, well" > means, but I don't know yet if I'm correct. > > In September's discussion, I will tape it to hear how it sounds. > > Janet Cantor > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was > scrubbed... > URL: > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20120707/6d144e > 00/attachment-0001.html > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Percy-L mailing list > Percy-L at lists.ibiblio.org > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/percy-l > > > End of Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 > ************************************** > -- 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 Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add @ sign when addressing email) From kathena1 at aol.com Sun Jul 8 15:19:37 2012 From: kathena1 at aol.com (kathena1) Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2012 15:19:37 -0400 Subject: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <002b01cd5d3e$9e1a6d60$da4f4820$@com> And, those of you who have read Tolson's biography know this, that this subject was particularly important to Percy (as we see this theme often repeated in his novels) because when he was young (college?) he took a trip to Germany in the 1930s and greatly admired the enthusiasm and devotion to a cause of the Hitler Youth. Later, when he saw how it all played out, he saw how mistaken he had been, how this kind of sentimentalism can be quite evil. K -----Original Message----- From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of marcus at loyno.edu Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2012 1:31 PM To: Percy list Subject: Re: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 Janet Cantor writes, "On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" And he answers,..." to the gas chamber"." I think Percy told somone he was paraphasing a remark by Flannery O'Connor. I argued with Percy about this epigraph more than once. My reply was that tenderness (romantic secular sentimentality, kitsch, etc.) may have been involved in the cultural roots of the Holocaust, but plain old nasty anti-semitism burrowing through centuries of the "Christian West" was the primary agent driving the catastrophe. I don't recall that we ever concluded our discussion. By the way, the original title of Lady Chatterly's Lover was, of course, "Tenderness." Marcus Smith > 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. The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts (janet cantor) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2012 19:22:20 -0700 (PDT) > From: janet cantor > Subject: [percy-l] The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts > To: percy lists > Message-ID: > <1341714140.22561.YahooMailClassic at web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > If you have not read this book, do not read this. If you have read it > and preferably twice, see what you think of my musings so far. > > I am constructing my discussion of The Thanatos Syndrome for a > discussion of it with my book group in September early. > > ?I am discovering new things as I prepare. > > The first time I read it I wanted to take a scalpel to it and knew > just where. The second time, when I read it more carefully to take > notes and construct what I will use, I found very little to edit out. > The repetitions and over lengthy scenes this time, instead of being > annoying, were funny, and okay with me. They were there for a reason. > Or so it seemed to me. > > One example. I kept seeing similar lines interjected page after page > about a shaft of sunlight going through the trees that dissolved into > the dark underbrush and variations of that. On first reading I > thought they were gratuitous and unoriginal and even annoying in their > repetition. > On second reading I came up with a perfect rationale for them. Light > dissolving into or being swallowed up by darkness. White and black, as > in whites and negroes in the south, Well, that's obvious. But that's not all. > On a fishing trip, when Van Dorn wants to catch a certain fish and > asks why they don't trim some of the branches, Tom tells him then the > sunfish would leave. "You don't dare mess with light and shade." Tom says. > On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" > And he answers,..." to the gas chamber". > The do gooders of this book have the best of intentions but, as the > line says, every pre conceived utopia needs a police state to keep it running. > So in my mind I took all of these shafts of light and reflections of > silvery light fighting to get through and all those darknesses > swallowing them up, to represent the forces of good and evil. Percy > knew what he was doing. By inserting these phrases so often out of > nowhere into his descriptive passages he was subliminally undergirding > his main theme. People must not try to play G-d. They must respect > free will of individuals because no matter what good intentions they > have, in the end they interfere with people's personhood. No matter > what mistakes people make while using free will, that is better than > do gooders trying to manipulate the world to be a more perfect one. > All tenderness leads to the gas chambers. > And by having it all come from Father Smith, the moralist, to Tom, our > everyman, the reader's surrogate, and thus from Percy, psychiatrist to > the world, he is, not subtly this time, in his last novel, making his case. > At the end of the book is that wonderful paragraph where Percy lets us > know that the? 20th century was the most murderous in history and > where was G-d. All He had to do was stand back and not interfere and > allow man to do what he did and the devil could laugh while it went > on. Light fights the dark and the dark seems to be winning. > I will play for my book group the last three minutes of Percy's talk > to Notre Dame so they can hear him in person giving the warning. > > Another great joke is that in any mystery part of the tension comes > from delaying the solution. So all through as Tom is constantly > anxious to get going, Father Smith keeps saying "one more thing". The > first time, I found it irritating. This time I found it very funny and > it added to the tension as well. Or Dr. Comeaux grabs his arm as he's > ready to bolt and keeps him back. Lucy, Van Dorn, so many others keep Tom trapped for a time. > > I will read lots of things that I consider funny. And show them > examples of Percy's vivid descriptive passages, his interest in > language, Hudeen, a marvelous creation. > > My overall goal is not to discuss the story or the characters, but to > talk about Percy, his writing, why it works on me, his themes. I > intend to show how this book represents a recapitulation of the > history of his whole thinking life. Scientist,? Psychiatrist,? > philosopher, semioticist, drinker, Catholic, moralist, and finally > story teller. > > Two things left to ponder over. I am not convinced that the book is > improved by making the do gooders sex offenders. It would have been a > more ambitious book if they were more ambiguously wrong instead of > obviously evil. I did love the way they were all placed in their jobs > at the end, especially the ape teaching the person how to communicate again. > And, speaking of the end, I have a theory of what that "Well, well, well" > means, but I don't know yet if I'm correct. > > In September's discussion, I will tape it to hear how it sounds. > > Janet Cantor > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was > scrubbed... > URL: > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20120707/6d144e > 00/attachment-0001.html > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Percy-L mailing list > Percy-L at lists.ibiblio.org > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/percy-l > > > End of Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 > ************************************** > -- 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 Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add @ sign when addressing email) From janetcantor37 at yahoo.com Sun Jul 8 22:57:56 2012 From: janetcantor37 at yahoo.com (janet cantor) Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2012 19:57:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1341802676.80565.YahooMailClassic@web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> I wasn't aware of the things you tell me here, not the Flannery O'Connot phrase, not the Lady Chatterly's Lover reference. But I don't think Percy was restricting his reference to the Holocaust. The reason the Father Smith story was in the book was because it replicated something that happened to Percy himself. And he was haunted by it and decided to write the book around it, I am guessing. I think Percy was warning us not to think we know what's best for everyone in cookie cutter perfection. Thanks for the reply and lucky you that you got to talk to him. Janet --- On Sun, 7/8/12, marcus at loyno.edu wrote: Janet Cantor writes, "On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" And he answers,..." to the gas chamber"." I think Percy told somone he was paraphasing a remark by Flannery O'Connor. I argued with Percy about this epigraph more than once.? My reply was that tenderness (romantic secular sentimentality, kitsch, etc.) may have been involved in the cultural roots of the Holocaust, but plain old nasty anti-semitism burrowing through centuries of the "Christian West" was the primary agent driving the catastrophe.? I don't recall that we ever concluded our discussion. By the way, the original title of Lady Chatterly's Lover was, of course, "Tenderness." Marcus Smith > 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. The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts (janet cantor) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2012 19:22:20 -0700 (PDT) > From: janet cantor > Subject: [percy-l] The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts > To: percy lists > Message-ID: > ??? <1341714140.22561.YahooMailClassic at web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > If you have not read this book, do not read this. If you have read it and > preferably twice, see what you think of my musings so far. > > I am constructing my discussion of The Thanatos Syndrome for a discussion > of it with my book group in September early. > > ?I am discovering new things as I prepare. > > The first time I read it I wanted to take a scalpel to it and knew just > where. The second time, when I read it more carefully to take notes and > construct what I will use, I found very little to edit out. The > repetitions and over lengthy scenes this time, instead of being annoying, > were funny, and okay with me. They were there for a reason. Or so it > seemed to me. > > One example. I kept seeing similar lines interjected page after page about > a shaft of sunlight going through the trees that dissolved into the dark > underbrush and variations of that. On >? first reading I thought they were gratuitous and unoriginal and even > annoying in their repetition. > On second reading I came up with a perfect rationale for them. Light > dissolving into or being swallowed up by darkness. White and black, as in > whites and negroes in the south, Well, that's obvious. But that's not all. > On a fishing trip, when Van Dorn wants to catch a certain fish and asks > why they don't trim some of the branches, Tom tells him then the sunfish > would leave. "You don't dare mess with light and shade." Tom says. > On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" And > he answers,..." to the gas chamber". > The do gooders of this book have the best of intentions but, as the line > says, every pre conceived utopia needs a police state to keep it running. > So in my mind I took all of these shafts of light and reflections of > silvery light fighting to get through and all those darknesses swallowing > them up, to represent >? the forces of good and evil. Percy knew what he was doing. By inserting > these phrases so often out of nowhere into his descriptive passages he > was subliminally undergirding his main theme. People must not try to play > G-d. They must respect free will of individuals because no matter what > good intentions they have, in the end they interfere with people's > personhood. No matter what mistakes people make while using free will, > that is better than do gooders trying to manipulate the world to be a > more perfect one. All tenderness leads to the gas chambers. > And by having it all come from Father Smith, the moralist, to Tom, our > everyman, the reader's surrogate, and thus from Percy, psychiatrist to the > world, he is, not subtly this time, in his last novel, making his case. > At the end of the book is that wonderful paragraph where Percy lets us > know that the? 20th century was the most murderous in history and where > was G-d. All He had to do was stand >? back and not interfere and allow man to do what he did and the devil > could laugh while it went on. Light fights the dark and the dark seems to > be winning. > I will play for my book group the last three minutes of Percy's talk to > Notre Dame so they can hear him in person giving the warning. > > Another great joke is that in any mystery part of the tension comes from > delaying the solution. So all through as Tom is constantly anxious to get > going, Father Smith keeps saying "one more thing". The first time, I found > it irritating. This time I found it very funny and it added to the tension > as well. Or Dr. Comeaux grabs his arm as he's ready to bolt and keeps him > back. Lucy, Van Dorn, so many others keep Tom trapped for a time. > > I will read lots of things that I consider funny. And show them examples > of Percy's vivid descriptive passages, his interest in language, Hudeen, a > marvelous creation. > > My overall goal is not to discuss the story or >? the characters, but to talk about Percy, his writing, why it works on me, > his themes. I intend to show how this book represents a recapitulation of > the history of his whole thinking life. Scientist,? Psychiatrist,? > philosopher, semioticist, drinker, Catholic, moralist, and finally story > teller. > > Two things left to ponder over. I am not convinced that the book is > improved by making the do gooders sex offenders. It would have been a more > ambitious book if they were more ambiguously wrong instead of obviously > evil. I did love the way they were all placed in their jobs at the end, > especially the ape teaching the person how to communicate again. > And, speaking of the end, I have a theory of what that "Well, well, well" > means, but I don't know yet if I'm correct. > > In September's discussion, I will tape it to hear how it sounds. > > Janet Cantor > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20120707/6d144e00/attachment-0001.html > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Percy-L mailing list > Percy-L at lists.ibiblio.org > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/percy-l > > > End of Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 > ************************************** > -- 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 Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add @ sign when addressing email) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From janetcantor37 at yahoo.com Sun Jul 8 23:03:32 2012 From: janetcantor37 at yahoo.com (janet cantor) Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2012 20:03:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 In-Reply-To: <002b01cd5d3e$9e1a6d60$da4f4820$@com> Message-ID: <1341803012.84398.YahooMailClassic@web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> As you can see, I did mention this, too. I must say I find a small similarity in the do gooders of today who want to tell us what to eat, drink and how to live. Perhaps Percy would not appreciate the comparison, but it came to my mind as I read the book. I will not bring that up when I discuss the book in my group, though.J Janet And, those of you who have read Tolson's biography know this, that this subject was particularly important to Percy (as we see this theme often repeated in his novels) because when he was young (college?) he took a trip to Germany in the 1930s and greatly admired the enthusiasm and devotion to a cause of the Hitler Youth.? Later, when he saw how it all played out, he saw how mistaken he had been, how this kind of sentimentalism can be quite evil. K -----Original Message----- From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of marcus at loyno.edu Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2012 1:31 PM To: Percy list Subject: Re: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 Janet Cantor writes, "On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" And he answers,..." to the gas chamber"." I think Percy told somone he was paraphasing a remark by Flannery O'Connor. I argued with Percy about this epigraph more than once.? My reply was that tenderness (romantic secular sentimentality, kitsch, etc.) may have been involved in the cultural roots of the Holocaust, but plain old nasty anti-semitism burrowing through centuries of the "Christian West" was the primary agent driving the catastrophe.? I don't recall that we ever concluded our discussion. By the way, the original title of Lady Chatterly's Lover was, of course, "Tenderness." Marcus Smith > 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. The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts (janet cantor) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2012 19:22:20 -0700 (PDT) > From: janet cantor > Subject: [percy-l] The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts > To: percy lists > Message-ID: > ??? <1341714140.22561.YahooMailClassic at web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > If you have not read this book, do not read this. If you have read it > and preferably twice, see what you think of my musings so far. > > I am constructing my discussion of The Thanatos Syndrome for a > discussion of it with my book group in September early. > > ?I am discovering new things as I prepare. > > The first time I read it I wanted to take a scalpel to it and knew > just where. The second time, when I read it more carefully to take > notes and construct what I will use, I found very little to edit out. > The repetitions and over lengthy scenes this time, instead of being > annoying, were funny, and okay with me. They were there for a reason. > Or so it seemed to me. > > One example. I kept seeing similar lines interjected page after page > about a shaft of sunlight going through the trees that dissolved into > the dark underbrush and variations of that. On? first reading I > thought they were gratuitous and unoriginal and even annoying in their > repetition. > On second reading I came up with a perfect rationale for them. Light > dissolving into or being swallowed up by darkness. White and black, as > in whites and negroes in the south, Well, that's obvious. But that's not all. > On a fishing trip, when Van Dorn wants to catch a certain fish and > asks why they don't trim some of the branches, Tom tells him then the > sunfish would leave. "You don't dare mess with light and shade." Tom says. > On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" > And he answers,..." to the gas chamber". > The do gooders of this book have the best of intentions but, as the > line says, every pre conceived utopia needs a police state to keep it running. > So in my mind I took all of these shafts of light and reflections of > silvery light fighting to get through and all those darknesses > swallowing them up, to represent? the forces of good and evil. Percy > knew what he was doing. By inserting these phrases so often out of > nowhere into his descriptive passages he was subliminally undergirding > his main theme. People must not try to play G-d. They must respect > free will of individuals because no matter what good intentions they > have, in the end they interfere with people's personhood. No matter > what mistakes people make while using free will, that is better than > do gooders trying to manipulate the world to be a more perfect one. > All tenderness leads to the gas chambers. > And by having it all come from Father Smith, the moralist, to Tom, our > everyman, the reader's surrogate, and thus from Percy, psychiatrist to > the world, he is, not subtly this time, in his last novel, making his case. > At the end of the book is that wonderful paragraph where Percy lets us > know that the? 20th century was the most murderous in history and > where was G-d. All He had to do was stand? back and not interfere and > allow man to do what he did and the devil could laugh while it went > on. Light fights the dark and the dark seems to be winning. > I will play for my book group the last three minutes of Percy's talk > to Notre Dame so they can hear him in person giving the warning. > > Another great joke is that in any mystery part of the tension comes > from delaying the solution. So all through as Tom is constantly > anxious to get going, Father Smith keeps saying "one more thing". The > first time, I found it irritating. This time I found it very funny and > it added to the tension as well. Or Dr. Comeaux grabs his arm as he's > ready to bolt and keeps him back. Lucy, Van Dorn, so many others keep Tom trapped for a time. > > I will read lots of things that I consider funny. And show them > examples of Percy's vivid descriptive passages, his interest in > language, Hudeen, a marvelous creation. > > My overall goal is not to discuss the story or? the characters, but to > talk about Percy, his writing, why it works on me, his themes. I > intend to show how this book represents a recapitulation of the > history of his whole thinking life. Scientist,? Psychiatrist,? > philosopher, semioticist, drinker, Catholic, moralist, and finally > story teller. > > Two things left to ponder over. I am not convinced that the book is > improved by making the do gooders sex offenders. It would have been a > more ambitious book if they were more ambiguously wrong instead of > obviously evil. I did love the way they were all placed in their jobs > at the end, especially the ape teaching the person how to communicate again. > And, speaking of the end, I have a theory of what that "Well, well, well" > means, but I don't know yet if I'm correct. > > In September's discussion, I will tape it to hear how it sounds. > > Janet Cantor > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was > scrubbed... > URL: > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20120707/6d144e > 00/attachment-0001.html > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Percy-L mailing list > Percy-L at lists.ibiblio.org > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/percy-l > > > End of Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 > ************************************** > -- 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 Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add @ sign when addressing email) -- 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 Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add @ sign when addressing email) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jhforest at gmail.com Mon Jul 9 05:03:06 2012 From: jhforest at gmail.com (Jim Forest) Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2012 11:03:06 +0200 Subject: [percy-l] Flannery on tenderness Message-ID: Re Flannery's comments, here's the text referred to... see the highlighted paragraph. Jim Forest * * * Flannery O?Connor?s Introduction to A Memoir of Mary Ann The Death of a Child The creative action of the Christian?s life is to prepare his death in Christ. It is a continuous action in which this world?s goods are utilized to the fullest, both positive gifts and what P?re Teilhard de Chardin calls 'passive diminishments.' Mary Ann?s diminishment was extreme, but she was equipped by natural intelligence and by a suitable education, not simply to endure it, but to build upon it. She was an extraordinarily rich little girl. Death is the theme of much modern literature. There is Death in Venice, Death of a Salesman, Death in the Afternoon, Death of a Man. Mary Ann?s was the death of a child. It was simpler than any of these, yet infinitely more knowing. When she entered the door of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Home in Atlanta, she fell into the hands of women who were shocked at nothing and who love life so much that they spend their own lives making comfortable those who have been pronounced incurable of cancer. Her own prognosis was six months, but she lived twelve years, long enough for the Sisters to teach her what alone could have been of importance to her. Hers was an education for death, but not one carried on obtrusively. Her days were full of dogs and party dresses, of Sisters and sisters, of Coca-Colas and Dagwood sandwiches, and of her many and various friends . . . ; from patients afflicted the way she was to children who were brought to the Home to visit her and were perhaps told when they left to think how thankful they should be that God had made their faces straight. It is doubtful if any of them were as fortunate as Mary Ann. . . . Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept the fact that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a clich? or a smoothing-down that will soften their real look. When we look into the face of good, we are liable to see a face like Mary Ann?s, full of promise. Bishop Hyland preached Mary Ann?s funeral sermon. He said that the world would ask why Mary Ann should die. He was thinking undoubtedly of those who had known her and knew that she loved life, knew that her grip on a hamburger had once been so strong that she has fallen through the back of a chair without dropping it, or that some months before her death, she and Sister Loretta had got a real baby to nurse. The Bishop was speaking to her family and friends. He could not have been thinking of that world, much farther removed yet everywhere, which would not ask why Mary Ann should die, but why she should be born in the first place. One of the tendencies of our age is to use the suffering of children to discredit the goodness of God, and once you have discredited his goodness, you are done with him . . . . Ivan Karamazov cannot believe, as long as one child is in torment; Camus? hero cannot accept the divinity of Christ, because of the massacre of the innocents. In this popular pity, we mark our gain in sensibility and our loss in vision. If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness. Its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chambers . . . This action by which charity grows invisibly among us, entwining the living and the death, is called by the Church the Communion of Saints. It is a communion created upon human imperfection, created from what we make of our grotesque state. Of hers Mary Ann made what, like all good things, would have escaped notice had not the Sisters and many others been affected by it and wished it written down. The Sisters who composed the memoir have told me that they feel they have failed to create her as she was, that she was more lively than they managed to make her, more gay, more gracious, but I think that they have done enough and done it well. I think that for the reader this story will illuminate the lines that join the most diverse lives and that hold us fast in Christ. * * * On Sun, Jul 8, 2012 at 7:31 PM, wrote: Janet Cantor writes, "On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where > tenderness leads?" And he answers,..." to the gas chamber"." > > I think Percy told somone he was paraphasing a remark by Flannery O'Connor. > > I argued with Percy about this epigraph more than once. My reply was that > tenderness (romantic secular sentimentality, kitsch, etc.) may have been > involved in the cultural roots of the Holocaust, but plain old nasty > anti-semitism burrowing through centuries of the "Christian West" was the > primary agent driving the catastrophe. I don't recall that we ever > concluded our discussion. > > By the way, the original title of Lady Chatterly's Lover was, of course, > "Tenderness." > > Marcus Smith > * * * A Canonization in Munich: http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/2012/02/10/schmorell-canonization/ Photos of the canonization: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/72157629206699911/with/6831984485/ Article about St. Alexander Schmorell: http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/2011/02/02/alexander-schmorell-a-witness-in-dark-times/ Photos of my recent travels in Poland: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/collections/72157628050528457/ Reflections on a visit to Auschwitz: http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/2011/11/28/auschwitz/ Recent books: *All is Grace* revised and expanded biography of Dorothy Day: http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/2006/03/24/all-is-grace/ *Saint George & the Dragon* a children's book: http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/2011/04/04/saint-george-and-the-dragon/ *For the Peace From Above* a resource book on war, peace and nationalism: http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/2011/09/08/for-the-peace-from-above-an-orthodox-resource-book-on-war-peace-and-nationalism/ Jim & Nancy web site: www.jimandnancyforest.com Jim's books: http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/books/ Photo collections: www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/collections/ In Communion site: www.incommunion.org Forest-Flier Editorial Services: www.forestflier.com On Pilgrimage blog: http://jimandnancyonpilgrimage.blogspot.com/ A Tale of Two Kidneys blog: http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/ *Jim & Nancy Forest* Kanisstraat 5 / 1811 GJ Alkmaar / The Netherlands * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From janetcantor37 at yahoo.com Mon Jul 9 05:47:31 2012 From: janetcantor37 at yahoo.com (janet cantor) Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2012 02:47:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [percy-l] Flannery on tenderness In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1341827251.41093.YahooMailClassic@web125906.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Wow. thank you for all of this. Janet --- On Mon, 7/9/12, Jim Forest wrote: From: Jim Forest Subject: [percy-l] Flannery on tenderness To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" Date: Monday, July 9, 2012, 5:03 AM Re Flannery's comments, here's the text referred to... see the highlighted paragraph. Jim Forest * * * Flannery O?Connor?s Introduction to A Memoir of Mary Ann ? The Death of a Child ? The creative action of the Christian?s life is to prepare his death in Christ. It is a continuous action in which this world?s goods are utilized to the fullest, both positive gifts and what P?re Teilhard de Chardin calls 'passive diminishments.' Mary Ann?s diminishment was extreme, but she was equipped by natural intelligence and by a suitable education, not simply to endure it, but to build upon it. She was an extraordinarily rich little girl. ? Death is the theme of much modern literature. There is Death in Venice, Death of a Salesman, Death in the Afternoon, Death of a Man. Mary Ann?s was the death of a child. It was simpler than any of these, yet infinitely more knowing. When she entered the door of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Home in Atlanta, she fell into the hands of women who were shocked at nothing and who love life so much that they spend their own lives making comfortable those who have been pronounced incurable of cancer. Her own prognosis was six months, but she lived twelve years, long enough for the Sisters to teach her what alone could have been of importance to her. Hers was an education for death, but not one carried on obtrusively. Her days were full of dogs and party dresses, of Sisters and sisters, of Coca-Colas and Dagwood sandwiches, and of her many and various friends . . . ; from patients afflicted the way she was to children who were brought to the Home to visit her and were perhaps told when they left to think how thankful they should be that God had made their faces straight. It is doubtful if any of them were as fortunate as Mary Ann. . . . ? Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept the fact that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a clich? or a smoothing-down that will soften their real look. When we look into the face of good, we are liable to see a face like Mary Ann?s, full of promise. ? Bishop Hyland preached Mary Ann?s funeral sermon. He said that the world would ask why Mary Ann should die. He was thinking undoubtedly of those who had known her and knew that she loved life, knew that her grip on a hamburger had once been so strong that she has fallen through the back of a chair without dropping it, or that some months before her death, she and Sister Loretta had got a real baby to nurse. The Bishop was speaking to her family and friends. He could not have been thinking of that world, much farther removed yet everywhere, which would not ask why Mary Ann should die, but why she should be born in the first place. ? One of the tendencies of our age is to use the suffering of children to discredit the goodness of God, and once you have discredited his goodness, you are done with him . . . . Ivan Karamazov cannot believe, as long as one child is in torment; Camus? hero cannot accept the divinity of Christ, because of the massacre of the innocents. In this popular pity, we mark our gain in sensibility and our loss in vision. If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness. Its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chambers . . . ? This action by which charity grows invisibly among us, entwining the living and the death, is called by the Church the Communion of Saints. It is a communion created upon human imperfection, created from what we make of our grotesque state. Of hers Mary Ann made what, like all good things, would have escaped notice had not the Sisters and many others been affected by it and wished it written down. The Sisters who composed the memoir have told me that they feel they have failed to create her as she was, that she was more lively than they managed to make her, more gay, more gracious, but I think that they have done enough and done it well. I think that for the reader this story will illuminate the lines that join the most diverse lives and that hold us fast in Christ. ? * * * On Sun, Jul 8, 2012 at 7:31 PM, wrote: Janet Cantor writes, "On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" And he answers,..." to the gas chamber"." I think Percy told somone he was paraphasing a remark by Flannery O'Connor. I argued with Percy about this epigraph more than once. ?My reply was that tenderness (romantic secular sentimentality, kitsch, etc.) may have been involved in the cultural roots of the Holocaust, but plain old nasty anti-semitism burrowing through centuries of the "Christian West" was the primary agent driving the catastrophe. ?I don't recall that we ever concluded our discussion. By the way, the original title of Lady Chatterly's Lover was, of course, "Tenderness." Marcus Smith * * * A Canonization in Munich:http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/2012/02/10/schmorell-canonization/? Photos of the canonization:http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/72157629206699911/with/6831984485/ Article about St. Alexander Schmorell:http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/2011/02/02/alexander-schmorell-a-witness-in-dark-times/ Photos of my recent travels in Poland: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/collections/72157628050528457/ Reflections on a visit to Auschwitz:?http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/2011/11/28/auschwitz/ Recent books: All is Gracerevised and expanded biography of Dorothy Day:http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/2006/03/24/all-is-grace/ Saint George & the Dragona children's book: http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/2011/04/04/saint-george-and-the-dragon/ For the Peace From Abovea resource book on war, peace and nationalism:http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/2011/09/08/for-the-peace-from-above-an-orthodox-resource-book-on-war-peace-and-nationalism/ Jim & Nancy web site: www.jimandnancyforest.comJim's books: http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/books/ Photo collections: www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/collections/ In Communion site: www.incommunion.org Forest-Flier Editorial Services: www.forestflier.com On Pilgrimage blog: http://jimandnancyonpilgrimage.blogspot.com/ A Tale of Two Kidneys blog: http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/ Jim & Nancy Forest Kanisstraat 5 / 1811 GJ Alkmaar / The Netherlands? * * * -----Inline Attachment Follows----- -- 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 Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add @ sign when addressing email) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From janetcantor37 at yahoo.com Mon Jul 9 06:56:09 2012 From: janetcantor37 at yahoo.com (janet cantor) Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2012 03:56:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [percy-l] I hope I am not becoming a pest Message-ID: <1341831369.43500.YahooMailClassic@web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Re: The Thanatos Syndrome of Walker Percy: Eros and Thanatos?Freud identifies two drives that both coincide and conflict within the individual and among individuals.? Eros is the drive of life, love, creativity, and sexuality, self-satisfaction, and species preservation.? Thanatos, from the Greek word for "death" is the drive of aggression, sadism, destruction, violence, and death.? At the conclusion of C&D, Freud notes (in 1930-31) that human beings, following Thanatos, have invented the tools to completely exterminate themselves; in turn, Eros is expected to "make an effort to assert himself in the struggle with an equally immortal adversary. But who can foresee with what success and with what result?" In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud struggles with paradoxes: 1.???? Human behavior is motivated by a desire for happiness ("satisfaction of needs").? Humans bond together to promote happiness.? This bonding or "civilization" works against individual happiness. 2.???? Although civilization prevents happiness, it is necessary for human life. 3.???? In order for civilizations to be coherent, they channel their aggression toward scapegoats (those excluded from the coherence), but with little effect: "In this respect the Jewish people, scattered everywhere, have rendered most useful services to the civilizations of the countries that have been their hosts; but unfortunately all the massacres of the Jews in the Middle Ages did not suffice to make that period more peaceful and secure for their Christian fellows" AND this is an awkward kid who made a video for his teacher as a school project to explain Existentialism. Forget about his hemming and hawing and just listen to him. This is the clearest explanation of Existentialism I have ever heard.? Note especially what he says about Kierkegard. I just love this primitive video: Existentialism & Walker Percy.mp4 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jeriley at uark.edu Mon Jul 9 17:50:13 2012 From: jeriley at uark.edu (John E. Riley) Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2012 21:50:13 +0000 Subject: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 4 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Janet: You wrote: "The reason the Father Smith story was in the book was because it replicated something that happened to Percy himself. And he was haunted by it and decided to write the book around it, I am guessing..." I think you are correct to note the biographical roots of the Father Smith character and the "tenderness leads to the gas chambers" motif in Thanatos (several critics have written about the latter idea and Percy's "debt" to Flannery O'Connor though I don't have those citations handy). As you probably know, Percy traveled to Germany in 1934, and Father Smith's musings about HIS trip to Germany as a young man are fairly transparently patterned on Percy's own memories. Percy was certainly haunted to the end by his admiration, even attraction for a teenaged son of the German family he boarded with who was a member of the Hitler Youth. The philosopher in Percy was impressed by the power of absolute belief he saw in the young man--which he compared ironically to his own experience in the Boy Scouts (!) I believe Thanatos can be read--along with Lancelot, certainly--as Percy's attempt to grapple with the concept of evil, especially in the context of people and cultures who don't believe they are capable of evil. In other words, evil is most dangerous in people and cultures who don't REALLY believe that evil exists, and certainly not in themselves. Percy's conversion to Catholicism might have had much to do with that system's unambiguous position that evil exists in the world, a perspective he surely found lacking in contemporary ideologies, including "scientism" (a misguided belief in science's power to potentially cure all human ills). For a well-written, scholarly account of the South's WWII-era flirtation with fascism, read Robert Brinkmeyer's The Fourth Ghost: White Southern Writers and European Fascism, 1930-1950. There is a chapter in the book on William Alexander Percy, including a discussion of Lanterns on the Levee. I was fortunate enough to sit in on several of Bob's classes; he is a brilliant scholar, writer, and teacher (he is with the U of South Carolina last I am aware of). http://amzn.com/0807133833 (Link to Amazon record for The Fourth Ghost) Thanks again for your thoughts and your continued contributions to this listserv. Your comments always stimulate my own thinking on Percy's work. Your book group has no idea what's in store for them, ha ha. John Riley Reference Mullins Library University of Arkansas Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA ________________________________________ From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] on behalf of percy-l-request at lists.ibiblio.org [percy-l-request at lists.ibiblio.org] Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2012 10:03 PM To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org Subject: Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 4 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: Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 (janet cantor) 2. Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 (janet cantor) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2012 19:57:56 -0700 (PDT) From: janet cantor Subject: Re: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" Message-ID: <1341802676.80565.YahooMailClassic at web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" I wasn't aware of the things you tell me here, not the Flannery O'Connot phrase, not the Lady Chatterly's Lover reference. But I don't think Percy was restricting his reference to the Holocaust. The reason the Father Smith story was in the book was because it replicated something that happened to Percy himself. And he was haunted by it and decided to write the book around it, I am guessing. I think Percy was warning us not to think we know what's best for everyone in cookie cutter perfection. Thanks for the reply and lucky you that you got to talk to him. Janet --- On Sun, 7/8/12, marcus at loyno.edu wrote: Janet Cantor writes, "On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" And he answers,..." to the gas chamber"." I think Percy told somone he was paraphasing a remark by Flannery O'Connor. I argued with Percy about this epigraph more than once.? My reply was that tenderness (romantic secular sentimentality, kitsch, etc.) may have been involved in the cultural roots of the Holocaust, but plain old nasty anti-semitism burrowing through centuries of the "Christian West" was the primary agent driving the catastrophe.? I don't recall that we ever concluded our discussion. By the way, the original title of Lady Chatterly's Lover was, of course, "Tenderness." Marcus Smith > 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. The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts (janet cantor) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2012 19:22:20 -0700 (PDT) > From: janet cantor > Subject: [percy-l] The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts > To: percy lists > Message-ID: > ??? <1341714140.22561.YahooMailClassic at web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > If you have not read this book, do not read this. If you have read it and > preferably twice, see what you think of my musings so far. > > I am constructing my discussion of The Thanatos Syndrome for a discussion > of it with my book group in September early. > > ?I am discovering new things as I prepare. > > The first time I read it I wanted to take a scalpel to it and knew just > where. The second time, when I read it more carefully to take notes and > construct what I will use, I found very little to edit out. The > repetitions and over lengthy scenes this time, instead of being annoying, > were funny, and okay with me. They were there for a reason. Or so it > seemed to me. > > One example. I kept seeing similar lines interjected page after page about > a shaft of sunlight going through the trees that dissolved into the dark > underbrush and variations of that. On >? first reading I thought they were gratuitous and unoriginal and even > annoying in their repetition. > On second reading I came up with a perfect rationale for them. Light > dissolving into or being swallowed up by darkness. White and black, as in > whites and negroes in the south, Well, that's obvious. But that's not all. > On a fishing trip, when Van Dorn wants to catch a certain fish and asks > why they don't trim some of the branches, Tom tells him then the sunfish > would leave. "You don't dare mess with light and shade." Tom says. > On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" And > he answers,..." to the gas chamber". > The do gooders of this book have the best of intentions but, as the line > says, every pre conceived utopia needs a police state to keep it running. > So in my mind I took all of these shafts of light and reflections of > silvery light fighting to get through and all those darknesses swallowing > them up, to represent >? the forces of good and evil. Percy knew what he was doing. By inserting > these phrases so often out of nowhere into his descriptive passages he > was subliminally undergirding his main theme. People must not try to play > G-d. They must respect free will of individuals because no matter what > good intentions they have, in the end they interfere with people's > personhood. No matter what mistakes people make while using free will, > that is better than do gooders trying to manipulate the world to be a > more perfect one. All tenderness leads to the gas chambers. > And by having it all come from Father Smith, the moralist, to Tom, our > everyman, the reader's surrogate, and thus from Percy, psychiatrist to the > world, he is, not subtly this time, in his last novel, making his case. > At the end of the book is that wonderful paragraph where Percy lets us > know that the? 20th century was the most murderous in history and where > was G-d. All He had to do was stand >? back and not interfere and allow man to do what he did and the devil > could laugh while it went on. Light fights the dark and the dark seems to > be winning. > I will play for my book group the last three minutes of Percy's talk to > Notre Dame so they can hear him in person giving the warning. > > Another great joke is that in any mystery part of the tension comes from > delaying the solution. So all through as Tom is constantly anxious to get > going, Father Smith keeps saying "one more thing". The first time, I found > it irritating. This time I found it very funny and it added to the tension > as well. Or Dr. Comeaux grabs his arm as he's ready to bolt and keeps him > back. Lucy, Van Dorn, so many others keep Tom trapped for a time. > > I will read lots of things that I consider funny. And show them examples > of Percy's vivid descriptive passages, his interest in language, Hudeen, a > marvelous creation. > > My overall goal is not to discuss the story or >? the characters, but to talk about Percy, his writing, why it works on me, > his themes. I intend to show how this book represents a recapitulation of > the history of his whole thinking life. Scientist,? Psychiatrist,? > philosopher, semioticist, drinker, Catholic, moralist, and finally story > teller. > > Two things left to ponder over. I am not convinced that the book is > improved by making the do gooders sex offenders. It would have been a more > ambitious book if they were more ambiguously wrong instead of obviously > evil. I did love the way they were all placed in their jobs at the end, > especially the ape teaching the person how to communicate again. > And, speaking of the end, I have a theory of what that "Well, well, well" > means, but I don't know yet if I'm correct. > > In September's discussion, I will tape it to hear how it sounds. > > Janet Cantor > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20120707/6d144e00/attachment-0001.html > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Percy-L mailing list > Percy-L at lists.ibiblio.org > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/percy-l > > > End of Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 > ************************************** > -- 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 Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add @ sign when addressing email) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20120708/c6f78dce/attachment-0001.html ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2012 20:03:32 -0700 (PDT) From: janet cantor Subject: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" Message-ID: <1341803012.84398.YahooMailClassic at web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" As you can see, I did mention this, too. I must say I find a small similarity in the do gooders of today who want to tell us what to eat, drink and how to live. Perhaps Percy would not appreciate the comparison, but it came to my mind as I read the book. I will not bring that up when I discuss the book in my group, though.J Janet And, those of you who have read Tolson's biography know this, that this subject was particularly important to Percy (as we see this theme often repeated in his novels) because when he was young (college?) he took a trip to Germany in the 1930s and greatly admired the enthusiasm and devotion to a cause of the Hitler Youth.? Later, when he saw how it all played out, he saw how mistaken he had been, how this kind of sentimentalism can be quite evil. K -----Original Message----- From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of marcus at loyno.edu Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2012 1:31 PM To: Percy list Subject: Re: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 Janet Cantor writes, "On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" And he answers,..." to the gas chamber"." I think Percy told somone he was paraphasing a remark by Flannery O'Connor. I argued with Percy about this epigraph more than once.? My reply was that tenderness (romantic secular sentimentality, kitsch, etc.) may have been involved in the cultural roots of the Holocaust, but plain old nasty anti-semitism burrowing through centuries of the "Christian West" was the primary agent driving the catastrophe.? I don't recall that we ever concluded our discussion. By the way, the original title of Lady Chatterly's Lover was, of course, "Tenderness." Marcus Smith > 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. The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts (janet cantor) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2012 19:22:20 -0700 (PDT) > From: janet cantor > Subject: [percy-l] The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts > To: percy lists > Message-ID: > ??? <1341714140.22561.YahooMailClassic at web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > If you have not read this book, do not read this. If you have read it > and preferably twice, see what you think of my musings so far. > > I am constructing my discussion of The Thanatos Syndrome for a > discussion of it with my book group in September early. > > ?I am discovering new things as I prepare. > > The first time I read it I wanted to take a scalpel to it and knew > just where. The second time, when I read it more carefully to take > notes and construct what I will use, I found very little to edit out. > The repetitions and over lengthy scenes this time, instead of being > annoying, were funny, and okay with me. They were there for a reason. > Or so it seemed to me. > > One example. I kept seeing similar lines interjected page after page > about a shaft of sunlight going through the trees that dissolved into > the dark underbrush and variations of that. On? first reading I > thought they were gratuitous and unoriginal and even annoying in their > repetition. > On second reading I came up with a perfect rationale for them. Light > dissolving into or being swallowed up by darkness. White and black, as > in whites and negroes in the south, Well, that's obvious. But that's not all. > On a fishing trip, when Van Dorn wants to catch a certain fish and > asks why they don't trim some of the branches, Tom tells him then the > sunfish would leave. "You don't dare mess with light and shade." Tom says. > On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" > And he answers,..." to the gas chamber". > The do gooders of this book have the best of intentions but, as the > line says, every pre conceived utopia needs a police state to keep it running. > So in my mind I took all of these shafts of light and reflections of > silvery light fighting to get through and all those darknesses > swallowing them up, to represent? the forces of good and evil. Percy > knew what he was doing. By inserting these phrases so often out of > nowhere into his descriptive passages he was subliminally undergirding > his main theme. People must not try to play G-d. They must respect > free will of individuals because no matter what good intentions they > have, in the end they interfere with people's personhood. No matter > what mistakes people make while using free will, that is better than > do gooders trying to manipulate the world to be a more perfect one. > All tenderness leads to the gas chambers. > And by having it all come from Father Smith, the moralist, to Tom, our > everyman, the reader's surrogate, and thus from Percy, psychiatrist to > the world, he is, not subtly this time, in his last novel, making his case. > At the end of the book is that wonderful paragraph where Percy lets us > know that the? 20th century was the most murderous in history and > where was G-d. All He had to do was stand? back and not interfere and > allow man to do what he did and the devil could laugh while it went > on. Light fights the dark and the dark seems to be winning. > I will play for my book group the last three minutes of Percy's talk > to Notre Dame so they can hear him in person giving the warning. > > Another great joke is that in any mystery part of the tension comes > from delaying the solution. So all through as Tom is constantly > anxious to get going, Father Smith keeps saying "one more thing". The > first time, I found it irritating. This time I found it very funny and > it added to the tension as well. Or Dr. Comeaux grabs his arm as he's > ready to bolt and keeps him back. Lucy, Van Dorn, so many others keep Tom trapped for a time. > > I will read lots of things that I consider funny. And show them > examples of Percy's vivid descriptive passages, his interest in > language, Hudeen, a marvelous creation. > > My overall goal is not to discuss the story or? the characters, but to > talk about Percy, his writing, why it works on me, his themes. I > intend to show how this book represents a recapitulation of the > history of his whole thinking life. Scientist,? Psychiatrist,? > philosopher, semioticist, drinker, Catholic, moralist, and finally > story teller. > > Two things left to ponder over. I am not convinced that the book is > improved by making the do gooders sex offenders. It would have been a > more ambitious book if they were more ambiguously wrong instead of > obviously evil. I did love the way they were all placed in their jobs > at the end, especially the ape teaching the person how to communicate again. > And, speaking of the end, I have a theory of what that "Well, well, well" > means, but I don't know yet if I'm correct. > > In September's discussion, I will tape it to hear how it sounds. > > Janet Cantor > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was > scrubbed... > URL: > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20120707/6d144e > 00/attachment-0001.html > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Percy-L mailing list > Percy-L at lists.ibiblio.org > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/percy-l > > > End of Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 > ************************************** > -- 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 Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add @ sign when addressing email) -- 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 Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add @ sign when addressing email) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20120708/3134fb2b/attachment.html ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Percy-L mailing list Percy-L at lists.ibiblio.org http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/percy-l End of Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 4 ************************************** From janetcantor37 at yahoo.com Mon Jul 9 19:36:39 2012 From: janetcantor37 at yahoo.com (janet cantor) Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2012 16:36:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 4 - TMI from me Message-ID: <1341876999.27632.YahooMailClassic@web125901.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Ha ha indeed. Thanks for your response. I keep wondering how they will appreciate what I am going to show them. One good thing is one of them is reading it now and she thanked me because she is enjoying the book. But I intend to spend almost no time on the story or the characters. I hope rather to focus on other things. For example the repeated mentions of light and dark which I will trace in the story that are strategically placed in certain paragraphs to undergird the main ideas of good and evil. I will spend time on things I found funny because I am not sure they will have recognized them as funny. And I will share with them other references from William Percy, Jay Tolson and Flannery O'Connor. BTW, here it is: This from something Flannery O'Connor wrote which Percy incorporated in Thanatos: One of the tendencies of our age is to use the suffering of children to discredit the goodness of God, and once you have discredited his goodness, you are done with him . . . . Ivan Karamazov cannot believe, as long as one child is in torment; Camus? hero cannot accept the divinity of Christ, because of the massacre of the innocents. In this popular pity, we mark our gain in sensibility and our loss in vision. If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness. Its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chambers . . . I also hope to include this which traces so much of what is in the book: Eros and Thanatos?Freud identifies two drives that both coincide and conflict within the individual and among individuals.? Eros is the drive of life, love, creativity, and sexuality, self-satisfaction, and species preservation.? Thanatos, from the Greek word for "death" is the drive of aggression, sadism, destruction, violence, and death.? At the conclusion of C&D, Freud notes (in 1930-31) that human beings, following Thanatos, have invented the tools to completely exterminate themselves; in turn, Eros is expected to "make an effort to assert himself in the struggle with an equally immortal adversary. But who can foresee with what success and with what result?" In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud struggles with paradoxes: 1.???? Human behavior is motivated by a desire for happiness ("satisfaction of needs").? Humans bond together to promote happiness.? This bonding or "civilization" works against individual happiness. 2.???? Although civilization prevents happiness, it is necessary for human life. 3.???? In order for civilizations to be coherent, they channel their aggression toward scapegoats (those excluded from the coherence), but with little effect: "In this respect the Jewish people, scattered everywhere, have rendered most useful services to the civilizations of the countries that have been their hosts; but unfortunately all the massacres of the Jews in the Middle Ages did not suffice to make that period more peaceful and secure for their Christian fellows" If I don't get time for it, I will send it to them afterward. In case this isn't enough for you I give you an extra: This is an awkward kid who made a video for his teacher as a school project to explain Existentialism. Forget about his hemming and hawing and just listen to him. This is the clearest explanation of Existentialism I have ever heard.? Note especially what he says about Kierkegard. I just love this primitive video: Existentialism & Walker Percy.mp4 Janet Janet: You wrote: "The reason the Father Smith story was in the book was because it replicated something that happened to Percy himself. And he was haunted by it and decided to write the book around it, I am guessing..." I think you are correct to note the biographical roots of the Father Smith character and the "tenderness leads to the gas chambers" motif in Thanatos (several critics have written about the latter idea and Percy's "debt" to Flannery O'Connor though I don't have those citations handy). As you probably know, Percy traveled to Germany in 1934, and Father Smith's musings about HIS trip to Germany as a young man are fairly transparently patterned on Percy's own memories.? Percy was certainly haunted to the end by his admiration, even attraction for a teenaged son of the German family he boarded with who was a member of the Hitler Youth. The philosopher in Percy was impressed by the power of absolute belief he saw in the young man--which he compared ironically to his own experience in the Boy Scouts (!) I believe Thanatos can be read--along with Lancelot, certainly--as Percy's attempt to grapple with the concept of evil, especially in the context of people and cultures who don't believe they are capable of evil.? In other words, evil is most dangerous in people and cultures who don't REALLY believe that evil exists, and certainly not in themselves.? Percy's conversion to Catholicism might have had much to do with that system's unambiguous position that evil exis ts in the world, a perspective he surely found lacking in contemporary ideologies, including "scientism" (a misguided belief in science's power to potentially cure all human ills). For a well-written, scholarly account of the South's WWII-era flirtation with fascism, read Robert Brinkmeyer's The Fourth Ghost: White Southern Writers and European Fascism, 1930-1950.? There is a chapter in the book on William Alexander Percy, including a discussion of Lanterns on the Levee.? I was fortunate enough to sit in on several of Bob's classes; he is a brilliant scholar, writer, and teacher (he is with the U of South Carolina last I am aware of). http://amzn.com/0807133833? (Link to Amazon record for The Fourth Ghost) Thanks again for your thoughts and your continued contributions to this listserv.? Your comments always stimulate my own thinking on Percy's work. Your book group has no idea what's in store for them, ha ha. John Riley Reference Mullins Library University of Arkansas Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA ________________________________________ From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] on behalf of percy-l-request at lists.ibiblio.org [percy-l-request at lists.ibiblio.org] Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2012 10:03 PM To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org Subject: Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 4 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: Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 (janet cantor) ???2.? Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 (janet cantor) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2012 19:57:56 -0700 (PDT) From: janet cantor Subject: Re: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" ? ? ? ? Message-ID: ? ? ? ? <1341802676.80565.YahooMailClassic at web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" I wasn't aware of the things you tell me here, not the Flannery O'Connot phrase, not the Lady Chatterly's Lover reference. But I don't think Percy was restricting his reference to the Holocaust. The reason the Father Smith story was in the book was because it replicated something that happened to Percy himself. And he was haunted by it and decided to write the book around it, I am guessing. I think Percy was warning us not to think we know what's best for everyone in cookie cutter perfection. Thanks for the reply and lucky you that you got to talk to him. Janet --- On Sun, 7/8/12, marcus at loyno.edu wrote: Janet Cantor writes, "On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" And he answers,..." to the gas chamber"." I think Percy told somone he was paraphasing a remark by Flannery O'Connor. I argued with Percy about this epigraph more than once.? My reply was that tenderness (romantic secular sentimentality, kitsch, etc.) may have been involved in the cultural roots of the Holocaust, but plain old nasty anti-semitism burrowing through centuries of the "Christian West" was the primary agent driving the catastrophe.? I don't recall that we ever concluded our discussion. By the way, the original title of Lady Chatterly's Lover was, of course, "Tenderness." Marcus Smith > 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. The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts (janet cantor) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2012 19:22:20 -0700 (PDT) > From: janet cantor > Subject: [percy-l] The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts > To: percy lists > Message-ID: > ??? <1341714140.22561.YahooMailClassic at web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > If you have not read this book, do not read this. If you have read it and > preferably twice, see what you think of my musings so far. > > I am constructing my discussion of The Thanatos Syndrome for a discussion > of it with my book group in September early. > > ?I am discovering new things as I prepare. > > The first time I read it I wanted to take a scalpel to it and knew just > where. The second time, when I read it more carefully to take notes and > construct what I will use, I found very little to edit out. The > repetitions and over lengthy scenes this time, instead of being annoying, > were funny, and okay with me. They were there for a reason. Or so it > seemed to me. > > One example. I kept seeing similar lines interjected page after page about > a shaft of sunlight going through the trees that dissolved into the dark > underbrush and variations of that. On >? first reading I thought they were gratuitous and unoriginal and even > annoying in their repetition. > On second reading I came up with a perfect rationale for them. Light > dissolving into or being swallowed up by darkness. White and black, as in > whites and negroes in the south, Well, that's obvious. But that's not all. > On a fishing trip, when Van Dorn wants to catch a certain fish and asks > why they don't trim some of the branches, Tom tells him then the sunfish > would leave. "You don't dare mess with light and shade." Tom says. > On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" And > he answers,..." to the gas chamber". > The do gooders of this book have the best of intentions but, as the line > says, every pre conceived utopia needs a police state to keep it running. > So in my mind I took all of these shafts of light and reflections of > silvery light fighting to get through and all those darknesses swallowing > them up, to represent >? the forces of good and evil. Percy knew what he was doing. By inserting > these phrases so often out of nowhere into his descriptive passages he > was subliminally undergirding his main theme. People must not try to play > G-d. They must respect free will of individuals because no matter what > good intentions they have, in the end they interfere with people's > personhood. No matter what mistakes people make while using free will, > that is better than do gooders trying to manipulate the world to be a > more perfect one. All tenderness leads to the gas chambers. > And by having it all come from Father Smith, the moralist, to Tom, our > everyman, the reader's surrogate, and thus from Percy, psychiatrist to the > world, he is, not subtly this time, in his last novel, making his case. > At the end of the book is that wonderful paragraph where Percy lets us > know that the? 20th century was the most murderous in history and where > was G-d. All He had to do was stand >? back and not interfere and allow man to do what he did and the devil > could laugh while it went on. Light fights the dark and the dark seems to > be winning. > I will play for my book group the last three minutes of Percy's talk to > Notre Dame so they can hear him in person giving the warning. > > Another great joke is that in any mystery part of the tension comes from > delaying the solution. So all through as Tom is constantly anxious to get > going, Father Smith keeps saying "one more thing". The first time, I found > it irritating. This time I found it very funny and it added to the tension > as well. Or Dr. Comeaux grabs his arm as he's ready to bolt and keeps him > back. Lucy, Van Dorn, so many others keep Tom trapped for a time. > > I will read lots of things that I consider funny. And show them examples > of Percy's vivid descriptive passages, his interest in language, Hudeen, a > marvelous creation. > > My overall goal is not to discuss the story or >? the characters, but to talk about Percy, his writing, why it works on me, > his themes. I intend to show how this book represents a recapitulation of > the history of his whole thinking life. Scientist,? Psychiatrist,? > philosopher, semioticist, drinker, Catholic, moralist, and finally story > teller. > > Two things left to ponder over. I am not convinced that the book is > improved by making the do gooders sex offenders. It would have been a more > ambitious book if they were more ambiguously wrong instead of obviously > evil. I did love the way they were all placed in their jobs at the end, > especially the ape teaching the person how to communicate again. > And, speaking of the end, I have a theory of what that "Well, well, well" > means, but I don't know yet if I'm correct. > > In September's discussion, I will tape it to hear how it sounds. > > Janet Cantor > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20120707/6d144e00/attachment-0001.html > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Percy-L mailing list > Percy-L at lists.ibiblio.org > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/percy-l > > > End of Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 > ************************************** > -- 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 Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add @ sign when addressing email) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20120708/c6f78dce/attachment-0001.html ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2012 20:03:32 -0700 (PDT) From: janet cantor Subject: [percy-l]? Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" ? ? ? ? Message-ID: ? ? ? ? <1341803012.84398.YahooMailClassic at web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" As you can see, I did mention this, too. I must say I find a small similarity in the do gooders of today who want to tell us what to eat, drink and how to live. Perhaps Percy would not appreciate the comparison, but it came to my mind as I read the book. I will not bring that up when I discuss the book in my group, though.J Janet And, those of you who have read Tolson's biography know this, that this subject was particularly important to Percy (as we see this theme often repeated in his novels) because when he was young (college?) he took a trip to Germany in the 1930s and greatly admired the enthusiasm and devotion to a cause of the Hitler Youth.? Later, when he saw how it all played out, he saw how mistaken he had been, how this kind of sentimentalism can be quite evil. K -----Original Message----- From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of marcus at loyno.edu Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2012 1:31 PM To: Percy list Subject: Re: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 Janet Cantor writes, "On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" And he answers,..." to the gas chamber"." I think Percy told somone he was paraphasing a remark by Flannery O'Connor. I argued with Percy about this epigraph more than once.? My reply was that tenderness (romantic secular sentimentality, kitsch, etc.) may have been involved in the cultural roots of the Holocaust, but plain old nasty anti-semitism burrowing through centuries of the "Christian West" was the primary agent driving the catastrophe.? I don't recall that we ever concluded our discussion. By the way, the original title of Lady Chatterly's Lover was, of course, "Tenderness." Marcus Smith > 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. The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts (janet cantor) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2012 19:22:20 -0700 (PDT) > From: janet cantor > Subject: [percy-l] The Thanatos Syndrome - some thoughts > To: percy lists > Message-ID: > ??? <1341714140.22561.YahooMailClassic at web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > If you have not read this book, do not read this. If you have read it > and preferably twice, see what you think of my musings so far. > > I am constructing my discussion of The Thanatos Syndrome for a > discussion of it with my book group in September early. > > ?I am discovering new things as I prepare. > > The first time I read it I wanted to take a scalpel to it and knew > just where. The second time, when I read it more carefully to take > notes and construct what I will use, I found very little to edit out. > The repetitions and over lengthy scenes this time, instead of being > annoying, were funny, and okay with me. They were there for a reason. > Or so it seemed to me. > > One example. I kept seeing similar lines interjected page after page > about a shaft of sunlight going through the trees that dissolved into > the dark underbrush and variations of that. On? first reading I > thought they were gratuitous and unoriginal and even annoying in their > repetition. > On second reading I came up with a perfect rationale for them. Light > dissolving into or being swallowed up by darkness. White and black, as > in whites and negroes in the south, Well, that's obvious. But that's not all. > On a fishing trip, when Van Dorn wants to catch a certain fish and > asks why they don't trim some of the branches, Tom tells him then the > sunfish would leave. "You don't dare mess with light and shade." Tom says. > On page 128 Father Smith asks, "Do you know where tenderness leads?" > And he answers,..." to the gas chamber". > The do gooders of this book have the best of intentions but, as the > line says, every pre conceived utopia needs a police state to keep it running. > So in my mind I took all of these shafts of light and reflections of > silvery light fighting to get through and all those darknesses > swallowing them up, to represent? the forces of good and evil. Percy > knew what he was doing. By inserting these phrases so often out of > nowhere into his descriptive passages he was subliminally undergirding > his main theme. People must not try to play G-d. They must respect > free will of individuals because no matter what good intentions they > have, in the end they interfere with people's personhood. No matter > what mistakes people make while using free will, that is better than > do gooders trying to manipulate the world to be a more perfect one. > All tenderness leads to the gas chambers. > And by having it all come from Father Smith, the moralist, to Tom, our > everyman, the reader's surrogate, and thus from Percy, psychiatrist to > the world, he is, not subtly this time, in his last novel, making his case. > At the end of the book is that wonderful paragraph where Percy lets us > know that the? 20th century was the most murderous in history and > where was G-d. All He had to do was stand? back and not interfere and > allow man to do what he did and the devil could laugh while it went > on. Light fights the dark and the dark seems to be winning. > I will play for my book group the last three minutes of Percy's talk > to Notre Dame so they can hear him in person giving the warning. > > Another great joke is that in any mystery part of the tension comes > from delaying the solution. So all through as Tom is constantly > anxious to get going, Father Smith keeps saying "one more thing". The > first time, I found it irritating. This time I found it very funny and > it added to the tension as well. Or Dr. Comeaux grabs his arm as he's > ready to bolt and keeps him back. Lucy, Van Dorn, so many others keep Tom trapped for a time. > > I will read lots of things that I consider funny. And show them > examples of Percy's vivid descriptive passages, his interest in > language, Hudeen, a marvelous creation. > > My overall goal is not to discuss the story or? the characters, but to > talk about Percy, his writing, why it works on me, his themes. I > intend to show how this book represents a recapitulation of the > history of his whole thinking life. Scientist,? Psychiatrist,? > philosopher, semioticist, drinker, Catholic, moralist, and finally > story teller. > > Two things left to ponder over. I am not convinced that the book is > improved by making the do gooders sex offenders. It would have been a > more ambitious book if they were more ambiguously wrong instead of > obviously evil. I did love the way they were all placed in their jobs > at the end, especially the ape teaching the person how to communicate again. > And, speaking of the end, I have a theory of what that "Well, well, well" > means, but I don't know yet if I'm correct. > > In September's discussion, I will tape it to hear how it sounds. > > Janet Cantor > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was > scrubbed... > URL: > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20120707/6d144e > 00/attachment-0001.html > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Percy-L mailing list > Percy-L at lists.ibiblio.org > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/percy-l > > > End of Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 2 > ************************************** > -- 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 Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add @ sign when addressing email) -- 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 Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add @ sign when addressing email) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20120708/3134fb2b/attachment.html ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Percy-L mailing list Percy-L at lists.ibiblio.org http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/percy-l End of Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 4 ************************************** -- 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 Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add @ sign when addressing email) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From janetcantor37 at yahoo.com Mon Jul 9 19:57:19 2012 From: janetcantor37 at yahoo.com (janet cantor) Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2012 16:57:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [percy-l] This I will not share with my book group Message-ID: <1341878239.26805.YahooMailClassic@web125906.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> I wonder if Percy, the psychiatrist would enjoy this. I love it. Mad TV Bob Newhart Skit - Mo Collins - Stop it -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From henry at henrymills.info Tue Jul 10 05:38:50 2012 From: henry at henrymills.info (Henry Mills III) Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:38:50 -0400 Subject: [percy-l] I hope I am not becoming a pest / WP student video In-Reply-To: <1341831369.43500.YahooMailClassic@web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1341831369.43500.YahooMailClassic@web125902.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4FFBF82A.4040500@henrymills.info> Janet, Thanks for sharing this video and your other many recent stimulating thoughts. It's been great to see a recent resurgence of discussion on the list, and especially rewarding to see a person from a younger generation as in this video becoming inspired by Percy. I only wish I had been "turned on" to Percy at such an early age. I will be certain to post a link to the video on the Percy Project website in the days ahead along with it already being archived in the Percy-L archives. I hope also to announce to the Percy-L community new ways for it to get involved in the Project in coming months. Best wishes, Henry -- Henry Mills, Director & Editor The Walker Percy Project Percy-L Moderator www.ibiblio.org/wpercy On 7/9/12 6:56 AM, janet cantor wrote: > Re: The Thanatos Syndrome of Walker Percy: > > *Eros and Thanatos*---Freud identifies two drives that both coincide > and conflict within the individual and among individuals. Eros is the > drive of life, love, creativity, and sexuality, self-satisfaction, and > species preservation. Thanatos, from the Greek word for "death" is the > drive of aggression, sadism, destruction, violence, and death. At the > conclusion of /C&D,/ Freud notes (in 1930-31) that human beings, > following Thanatos, have invented the tools to completely exterminate > themselves; in turn, Eros is expected to "make an effort to assert > himself in the struggle with an equally immortal adversary. But who > can foresee with what success and with what result?" > > In *Civilization and its Discontents*, Freud struggles with paradoxes: > > 1.Human behavior is motivated by a desire for happiness ("satisfaction > of needs"). Humans bond together to promote happiness. This bonding > or "civilization" works against individual happiness. > > 2.Although civilization prevents happiness, it is necessary for human > life. > > 3.In order for civilizations to be coherent, they channel their > aggression toward scapegoats (those excluded from the coherence), but > with little effect: "In this respect the Jewish people, scattered > everywhere, have rendered most useful services to the civilizations of > the countries that have been their hosts; but unfortunately all the > massacres of the Jews in the Middle Ages did not suffice to make that > period more peaceful and secure for their Christian fellows" > > > > > AND this is an awkward kid who made a video for his teacher as a > school project to explain Existentialism. Forget about his hemming and > hawing and just listen to him. This is the clearest explanation of > Existentialism I have ever heard. Note especially what he says about > Kierkegard. I just love this primitive video: > > > Existentialism & Walker Percy.mp4 > > > > > -- > 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 > > Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add @ sign when addressing email) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nikkibar at aol.com Wed Jul 11 16:09:20 2012 From: nikkibar at aol.com (Nikki) Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2012 16:09:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [percy-l] (no subject) Message-ID: <8CF2DB8311A77E5-162C-FE0B@web-mmc-d04.sysops.aol.com> http://www.dyrks.com/etropk.html?gpx=mvpeww -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From janetcantor37 at yahoo.com Sat Jul 21 10:16:50 2012 From: janetcantor37 at yahoo.com (Janet Cantor) Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2012 07:16:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [percy-l] Thanatos Message-ID: <1342880210.22647.YahooMailClassic@web141103.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> I just had to share this. My friend couldn't find a copy of The Thanatos Syndrome in any of her local libraries so I looked on Amazon to see its availability. There is actually someone offering fifteen copies of the book used in hardback for one penny each. Now these could have been donated to a library. But someone actually went to the trouble to post them for sale on Amazon. Is this a comment on his assessment of the book's worth or a generous act of ecumenicism to make it easy for others to be introduced to Percy? I leave it to you to ponder this one. Janet -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jay_thompson at rocketmail.com Sat Jul 21 15:21:33 2012 From: jay_thompson at rocketmail.com (Jay Thompson) Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2012 12:21:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [percy-l] Thanatos (Janet Cantor) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1342898493.25390.YahooMailNeo@web65515.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Janet, thanks for the heads up. I just ordered a hardback copy for a penny plus shipping ($4.00). Much obliged. Jay ________________________________ From: "percy-l-request at lists.ibiblio.org" To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2012 11:00 AM Subject: Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, 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. Thanatos (Janet Cantor) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2012 07:16:50 -0700 (PDT) From: Janet Cantor Subject: [percy-l] Thanatos To: rhoda faust , jay tolson Cc: percy lists Message-ID: ??? <1342880210.22647.YahooMailClassic at web141103.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I just had to share this. My friend couldn't find a copy of The Thanatos Syndrome in any of her local libraries so I looked on Amazon to see its availability. There is actually someone offering fifteen copies of the book used in hardback for one penny each. Now these could have been donated to a library. But someone actually went to the trouble to post them for sale on Amazon. Is this a comment on his assessment of the book's worth or a generous act of ecumenicism to make it easy for others to be introduced to Percy? I leave it to you to ponder this one. Janet -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20120721/dc3fa884/attachment-0001.html ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Percy-L mailing list Percy-L at lists.ibiblio.org http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/percy-l End of Percy-L Digest, Vol 94, Issue 10 *************************************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From scholler at gmail.com Thu Jul 26 16:32:38 2012 From: scholler at gmail.com (Seth Holler) Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 13:32:38 -0700 Subject: [percy-l] Percy and the 19th century Message-ID: <-2566083120758242644@unknownmsgid> Folks, Where should I start reading about Percy's debt to various 19th century writers, eg Scott, SK, Dostoevsky? Thanks, -- Seth C. Holler