[percy-l] [External] Re: LITR - Five Years Later

Lauren Stacy Berdy lauren.stacy.berdy at gmail.com
Tue Aug 5 09:44:21 EDT 2014


  greetings!
I too have been interested in what others have written. In fact I wish 
there was even more meat got chewed more flesh from this books very 
meaty bones...........
I believe Dr Percy did not want us to each to proclaim our own truths.
He wanted us to listen to one another and hear each story as it is told 
by our narrating self and find the similarity in our own lives.
what is the purpose of our lives he would say? what are we here for?
Are we missing the point of existence?
have we stopped being curious?
explanations by authorities  won't get us over the bridge to 
understanding our common ground (our only world) but listening just might!
We each have a bit of all the characters in LITR inside of us.........
thank you,

Lauren Stacy Berdy

On 8/4/2014 3:04 PM, RHONDA MCDONNELL wrote:
> This discussion has been a wonderful addition to my summer. I've been 
> fascinated by the broad range of folks we have on the list. To add to 
> the answers posted to Janet's question, I think the key might be to 
> look for the commonality between us, which beyond being Percy might be 
> that we are all wanderers to a degree, seekers of the truth, alert to 
> signs in the world.
>
> As for Greg's musings on the ending, I think perhaps Percy himself 
> found the ending to be only a temporary state of contentment. When he 
> resurrects Tom for TS he's had some tough times both spiritually and 
> temporally. As long as we are in this mortal dimension any paradise is 
> fleeting. We are bound to fall again and again.
>
> It's been a pleasure sharing the summer with y'all. Let's do it again 
> sometime!!
>
> Rhonda
>
> PS--thanks for the info on Rivendell Greg! Boy is it ever tempting!
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Aug 4, 2014, at 11:19 AM, "Plemmons, Gregory" 
> <gregory.plemmons at Vanderbilt.Edu 
> <mailto:gregory.plemmons at Vanderbilt.Edu>> wrote:
>
>>
>> To all,
>>
>> I've enjoyed hearing everyone's comments and reactions, and even 
>> though I read LiTR many years ago, I still did not recall how it 
>> ended, yet somehow I knew Tom would end up with Ellen and her 
>> sensibility. I agree wholeheartedly with Janet's comments---the 
>> message seems to be get over yourself and care for someone else, lose 
>> yourself, and notice the light all around.
>>
>>
>> On second reading, by the end, I still find myself wondering about 
>> Tom---how much still lies buried (at least unearthed) beneath the 
>> surface about Doris, his failed marriage, and losing Samantha---how 
>> neatly this all seems tied up with Ellen. Of course, it's human to 
>> crave such an ending, but throughout my second reading, I kept 
>> wondering about Doris, and the minor character of Alistair and his 
>> boyfriend. Alistair (and the homosexuals) seems to get jn Tom's craw 
>> more than most other characters in the novel (did anyone else catch 
>> the reference as well in the next to last section to Billy Sol, 
>> Lola's piano accompanist?---"a big old prisspot, but a real good 
>> boy"). It's the only part of LiTR which now seems to me more 
>> outdated, than the other cultural references. Last year I read the 
>> recent biography of Percy's uncle, William Alexander Percy (who wrote 
>> Lanterns on the Levee, as Janet mentions)---an absorbing look into a 
>> very conflicted character from a very different time. I assume as 
>> Percy was drafting this novel, the Stonewall uprising was taking 
>> place, along with all the rest of the chaos. In a way, Tom almost 
>> seems to envy his wife's relationship with Alistair on some 
>> level---which had me wondering, perhaps, about his own insecurity 
>> about sexuality. It's almost as if relations between men and women 
>> can belong in some ways to angelism, or bestialism, but never both. 
>> Doris and Alistair's relationship is angelic, at least in the sense 
>> it's presumably asexual, but nevertheless it's a relationship which 
>> may have been more emotionally intimate in some ways than his own 
>> marriage, precisely because it's not complicated by sex. At the 
>> extreme opposite, and in the Pit, we have bestialism, and Tom finds 
>> himself holed up in the HoJo with three women, until he finally 
>> settles on Ellen, with her he seems to have found a happy medium. 
>> It's interesting, though, that the woman he is picks is the nurse 
>> (not the cellist, not the secretary) ---women (and traditionally 
>> nurses) have always been the great humanizers in the field of 
>> medicine---the nuturers, the touch of the hand. But cool and clinical 
>> at times, when it's called for.
>>
>>
>> I came across this a few days ago, published last summer, in the 
>> Perspectives of Biology and Medicine:
>>
>>
>> Abstract
>>
>> A large online community has recently formed around autonomous 
>> sensory meridian response (ASMR), a pleasant and poorly understood 
>> somatic reaction to specific interpersonal triggers. Its web-based 
>> manifestations include a variety of amateur videos designed to elicit 
>> the reaction, many of which feature protracted imitations of a 
>> clinician's physical exam. This analysis considers through a literary 
>> lens the proximity of this phenomenon to clinical diagnostics, 
>> focusing in particular on characterizations of spiritual isolation 
>> elaborated in Love in the Ruins (1971), the third novel by 
>> physician-writer Walker Percy (1916--1990). Within this speculative 
>> framework, the tendency to derive pleasure from clinical milieus, 
>> real or constructed, may be interpreted as a quality particular to 
>> the postmodern psyche. Viewing web-based clinical role-play in light 
>> of Percy's writing also underscores the possibility that routine 
>> diagnostic assessments may have independent therapeutic implications.
>>
>>
>> We need the human touch more than ever, it seems. The article isn't 
>> available online without a subscription, but I'm glad to forward a 
>> PDF to anyone interested.
>>
>>
>> P.S. For those of you who may not be aware (or for any of you who 
>> write and may need some time away), the Percy property at Sewanee has 
>> now been made into a Writers Colony and is open for applications:
>>
>>
>> http://rivendellwriterscolony.org/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Gregory Plemmons
>> gregory.plemmons at vanderbilt.edu <mailto:gregory.plemmons at vanderbilt.edu>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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