[percy-l] Walker Percy Exhibit in NYC, Jan. 17-19, scheduled at Crossroads Cultural Center

Henry Mills wppdirector at gmail.com
Tue Jan 28 09:40:26 EST 2014


This is a forwarded post for list member Chuck Lowry 
<lowry.charles at gmail.com>.

Thanks, Chuck!

Henry Mills

--
Post by Chuck Lowry:

I went this afternoon to the Walker Percy exhibit put on by New York  
Encounter, a cultural outreach of the Catholic association Communion 
and  Liberation.  The program comprised twenty-nine (yes, I counted 
them)  posters arranged around four walls.  The slides offered 
perspectives on  biographical, literary and philosophical aspects of 
Percy's life and work.

The commentary was prepared and the Percy quotation selected by Tom 
Tobin, an academic who is a familiar figure at New York-area 
conferences  on Percy. Tom makes no secret of the fact that he read *The 
Moviegoer*  at the behest of an acquaintance and immediately put his 
life on hold  until he had read all the rest of Percy.  That is, I note, 
exactly what  happened to me.  Tom seemed to indicate that his two 
favorite Percy  novels were *Love in the Ruins* and *The Second Coming*.

Between Friday evening and Sunday evening there were eight or ten 
"guided tours" around the posters.  I was fortunate to attend one at  
noon today that was conducted by Tom himself, though he did not conduct  
them all.  The tour I was on took nearly an hour.

I had the impression that most of the folks on the tour were more 
interested in Catholicism than in literature, but in an hour they got a  
good bit of information on Percy's life, the influences on him and the  
varieties of his work.  If I may be taken as a typical member of this  
list, I would probably say that I did not learn anything, but I was  
reminded --pleasantly-- of many things, and I'm sure now that I'll go  
back and look at some Percy writing again. It is, I am sure you will  
all agree, a great thing to be reminded of the great Percy quotations.   
I shall close this note with one such:

"I believe in God and the whole business but I love women best, music  
and science next, whiskey next, God fourth, and my fellowman hardly at  
all. Generally I do as I please. A man, wrote John, who says he 
believes  in God and does not keep his commandments is a liar. If John 
is right,  then I am a liar. Nevertheless, I still believe." *Love in 
the Ruins*

Substitute *literature* for *science* and I think I'll plead guilty and  
throw myself on the mercy of the Court.

Chuck Lowry
Brooklyn, NY





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