[percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War
Beck, David A
dabeck at iupui.edu
Tue Jun 24 21:00:36 EDT 2014
I agree, Karey (did I just say that?). Seriously, though, I posted the
opening to LIR, because, while it is a work of fiction, it shows that
Percy saw where we were headed--in Karey's words, "hell in a
handbasket." It seems to me--just off the top of my head--that his
concern was not a right or left one, but one that concerned our
"culture of death." I need to re-read Fr. Smith's "sermons" from the
fire tower (it's been awhile).
But I don't think he saw us as the "city on the hill." I think he had
some legit concerns. He obviously saw and showed how easily we can
"fall asleep at the wheel", with our endless distractions.
-David
Quoting Karey via Percy-L <percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org>:
> Rhonda: I'm in!
>
> Janet - I'm not sure what you thought the Iraq war was fought for?
> Or even Vietnam? (Yes, David, we agree on something! ;) ...) And
> Malaysia just indicted the Bush-Cheney admin for war crimes; I'd be
> surprised if other countries didn't follow suit.
>
> Percy definitely didn't see America through rose-colored glasses. He
> kinda thought we were going to hell in a handbasket. One of his most
> important themes is social criticism - not only the generic
> postmodernism of the 20th century West (a big one), but particular
> political and social issues of America of his day. Some of his
> critics have even said his themes were too contextual and that's why
> he's sort of faded in the 21st century - I don't think so though.
> Look at the Knotheads and the Leftpapas. The Knots ARE the Tea
> Party, envisioned 30 - 40 years before they ever came about.
>
> Smart guy that Percy.
>
> Karey
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Jun 23, 2014, at 10:11 AM, RHONDA MCDONNELL
> <rhonda_mcdonnell at msn.com> wrote:
>
> Janet,
>
> Oh how I wish I could see things as you do. I fear, though, that I am
> more cynical, and I perceive that Percy was too. The Death-Dealing
> Death-Loving 20th century as moved into the 21st with no respite. If
> we are merely altruistic as a nation, how is it that we let genocide
> go unchecked in places like Myanmar? I fear our interests are often
> (always?) control by corporate interests and lobbyists. The days of
> the knotheads are here. Let us hope we survive them.
>
> ps--it'd be fun to do a slow read of Love in the Ruins together on
> the list. Maybe we could spark up a little life? Anyone in?
>
> Rhonda
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>> On Jun 23, 2014, at 7:54 AM, "janetcantor37--- via Percy-L"
>> <percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org> wrote:
>>
>> David,
>> I know the Percy Lists are supposed to try to avoid the political
>> but you offered the Percy quote in response to my comment and I feel
>> a need to have my say. I find it interesting that Coriolanus, my
>> favorite Shakespeare play, is used by both goodies and baddies to
>> justify their personal choices.
>>
>> We fought in Korea and the president stopped the fighting and did
>> not allow the fight to continue into the north. Where would Koreans
>> prefer to live, in South Korea or North Korea?
>> Americans do not fight to gain territory or to takeover countries.
>> We fight to try to give others the chance to have liberty. We may
>> differ on when it is our fight.
>> If a cancer invades, it is something that is either fought or it
>> kills. Islamism and Communism are the cancers.
>>
>> So we may differ on whether something is our fight or not, or in how
>> the fight is fought, but, please, let us at least agree that America
>> represents the goodies and not the cancer.
>> Janet Cantor
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> From: "Beck, David A" <dabeck at iupui.edu>
>> To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org
>> Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2014 8:50 AM
>> Subject: Re: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War
>>
>> Janet,
>> I'm not sure we are a "shining light to the world" anymore or have been
>> for a long time. Our credibility has been on a downhill slide since
>> Viet Nam. I'm more apt to remember Percy's analogy of the old, rusting,
>> roller coaster at the beginning of Love in the Ruins: "now [is]the
>> blessing [on the U.S.A.] or the luck is over, the machinery clanks, the
>> chain catches hold, and the cars jerk forward?" (I love that passage.)
>>
>> -David
>>
>>
>>
>> Quoting janetcantor37--- via Percy-L <percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org>:
>>
>> > How lovely to read this now. But how sad because I am beginning to
>> > think that this is becoming obsolete thinking these days. There is
>> > more race rancor in our conversation today than I can remember since
>> > the 60's. It shouldn't be this way. I wish it were not so. We have a
>> > great country. I hope we don't lose it because we are asleep at the
>> > switch. It is a country worth saving, a shining light to the world. I
>> > wonder what Percy would be saying about current attitudes?
>> > Janet Cantor
>> >
>> >
>> > ________________________________
>> > From: Jim Forest <jhforest at gmail.com>
>> > To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion
>> > <percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org>
>> > Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2014 6:04 AM
>> > Subject: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > from the March 29, 1957 issue of Commonweal
>> >
>> > https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/american-war
>> >
>> > The American War
>> >
>> > by Walker Percy
>> >
>> > WHAT ARE THE reasons for the current revival of interest in
>> > the Civil War? That there is such a revival is undeniable. Books
>> on the War
>> > pour off the presses every week?some of them, incidentally, of a very high
>> > order, such as Bruce Catton's This Hallowed Ground and Shelby
>> Foote's Shiloh!
>> > What is at once noticeable about the current literature is its frankly
>> > non-political character and the absence of the old rancor. The
>> race issue may
>> > be still very much an issue, but Northern and Southern historians
>> > have achieved
>> > a common view of the War itself. When Catton from Michigan and Foote from
>> > Mississippi write about the battle of Shiloh, it sounds like the
>> same battle.
>> > Catton is never more eloquent than when he is appraising Lee's
>> generalship;
>> > Foote is just as impressed by the fighting qualities of the
>> Northern soldier.
>> > Indeed, from this distance the underdog psychology probably kindles
>> > the reader's
>> > enthusiasm more readily than do the social issues?and perhaps this
>> is just as
>> > well.
>> >
>> > The general impression outside the South seems to be that it
>> > is the rest of the country which has rediscovered the Civil War, that
>> > the South
>> > has never stopped looking back. This is mistaken, I believe, and
>> is due to an
>> > understandable optical illusion. The truth is, at least in my
>> > experience, that
>> > the Southerner never thinks about the Civil War?until he finds
>> himself among
>> > Northerners. Then, for some reason-perhaps because the Northerner
>> insists on
>> > casting him in his historical role and the Southerner is perfectly
>> willing to
>> > oblige, or because, lost in the great cities of the North, he
>> feels for the
>> > first time the need of his heritage?he breaks out the Stars and Bars. I
>> > remember traveling from Alabama to summer camp in Wisconsin in the
>> twenties.
>> > The train would stop in Chicago to pick up more boys. We from Alabama
>> > had heard
>> > as little about the Civil War as the Boer War and cared less, but
>> every time
>> > the Illinois boys got on in Chicago the War started, a real brawl yet not
>> > really bad-tempered. The same sort of thing must have happened during
>> > the World
>> > War I when an Alabama division suddenly found itself in a
>> donnybrook with the
>> > Fighting 69th at Plattsburg.
>> >
>> > The truth of it is, I think, that the whole country, South
>> > included, is just beginning to see the Civil War whole and entire for
>> > the first
>> > time. The thing was too big and too bloody, too full of suffering
>> and hatred,
>> > too closely knit into the fabric of our meaning as a people, to be
>> > held off and
>> > looked at-until now. It is like a man walking away from a mountain.
>> > The bigger
>> > it is, the farther he's got to go before he can see it. Then one
>> day he looks
>> > back and there it is, this colossal thing lying across his past.
>> >
>> > A history of the shifting attitudes toward the War would be
>> > enlightening. There would probably emerge a pattern common to such great
>> > events, a dialectic of loss-recovery: the long period of
>> recollection, of in
>> > tense partisan interest which is followed by a gradual fading of the
>> > Event into
>> > a dusty tapestry. (Lee and Grant at Appomattox taking their place beside
>> > Washington Crossing the Delaware.) Then under certain
>> circumstances, there is
>> > the recovery. Perhaps Washington will never be recovered, having been
>> > ossified
>> > too long in grammar school tableaus. But Lincoln and Grant and
>> McClellan and
>> > even the legendary Lee, who after all are closer in time to
>> > Washington than to
>> > us, have come very much alive. Why, then, their recovery, and what
>> > exactly has
>> > been recovered?
>> >
>> > WHAT HAS been recovered, it seems clear, is not the politics
>> > or the sociology of the War, nor even the slavery issue, but the
>> > fight itself.
>> > The tableau I remember from school was the Reconciliation, Grant and
>> > Lee in the
>> > McLean house, Lee healing the wounds at Washington College. Little
>> was said
>> > about the War, except that it was tragic; brother fighting against
>> brother,
>> > etc. Undoubtedly this was the necessary if somewhat boring
>> emphasis for the
>> > textbooks. Now, after ninety years of Reconciliation, we can take a
>> > look at the
>> > fight itself.
>> >
>> > What a fight it was! The South is a very big place, yet
>> > there is hardly a district that didn't have its skirmish, its
>> Federal gunboat
>> > sunk in a bayou?where some old-timer won't tell you, "Yes, they came
>> > through here." It is startling to realize that there were more casualties
>> > in the Civil War than in all the American forces of World War II, and
>> > more than
>> > in all other American wars put together. Of 3,000,000 men under arms,
>> > 2,300,000
>> > for the Union, 750,000 for the Con federacy, 618,222 died, with total
>> > casualties probably going well past a million. For sheer
>> concentrated fury,
>> > there are few events even in modern warfare to equal that terrible
>> > September 17
>> > at Antietam Creek when over 20,000 men fell?or the May-June of '64
>> > when, beginning
>> > with the battle of the Wilderness, Grant lost on the average of 2,000
>> > men a day
>> > for 30 days, culminating in the slaughter at Cold Harbor when over
>> 8,000 men
>> > fell in about ten minutes! There were murderous battles in the
>> West which one
>> > never heard of, like Stone's River with over 25,000 casualties.
>> >
>> > Yet terrible as it was, it is impossible to read of the Army
>> > of Northern Virginia or of the Army of the Potomac without being
>> caught up in
>> > the tremendous drama. The armies were big enough so that the action
>> > took place
>> > on an epic scale, yet the War was, as much as were the Punic Wars,
>> a personal
>> > encounter of the opposing leaders. Lee was very much aware of this
>> > grim beauty
>> > when the fog rose over Fredericksburg showing Burnside's entire
>> army facing
>> > his, battle flags flying. "It is
>> > well that war is so terrible,? he said; "else we should grow too fond of
>> > it." But what gave the Civil War the tragic proportions of the Iliad
>> > was the fact, apparent after Shiloh, that the American soldier,
>> > Union and
>> > Confederate, was not going to be beaten until he could literally fight no
>> > longer or was killed. When his leader was great, he was almost
>> > invincible; when
>> > his leader was mediocre, he was still superb. Pickett's charge is justly
>> > famous, but just as heartbreaking was the Union assault on
>> > Longstreet's position in the sunken road at Fredericksburg.
>> > The difference was that where Pickett?s men had every confidence in Lee,
>> > Couch's men knew very well that Burnside was wrong. Yet they
>> attacked all day
>> > long, and only stopped when the field was piled so high with dead
>> that they
>> > could no longer run over them.
>> >
>> > AS IN ALL tragedies, a great deal seemed to de pend upon
>> > fate. Small mischances become as important as Thetis?s oversight when she
>> > dipped Achilles?all but his heel?into the Styx. A Confederate
>> > courier loses some
>> > battle orders; they are found wrapped around three cigars and
>> > brought to McClellan; the direct result is the battle
>> > of Antietam. One can't read of that war without playing the
>> > fascinating game of
>> > what-if.... What if Jackson had lived through Chancellorsville? What if
>> > McClellan had listened to Phil Kearny (instead of the Pinkerton
>> detectives)
>> > during the Seven Days? What if Jeb Stuart had tended to business at
>> > Gettysburg?
>> > Lee was always just missing his Cannae and Lincoln's generals were
>> > always just
>> > short of ordinary competence?until he got Grant.
>> >
>> > Besides the great failures, there were the great successes,
>> > the heroes' deeds which are always irresistible to the human spirit
>> > and so pass
>> > over immediately into the legend of the race. There was
>> Chancellorsville when
>> > Lee, facing Hooker's 85,000, divided his battered army of 43,000,
>> > sent Jackson
>> > to the left, leaving him in front of Hooker with 17,000 men?and
>> attacked and
>> > very nearly destroyed the Army of the Potomac. There was the Union's
>> > "Pap" Thomas's assault on Missionary Ridge at Chattanooga and the
>> > subsequent demoralization of Bragg. And there was the fateful decision at
>> > Spotsylvania when, after taking a fearful mauling, Grant, instead
>> of falling
>> > back toward Washington as the army had been doing for the past
>> three years,
>> > retreated south, sliding around Lee's right.
>> >
>> > Therein lies the tragedy. If Lee had been a little more or a
>> > little less?if he had gotten his Cannae or if he had only been
>> just competent
>> > and been whipped by McClellan in '62?the results would still have
>> > been notable,
>> > but they would not have approached the terror and piteousness of
>> > what actually did happen. The
>> > summer of 1864 has a Gotterdammerung quality. With the issue
>> hardly in doubt
>> > after Gettysburg, the fighting nevertheless increased in fury with
>> both sides
>> > attacking steadily, without the usual remissions between battles.
>> >
>> > YET WITH all the horror, or perhaps because of it, there was
>> > always the feeling then, and even now as we read about it, that
>> the things a
>> > man lived through were somehow twice as real, twice as memorable
>> as the peace
>> > that followed. Peace is better than war, yet it is a sad fact that
>> > some of the
>> > heroes of the War, like Grant and Longstreet and many a lesser
>> man, found the
>> > peace a long descent into mediocrity. In
>> > the ordeal the man himself seemed to become more truly himself,
>> revealing his
>> > character or the lack of it, than at any time before or after. If
>> a man was
>> > secretly cowardly or secretly brave, stupid or shrewd, that was
>> what he was
>> > shown to be. The War infallibly discovered his hidden weakness and
>> his hidden
>> > strength. Hooker the braggart was reduced to impotence simply by
>> having Lee's
>> > small army in front of him (and understandably, for the veterans of
>> > the Army of
>> > the Potomac used to say to replacements fresh from victories in the West:
>> > "Wait till you meet Bobby Lee"). Grant the ne'er-do-well matured in
>> > defeat and became a noble and sensitive human being by having Lee at
>> > his mercy.
>> > It is no wonder that there was the temptation, especially in the
>> > ruined South,
>> > to enshrine those four years as the four years of truth and to
>> discount all
>> > other times, even the future.
>> >
>> > Then there were the thousand and one lesser encounters, any
>> > one of which, if it had happened at another time, would have its own
>> > literature
>> > and its own historians: the Confederate raiders, Farragut's capture of New
>> > Orleans, the battle of the ironclads, Forrest's miniature Cannae at Bryce
>> > Crossroads, James Andrews' stealing the
>> > Confederate train, and so on. It was the last of the wars of
>> > individuals, when
>> > a single man's ingenuity and pluck not only counted for some
>> thing in itself
>> > but could conceivably a:ffect the entire issue. Forrest himself is quite
>> > unbelievable. It is as if Launcelot had been reborn in Memphis. He
>> > carried into
>> > battle a cavalry saber sharpened to a razor edge and actually
>> killed men with
>> > it. He actually did fool a Yankee commander into surrendering by
>> parading a
>> > single cannon back and forth in the distance as they parleyed. He
>> > actually did
>> > have twenty-nine horses shot from under him.
>> >
>> > THERE IS an ambiguity about this new interest in the Civil
>> > War. On the one hand it is the past recaptured, the authentic
>> recovery of the
>> > long agony during which this nation came to be what it is. Yet
>> there is also
>> > the temptation to yield to an historical illusion by which the
>> past seems to
>> > gain in stature and authenticity as it recedes and the present to be
>> > discounted
>> > because it is the here and now. We sense the illusion in the words of the
>> > old-timer, "Yes, they came through here," in which it is somehow
>> > implied that this place has existed in a long trivial aftermath
>> after its one
>> > day of glory. Perhaps the North is in for a mild case of the same
>> romanticism
>> > which the South recovered from over fifty years ago.
>> >
>> > The increased emphasis upon the fighting at the expense of
>> > ideology is probably good. One does well, anyway, not to apply
>> ideology too
>> > closely to that war. James Truslow Adams can talk about the March of
>> > Democracy
>> > and Bruce Catton can call the Union army a truly revolutionary army
>> > and perhaps
>> > they are right. Perhaps the War was really and truly fought over
>> > slavery. But the
>> > other case can be made too. It is difficult to see the yeoman farmers who
>> > largely made up the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of Northern
>> > Virginia as
>> > Southern Bourbons. The South had some reason to regard the fight as a
>> > continuation of the American Revolution. After all it was her soil
>> which was
>> > being invaded and her independence which was being denied. The South
>> > might even
>> > have the better of the constitutional argument; yet what won out seems to
>> > transcend all the arguments. For it is that extraordinary thing,
>> the American
>> > Union.
>> >
>> > * * *
>> > Jim & Nancy Forest
>> >
>> > Kanisstraat 5 / 1811 GJ Alkmaar / The Netherlands
>> >
>> > Jim's books: www.jimandnancyforest.com/books/
>> >
>> > Jim & Nancy web site: www.jimandnancyforest.com
>> >
>> > Photo albums: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/
>> > Photo collections: www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/collections/
>> > On Pilgrimage blog: http://jimandnancyonpilgrimage.blogspot.com/
>> > A Tale of Two Kidneys blog: http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/
>> > In Communion site: www.incommunion.org
>> > Forest-Flier Editorial Services: http://forestflier.com/
>> >
>> > * * *
>> > --
>> > An archive of all list discussion is available at
>> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/
>> >
>> > Visit The Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy
>> >
>> > 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)
>>
>> --
>> 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)
>
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