[percy-l] LITR Slow Read
Jim Forest
jhforest at gmail.com
Sat Jun 28 06:37:40 EDT 2014
I'm not able to commit to leading a section but would do my best to
participate.
Let's give this a new subject heading. (Slow reading of Love in the Ruins?)
Jim Forest
On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 9:03 PM, Marshall Smith <mhsmithjrlaw at gmail.com>
wrote:
> I don't feel qualified to lead a discussion, but would enjoy participating.
>
> Marshall Smith
> Lexington, Mississippi
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 1:45 PM, Charles Cowherd <
> charlescowherd at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> All,
>> I would love to participate in the reading of "Love in the Ruins" and
>> to
>> lead a weekly discussion, if necessary.
>> ~ Charles R. Cowherd
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Percy-L [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of
>> percy-l-request at lists.ibiblio.org
>> Sent: Friday, June 27, 2014 1:00 PM
>> To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org
>> Subject: Percy-L Digest, Vol 107, Issue 13
>>
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>> Today's Topics:
>>
>> 1. Re: Walker Percy on the Cil War (RHONDA MCDONNELL)
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 12:42:17 -0500
>> From: RHONDA MCDONNELL <rhonda_mcdonnell at msn.com>
>> To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion"
>> <percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org>
>> Subject: Re: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War
>> Message-ID: <BAY407-EAS300ECDBEE5D9CD0AE52299CE41B0 at phx.gbl>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>> My understanding of a slow read is that we (the list) divide the novel up
>> into sections (using Percy's divisions is natural). Someone volunteers to
>> be a "discussion leader" of sorts for each section. We discuss one
>> section
>> a week (hence the term "slow read"). The discussion leader starts each
>> week
>> off with an initial post reflecting on that section. As long as we remain
>> connected to the text, I think it's fair to say that anything
>> goes--connections to contemporary politics, politics in the 1970s,
>> philosophy, science, Percy's other fiction, Percy's non-fiction, etc.
>>
>> It looks like (based on my kindle edition) that the sections are as
>> follows:
>> 1. July Fourth
>> 2. July First
>> 3. July Second
>> 4. July Third
>> 5. July Fourth (again)
>> 6. Five Years Later
>>
>> So over a period of six weeks, we'd engage in a spirited discussion of
>> Percy's novel without straining those of us busy with other projects,
>> academic or otherwise.
>>
>> I'd happily take the first section and have an initial post up by Monday,
>> June 30.
>>
>> Then if five others would be willing to lead sections, we'd look for
>> initial
>> section posts on Sunday/Monday of each following week: Section 2 on July
>> 6/7; Section 3 on July 13/14; Section 4 on July 20/21; Section 5 on July
>> 27/28; and Section 6 on Aug. 3/4.
>>
>> To me, it seems like a brilliant way to spend July during a time when the
>> center is not holding.
>>
>> Is anyone else game to take on a section?
>>
>> Rhonda
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> > On Jun 27, 2014, at 12:21 PM, "Karl M. Terrell"
>> <kterrell at stokeswagner.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > In Love in the Ruins, Walker Percy described an imagined America in
>> which
>> we ?have turned against each other.? He wrote, ?There are Left states and
>> Knothead states, Left towns and Knothead towns, but no center towns.?
>> >
>> > I agree certainly with the comments that Percy skewered both left and
>> right, and that it was not his intent to make a political statement, per
>> se.
>> I agree with you that, if here today, he would skewer (for example) Mayor
>> Bloomberg?s attempt to regulate the cup sizes of our favorite sugar
>> beverages (and I would laugh right along).
>> >
>> > Percy?s intent, at the political level, was to describe the potential
>> for
>> the disintegration of our ?beloved USA.? This is reflected in his
>> borrowing
>> from Yeats? The Second Coming, when first describing the situation of the
>> LeftPapas and Knotheads: ?The center did not hold,? Percy described. (As
>> Yeats spot-on put it, ?The ceremony of innocence is drowned / The best
>> lack
>> all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity?).
>> >
>> > I know we shouldn?t drag the discussions on this list into a
>> political-bickering fest. But, Percy did create his imaginary America out
>> of the cloth of the country in which he lived, and so some degree of
>> political comment, I think, is fair game. He described, for example, the
>> Knothead Party as derived from the ?old Republican Party,? and which
>> initially called itself the Christian Conservative Constitutional Party
>> (until someone pointed out the acronym ? CCCP ? is the same as that for
>> the
>> USSR in their alphabet). ? And so, Percy pretty accurately foresaw the
>> rise
>> of the Tea Party, and the center failing to hold.
>> >
>> > I perhaps fell victim to my own passions of the present era when
>> describing my personal disagreements with the current-day Knotheads. I
>> did
>> not mean to offend, or drag this list into a political discussion. And I
>> can certainly agree not all Tea Partiers are racist ? but I can?t avoid my
>> ability to observe (being old enough to remember Jim Crow and the
>> attitudes
>> then openly expressed, and knowing that such attitudes don?t just
>> disappear)
>> that there are still plenty of racists out there. Unfortunately, for the
>> Tea Party, it?s hard to deny that a lot of them have aligned themselves in
>> your camp.
>> >
>> > You?re obviously an intelligent and thoughtful person. I accept your
>> denial of racist motives on the part of the Tea Party you know, and I
>> respect the fact you took offense at the suggestion of being lumped with
>> racist cretins. But to deny those cretins are out there is a mistake.
>> >
>> > Someone made the suggestion of doing a ?slow read? of LITR on this list.
>> I don?t know how that works, but it sounds like a good idea to me. I
>> think
>> spirited comment and comparison to present-day political realities would
>> be
>> appropriate, but I agree ?name-calling? should be avoided, and agree again
>> that it was not Percy?s intent to advocate any particular political
>> viewpoint.
>> >
>> > Karl Montague Terrell
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > From: Percy-L [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of
>> > janetcantor37--- via Percy-L
>> > Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2014 11:07 AM
>> > To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion
>> > Subject: Re: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War
>> >
>> > I have taken to answering some things in personal E-mails rather than
>> sullying the Lists with the mere political.
>> >
>> > But, sir, you go too far.
>> >
>> > I am a Tea Party member. I know dozens of other Tea Party members. I
>> have
>> NEVER met or known indirectly one member who, to use President Obama's
>> phrase, has a smidgeon of racism in choosing to be a Tea Party member.
>> > When the president was elected, my liberal friend asked how I felt. I
>> told
>> her, "He is my president. I hope he does good work for the country and may
>> G-d be with him."
>> >
>> > If it makes you feel better or superior to state what you have said
>> here,
>> it is a free country and I would be the last one to try to stop you
>> because
>> as a Tea Party member we are about protecting individual freedom and
>> remembering and honoring the Constitution and thus the Bill of Rights.
>> > Please, everybody, cease and desist from this name calling. I am no
>> liberal in my political persuasion. But I do not impugn the motives of
>> liberals. I like to think liberals want what is best for this country and
>> I
>> would sincerely enjoy it so much better if the left would stop impugning
>> my
>> motives, because, believe me, sir, I have the best motives in the world.
>> > I want a return to Constitutional government, a return to smaller
>> government that does not make up new rights everyday.
>> > I do not believe Walker Percy would be pleased with all of this business
>> of telling us what to eat, how to live, what the government has the right
>> to
>> do to us to keep us in line. And I will best Percy would not describe the
>> knot heads as those who believe in an overweening government. I think that
>> would disturb him no end. Read Father Smith in the Thanatos Syndrome
>> warning
>> us that "All tenderness leads to the gas chambers." I could write reams
>> here.
>> >
>> > But I will just ask, please, stop calling others you disagree with
>> names.
>> It always amazes me that liberals love to consider Tea Party people closed
>> minded and savage. But do they ever listen to themselves? Listen to
>> yourself, for example, Mr. Terrell. I do not insult you or your motives.
>> Please stop insulting mine.
>> > Respectfully,
>> > Janet Cantor
>> >
>> > From: Karl M. Terrell <kterrell at stokeswagner.com>
>> > To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion
>> > <percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org>
>> > Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2014 9:56 AM
>> > Subject: Re: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War
>> >
>> > Well put, I say. I have had Percy?s Knotheads on my mind ever since the
>> emergence of the Tea Party, and the ?birthers,? and all the others
>> viscerally at odds with the image of a black man in the White House. **
>> These folks are careful to avoid (most of the time) obvious racist
>> comments,
>> but racism is clearly driving them.
>> > I am currently re-reading (after 30 or more years) the Strange Career of
>> Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward, and Kenneth Stampp?s revisionist history
>> (written in 1965) of Reconstruction. Woodward teaches that Jim Crow
>> didn?t
>> erect himself until the 1890s, following a period in which ? relatively
>> speaking ? there was a real progress in race relations. Stampp points out
>> that the South?s retrospective loathing of Reconstruction was distorted to
>> an unwarranted extreme by histories written in 1890 ? 1910 sympathetic to
>> the fantasy of the patrician South.
>> > There was, at that time in 1890 - 1910, growing sympathies in the North
>> to
>> the situation of the white man in the South vis a vis the Negro, prompted
>> by
>> (among other factors) xenophobic reactions in the North to immigration
>> from
>> southern and eastern Europe. The sociology, anthropology and psychology
>> popular at that time supported a racist view, as did the law (e.g.,
>> Plessy v
>> Ferguson?s imprimatur of the demonstrably unsound and intellectually
>> bankrupt notion of ?separate but equal?). Racism was its height then.
>> The
>> KKK re-emerged, the movie Birth of a Nation by D. W. Griffith, etc.
>> > These things come in waves. Maybe the waves are weaker each time, but
>> the
>> Tea Party wave is very real. It is full of people who, at its most
>> nakedly
>> obvious, are like that fellow out West, Clive Bunden I think is his name
>> (?Now, let me tell you another thing about the Negro ??). This wave could
>> grow larger ? particularly if the GOP takes the Senate in November. Or
>> maybe they?ll just make bigger asses out of themselves, and it will all
>> blow
>> over. That?s usually what happens. It is, after all, what happened the
>> last time around, mid-century, when the segregationists made their last
>> stand
>> > In any event, we need Walker Percy, and his vision of the Knotheads. I
>> like, therefore, what you said: ? Percy pointed to the power of irony to
>> rescue us from this condition. It highlights hypocrisy and contradiction
>> for us. It gives us a perspective outside of ourself to see ourselves and
>> therein lies the possibility of freedom.?
>> > ** I bet Percy would have loved Randy Newman?s ironic song released
>> > during the 2012 election, I?m Dreaming of a White President (sung to
>> > the tune of White Christmas) Karl Montague Terrell
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > From: Percy-L [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of
>> > Wade Riddick
>> > Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2014 10:18 AM
>> > To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org
>> > Subject: Re: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War
>> >
>> >
>> > The Knots ARE the Tea Party, envisioned 30 - 40 years before they ever
>> came about.
>> > The knotheads - and thus the Tea Party - are not very new. They are, in
>> fact, very old. They represent a strain of Southern self-righteousness
>> that
>> goes back well beyond the outbreak of the Civil War and trace themselves
>> to
>> the imagined courtliness of the planter classes who secretly believed
>> confiscating the private property of black people by making them slaves
>> was
>> really a form of liberty. These were enemies to the Constitution.
>> >
>> > Rand Paul is a perfect example of the anti-liberty libertarian streak
>> > still alive in the neofeudalists among us. He believes,
>> >
>> > 1) Defending the value of the dollar is one of the most important jobs
>> of
>> the federal government. This is why he's mad at the Federal Reserve. He
>> believes they're devaluing money by printing dollars (ignoring for the
>> moment that he's been wrong about imminent inflation for six years now;
>> money behaves differently in a depression, as Keynes proved). The simple
>> fact is money is a good like any other in that its price (the interest
>> rate)
>> can fluctuate due to demand. This is not "devaluation" per se.
>> >
>> > 2) Paul believes it's anti-property rights to force businesses not to
>> discriminate on the basis of race (or sex or religion) when doing business
>> with their customers. He's against the public accommodations provisions
>> of
>> the civil rights era laws. This is a David Duke-esque message of "reverse
>> discrimination" or well-cultivated white Southern Christian victimhood
>> designed to appeal to the militantly overprivileged rightwing Pharisees
>> who
>> now constitute his base. This is why all these guys talk about succession
>> and state's right and nullification and other imaginary concepts that
>> never
>> survived the 13th and 14th Amendments. They're the sons and grandsons of
>> the white citizenship councils and sovereignty commissions that Walker
>> Percy
>> loathed in the '60s and '70s and targeted squarely in _Love in the Ruins_.
>> >
>> > Combine 1 + 2: Paul believes it's a top job of the government to defend
>> the value of the greenback except when the hand holding it is black and
>> then
>> corporation can infinitely devalue it to zero.
>> >
>> > What sense does that make?
>> >
>> > It makes plenty of sense when you realize there's a long tradition in
>> the
>> South dating back to before _Dred Scot_ declaring that black people can't
>> be
>> American citizens and thus they're free targets (Obama's citizenship
>> "controversy" fits into this pattern; they don't think he's a citizen for
>> no
>> other reason than the color of his skin, even if they can no longer say so
>> openly). I think this is why Percy was fascinated with Nazi death camps
>> and
>> the culture of death. American racism in the South fit in a literary
>> sense
>> with religious and class warfare in Europe.
>> >
>> > Rand Paul got his political theory from Ayn Rand who believed
>> Christianity
>> was for rubes and altruism was a form of delusion. She literally
>> worshipped
>> psychopaths for their "will" - i.e., lack of conscience. (Wouldn't that
>> just tickle Goebbels who said, "Intellectual activity is a danger to the
>> building of character?") It's an irony but no mere coincidence that so
>> many
>> white Evangelical Christians now believe the same. They're not Christians
>> as much as they are Southern Nationalists in the stripe of Thomas
>> Jefferson
>> (an historical figure I've come to loath the more I age and read).
>> >
>> > The modern Tea Party pushes for voting restrictions when the original
>> Tea
>> Party stood for no taxation without representation.
>> >
>> > The fact is the modern Tea Party hates liberty. Liberty isn't just
>> > the freedom to do something like speak your mind - it's also the
>> > obligation to use that freedom responsibly on behalf of a better
>> > society. Liberty, to paraphrase the founding fathers, is the
>> > responsible exercise of self-government. Tea Party anger is nothing
>> > but incoherent id, barbarian-yawping like Jim Bond. (Oh, God. Stop
>> > me from having another Faulkner episode.) A true conservative
>> > stresses social responsibility. A true conservative doesn't lie about
>> > science. These people aren't conservatives. They're radicals
>> > hell-bent on overturning campaign finance laws so they can turn
>> > America into a newly reborn plantation economy where we're all
>> > corporate serfs. Since the Civil War the South has had one central,
>> > consistent response to economic development which is to drive down the
>> > cost of labor - (infinitely to zero, in the case of slavery). This is
>> > the "moonlight and magnolias" economic strategy that fo
>> cuses on tax credits/giveaways to rich businessmen because apparently
>> they
>> are lazy and have to be paid to make money and create jobs whereas workers
>> have to be punished because they work for a living and thus are, well, in
>> need of punishment. (Refusing to accept matching Medicaid funds is a
>> great
>> example of believing it builds character to ration medical care to the
>> sick.)
>> >
>> > Percy pointed to the power of irony to rescue us from this condition.
>> It
>> highlights hypocrisy and contradiction for us[1]. It gives us a
>> perspective
>> outside of ourself to see ourselves and therein lies the possibility of
>> freedom. Listen to John Kyl on the floor of the Senate saying with a
>> straight face, "This may not be a factually true statement," and tell me
>> the
>> Republicans aren't so lost they no longer have even irony?
>> >
>> > Being lost is the human condition. It's when you think you've found
>> yourself all on your own that you are truly in the dark. Anyone who's
>> ever
>> understood grace knows that.
>> >
>> > Wade Riddick
>> >
>> > 1. Without this tension, "meaning" itself would be impossible; things
>> have to be different or "contradict" to fall into he same category and
>> define a term. You must have different colors like red and blue to have a
>> concept of "color." Percy was probably thinking of all of these
>> linguistic
>> currents and eddies as he was manipulating old Southern contradictions and
>> ironies for his novels.
>> >
>> > * Percy-L Discussion Archives:
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>> >
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>> >
>> > * Visit The Walker Percy Project: http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy
>> >
>> >
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--
*Jim & Nancy Forest*
Kanisstraat 5 / 1811 GJ Alkmaar / The Netherlands
Jim's books: www.jimandnancyforest.com/books/
Jim & Nancy web site: www.jimandnancyforest.com
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