[percy-l] LITR Slow Read - Chapter 1 - "July Fourth"
Jim Forest
jhforest at gmail.com
Mon Jun 30 11:30:06 EDT 2014
A brief quote from Walker Percy that sheds a little light about what is is
up to in LITR (and in his fiction as a whole):
"The novelist writes about the coming end in order to warn about present
ills and so avert the end.... [but he] is less like a prophet than he is
like the canary that coal miners used to take down into the shaft to test
the air. When the canary gets unhappy, utters plaintive cries, and
collapses, it may be time for the miners to surface and think things
over..." -- from "Notes for a Novel About the End of the World"
Jim
On Sun, Jun 29, 2014 at 11:40 PM, RHONDA MCDONNELL <rhonda_mcdonnell at msn.com
> wrote:
> I’d like to start be referring to Lauren’s most recent post. In it she
> makes a great point: Percy is calling for “ALL OF US to look our own
> selves.” In the same post, though, she also seems to urge us to not
> examine his work communally. That, however, is contrary to Percy’s
> anthropology. The intersubjectivity of the communal experience is what he
> was after. So if we read the novel together, no matter how far apart we may
> be geographically, and discuss what in it speaks to us, what we each think
> he’s getting at, we can have that affirming moment, where we say, “Yes,
> yes, that is how it is with me, too!” That co-celebration was Percy’s
> main goal.
>
>
> In his essay, “Notes for a Novel about the End of the World,” Percy
> explains the novelists role: “The wounded man has a better view of the
> battle than those still shooting. The novelist is less like a prophet than
> he is like the canary that coal miners used to take down into the shaft to
> test the air. When the canary gets unhappy, utters plaintive cries, and
> collapses, it may be time for the miners to surface and think things over.”
>
>
> So I turn my thoughts to the opening chapter, partly in light of our
> previous discussions:
>
>
> The novel opens with Tom More above the battle, so to speak, and watching
> and waiting, like many of Percy’s protagonists. Tom More is a
> beautifully flawed narrator, and I can’t help but see him in the mold of
> St. Augustine who prayed, “Lord, grant me chastity and continence, but not
> yet.” Tom admits, “My life is a longing, longings for women, for the
> Nobel Prize, for the hot bosky bite of bourbon whiskey, and other great
> heart-wrenching longings that have no name.” In fact, he dwells quite a bit
> on longing in this novel (and his others). What is this longing all
> about? Is it the sensual longings he identifies or is more hiding behind
> it so that women, bourbon, the Nobel Prize can’t fill it?
>
>
> Tom is unique in his society, being neither Left nor Knothead. Instead, he
> is the odd man out—the true believer who is also a scientist. He may not
> be a “good” Catholic, yet, as he asserts, he believes. And his belief is
> not the watered down belief of Catholicism steeped in scientific humanism.
> No, he makes the point that he believes the mystery and miracle of it. Tom
> remembers, “The best of times were after mass on summer evenings when
> Samantha and I would walk home in the violet dusk, we having received
> Communion and I rejoicing afterwards, caring nought for my fellow Catholics
> but only for myself and Samantha and Christ swallowed, remembering what he
> promised me for eating him, that I would have life in me . . .” At his
> present time, though, Tom is no longer taking Communion, which leads to the
> question: Despite his avowed belief, is Christ in him? Certainly, God
> doesn’t rank particularly high on his priority list, coming after women,
> music, science, and whiskey.
>
>
> On the list, a lot of discussion has been focused on Knotheads vis-a-vis
> the Tea Party. But in this novel, it’s pretty clear that Tom More
> doesn’t belong to the liberals any more than he belongs to the
> conservatives. I imagine that overall, the list leans liberal, so the
> tendency is to focus on the criticisms of the Knotheads. But the
> liberals don’t fare any better in this novel, not from an objective (above
> the fighting) perspective. The liberal entertainment—Homo Hijinks—is a
> pretty good prediction of the direction of contemporary entertainment
> (e.g., Shades of Gray and the rest of the mommy porn). And, in truth,
> everyone in the novel is racist. The liberals’ racism might be more subtle,
> but it is still present. Is it better in its subtlety?
>
>
> Most folks who have been commenting lately, whether liberal or
> conservative, want to claim Percy as being in their camp (if he were still
> with us). I’m not so sure, in either case. If Percy was anything like
> his character, Tom, he was somewhere in the middle, liberal on some issues
> and conservative on others. Perhaps he was more concerned with the
> individual. If the sundered selves of modern people could be mended, the
> rest of it might sort itself out.
>
> I’ll come to a close, though much more remains to be discussed—what about
> all of the dropouts in the swamp? What about Tom being the only doctor that
> will treat the dropouts? What about the vines? What about Charley Parker
> watching the news?
>
> --Rhonda
>
> "You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of
> great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea
> of who he is or what he is doing."
>
> Walker Percy
>
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--
*Jim & Nancy Forest*
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