[percy-l] Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, Seen Again by Paul Elie (Podcast)

honeyjbc1 . honeyjbc at gmail.com
Fri Jan 10 13:47:46 EST 2020


So funny. I said Charles Percy and of course I meant Charles Lowry.
Ha ha.
Janet Cantor

On Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 1:46 PM honeyjbc1 . <honeyjbc at gmail.com> wrote:

> Charles Percy,
> You need no longer apologize that you are not a poet or a scholar.
> I always love your comments. They derive from lots of information and
> experience. Your observations are clear, direct and helpful to all readers
> of Percy.
> So from now on you can dispense with the apologies about your limitations.
> You have none sir.
> Janet Cantor
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 1:35 PM Charles Lowry <lowry.charles at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I both envy and admire the earlier contributions to this thread, since I
>> have no talent for the lyrical and no capacity for the scholarly, but I
>> offer a tidbit.  I think Jay Tolson, from his masterful biography of Percy,
>> might have a contribution to make here.  He offers an interesting slant on
>> Paul Elie's perspective: "Artist though he was, Percy became and remained a
>> moralist who saw the end of art not in formal perfection but in the
>> adequacy of its gesturing toward the truth that would make him free."
>> Tolson offers us an important piece of context on truth and freedom by
>> reminding us of Pascal's observation that the source of all human misery is
>> the inability to sit alone and content in one's own room.  Binx embraces
>> what he knows will be this misery, because he has figured out that this is
>> also the only path that leads to even the possibility of joy and
>> authenticity.
>>
>>      "What do you plan to do?"
>>
>>      I shrug. There is only one thing I can do: listen to people, see how
>> they stick themselves
>>      into the world, hand them along a ways in their dark journey and be
>> handed along, and for
>>      good and selfish reasons......
>>
>> Along the way, though, he has picked up a thing or two, as eloquently
>> summarized by an anonymous Knopf copywriter: "Binx's rediscovery of the
>> strengths of his tradition coincides with his new-found capacity to
>> encounter and love Kate as a person in her own right."  Contrary to
>> Pascal's advice, Binx has left his room, has transformed himself from
>> observer to actor, has stuck himself into the world.  It is not always
>> easy, and the results are unpredictable, but for Binx it is a very
>> humanizing process.  As an example, simply compare the tenor of Binx's
>> early conversations with Aunt Emily to his conversation with her after his
>> return from Chicago.  It is as straightforward as the transition from
>> certitude to struggle.  Percy does a masterful job in taking us along to
>> observe Binx's journey.  And that is why I love The Moviegoer.
>>
>> Chuck Lowry
>> Brooklyn, New York
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 12:50 PM Lauren Berdy <
>> lauren.stacy.berdy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I always believed that Dr Percy
>>> Turned towards Catholicism
>>> (Dostoevsky too, never straddled )
>>> Because
>>> Christ discovered
>>>
>>> Love
>>>
>>> What humans have done with this
>>> Discovery is
>>> Dr Percy’s landscape.
>>>
>>> Everything else is
>>> Material thought . Mostly Our illusions.
>>>
>>> Which isn’t
>>> Faith.
>>>
>>> Existentialists never have vibrated
>>> As close as Dr P towards
>>> The ground of
>>> I/thou
>>> It’s the only ground
>>> And still
>>> The biggest mystery
>>> It’s not an intellectual discussion it’s
>>> The only thing that exists.
>>>
>>> Take gd care in this Very messy world
>>> Lauren
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>
>>> On Jan 10, 2020, at 11:52 AM, Thomas Gollier <tgollier at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> 
>>> Lauren,
>>>
>>> I liked your message in response the Paul Elie's lecture. Binx does find
>>> love, an I-Thou relationship, but what I
>>> liked about 'The Moviegoer' was where he found it. Paul Elie says:
>>>
>>>    His sense of what a writer does — and this owed in part to his
>>> philosophy and in part to a southern upbringing
>>>    — was that communication is intersubjective. You don't write for
>>> yourself, you write to reach another
>>>    person, and it takes two to make a truth and then you dick over that
>>> truth, and you figure something else out.
>>>    So his philosophical essays were diminished by the lack of an
>>> audience.
>>>
>>> Binx finds love, as Walker Percy finds truth, in 'everydayness'. The
>>> search for Binx leads to and back from the
>>> movies and Aunt Emily's cultural mores, like for Percy it leads him to
>>> and back from semiotic and existential
>>> philosophy, to where it began. I like to think Percy didn't sweat "the
>>> lack of an audience" for either his
>>> philosophical essays or his literary novels. He was speaking to neither
>>> philosophers nor critics but to individuals
>>> living in their 'everydayness'. And to what can be found there. It's not
>>> surprising he had to be back-doored into
>>> the National Book Award and literature, and too bad that hasn't quite
>>> happened with philosophy.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Tom
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 6:49 AM Lauren Berdy <
>>> lauren.stacy.berdy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I listened carefully.
>>>>
>>>> It was the crucial act of Dr Percy
>>>> At least for these eyes to show
>>>> us the desolate decline of love
>>>> In the world.
>>>> And
>>>> Showing us the daring adventure of
>>>> Human relations
>>>> The quicksand of our mental
>>>> Possessiveness
>>>> And that self possession can be
>>>> Restored
>>>> Even the Moviegoer filled withdeep life illusions Ends with an
>>>> I and a thou
>>>> We are that I and thou
>>>> That’s the mystery
>>>> It’s nuff for this one reader
>>>>
>>>> Reread
>>>> “Allie and Will“ dialogues
>>>> Poems of illumination
>>>> Out of the dark cave into the illumined light of love.
>>>>
>>>> “ deep might call unto deep”
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>>
>>>> On Jan 8, 2020, at 12:05 AM, Henry P. Mills <wppdirector at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Dear Percy-L:
>>>>
>>>> Perhaps this recent, close revisit to *The Moviegoer* by Mr. Elie
>>>> could be a good start to 2020. As always, comments to the community
>>>> are welcome. Enjoy!
>>>>
>>>> Henry Mills
>>>> Percy-L Administrator
>>>>
>>>> _________________________________________________
>>>>
>>>> *Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, Seen Again by Paul Elie*
>>>>
>>>> This lecture by Prof. Paul Elie (Georgetown) was given as part of "The
>>>> Moral Imagination of the Novel", a conference held at Columbia University
>>>> on 4-5 October 2019.
>>>>
>>>> The conference was co-hosted by the Morningside Institute, Columbia
>>>> University's Department of Philosophy, and the Thomistic Institute.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> https://www.morningsideinstitute.org/podcast/2019/10/30/walker-percys-the-moviegoer-seen-again-paul-elie
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
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>>>
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>>
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>
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