[percy-l] Percy & Hesse (posted for Rhonda McDonnell)

Henry P. Mills III wppdirector at gmail.com
Wed Aug 3 13:58:56 EDT 2022


Chuck,
I confess to also being a bit of a “lazy" scholar, but one who knows my way
around search engines. I checked the Percy collection at UNC-Chapel Hill
and found the below reference to Hesse in Percy’s papers.

Hope this offers a satisfactory answer to the question of Hesse and Percy.
Thanks for bringing Hesse to our attention again, Jonathan, in sending the
LIR quotes (and Doug and Lauren for their Hesse discussion)!

Best,
Rhonda McDonnell




On Jul 22, 2022, at 10:00 PM, Jonathan Potter <jopomojo at gmail.com> wrote:

>*From the ebook version of Love in the a Ruins:*

*	[images]*

>https://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/2022-July/002550.html


On Sun, Mar 20, 2022 at 2:51 PM Doug Brown <wply1223 at gmail.com> wrote:

Michael,
>

> First, if you were a teenager in the 70s, then you and I are roughly the
> same age. I work in technology, so I often find myself surrounded by young
> people. I tell them that I am both a time-traveler and immortal. A
> time-traveler because I used to live in the 60s and 70s, and now I'm here.
> Immortal because ... well ... all the evidence so far indicates so.
>

> Charles Lowry's answer to your question is more thorough, but I'll add a
> vague statement that I know Percy refers to Herman Hesse a couple of times
> in Love in the Ruins. Unfortunately, I think both references I'm recalling
> are not especially flattering to Hesse. I think the character Tom More (not
> necessarily speaking for Percy) thinks of readers of Hesse (but not
> necessarily Hesse himself) as being a bit too high-minded. Tom More makes
> these kinds of observations once in conversation with his former wife and
> once in reference to one half of the attendees at a "Pit" scene where
> various psychiatrists present ideas in a somewhat competitive manner. But
> it's worth pointing out that the character Tom More is notoriously
> unreliable - and a bit grumpy.
>

> Not much help, but there you go.
>

> Doug Brown
>
Walker Percy Loves You and Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life
> <https://www.amazon.com/Walker-Percy-Loves-Wonderful-Plan/dp/B096LS1B7M>
>

>
> On Sun, Mar 20, 2022 at 3:09 PM Lauren Berdy <lauren.stacy.berdy at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
To a cultured mind no scenery is
>>
> Ordinary.
>>
> And
>>
> Such a mind will prefer solitude in
>>
> An unassuming landscape.
>>
> DP lived on the bogue Fayala ( sp)
>>
> A porous and certain primeval
>>
> Relaxin and releasing
>>
> Also
>>
> He wasn’t scared to meet the
>>
> Crowd and suck crayfishes either
>>
> But
>>
> He wasn’t dipping into orientalists
>>
> He made fun of them with aunt
>>
> Emily’s Bagvagita. Too bad
>>
> Tom Merton and he never
>>
> Dialogued.
>>
> Doubt is too
>>
> catching.
>>
>
Thank you,
>>
> Lauren
>>
>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>
>> On Mar 20, 2022, at 2:34 PM, lowry.charles at gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>> I am no scholar, heaven knows, but in my laziness I have developed a
>> million labor-saving workarounds.  Although it is only a partial and not a
>> definitive answer to your question, I can report that Hermann Hesse does
>> not appear in the indices of the following books I have on my Percy shelf:
>>
>>
>> —Jay Tolson’s and Father Samway’s biographies of Percy
>>
>> —John F. Desmond’s Walker Percy’s Search for Community
>>
>> —Robert Coles’ Walker Percy, An American Search
>>
>> —Jessica Hooten Wilson’s Reading Walker Percy’s Novels and Walker Percy,
>> Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the Search for Influence
>>
>> —Lewis A. Lawson’s Following Percy
>>
>> —Kieran Quinlan’s Walker Percy, The Last Catholic Novelist
>>
>> —Lawson and Kramer, editors, Conversations With Walker Percy
>>
>>
>> Further affiant sayeth naught.
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>>
>> On Mar 20, 2022, at 12:53 PM, Michael Martin Serafin <
>> michael_serafin at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> 
>>
>> When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I was a serious reader of Hermann
>> Hesse, the great German author. I learned about Hesse from an encouraging
>> essay by Kurt Vonnegut, also a favorite of mine at the time. Did Percy read
>> Hesse?
>>
>>
>> Michael Martin Serafin
>>
>> Chicopee, MA.
>>
>>
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