Walker Percy's Non-fiction Works - Book Descriptions
A Compilation of Book Descriptions of Walker Percy's Non-fiction Works
Directory
Select a book title from the following list to review a description of each of Walker Percy's non-fiction books as found below on this page. Links to the table of contents for each book are included. These listings supplement the Project's Walker Percy semiotics section and may be printed for reference purposes.Non-fiction Books, Essay Collections, and Correspondence
- The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other (Essay collection, 1975)
- Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (Non-Fiction book, 1983)
- Signposts in a Strange Land (Essay collection, 1991)
- A Thief of Peirce: The Letters of Kenneth Laine Ketner and Walker Percy (Correspondence collection, 1995)
- Symbol and Existence: A Study in Meaning: Explorations of Human Nature (Non-fiction book, 2019)
Interview Collections
Related Book
- The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy (Correspondence collection, 1996)
Non-Fiction Books, Essay Collections, and Correspondence
(Chronological)-
1. The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other by Walker Percy (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1975) (Essay collection)
View Table of ContentsBefore winning the National Book Award for fiction in 1962, Walker Percy was an established scholar of science, philosophy, and language. Presented here are his strongest essays in those subjects, offering what he called a "theory of man for a new age."
Ambitious yet readable, The Message in the Bottle encapsulates the philosophical foundations of his groundbreaking novels, perfect for Percy fans and new readers alike. From discussions on the dislocation of man in the twentieth century to theories on why humans talk while other animals do not, this is an enlightening collection from one of the South's most celebrated writers.
"Percy has an intellectual range and rigor few American novelists can match." — New York Times Book Review
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2. Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book by Walker Percy (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1983) (Non-fiction book)
View Table of ContentsWalker Percy's mordantly funny and wholly original contribution to the self-help book craze deals with the Western mind's tendency toward heavy abstraction. This favorite of Percy fans continues to charm and beguile readers of all tastes and backgrounds. Lost in the Cosmos invites us to think about how we communicate with our world.
"A mock self-help book designed not to help but to provoke; a chapbook to inveigle us into thinking about who we are and how we got into this mess." — Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review
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3. Signposts in a Strange Land, Patrick H. Samway, S.J., Editor (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1991) (Essay collection) [posthumous] [selected essays treat semiotics]
View Table of ContentsAt his death in 1990, Walker Percy left a considerable legacy of uncollected nonfiction. Assembled in Signposts in a Strange Land, these essays on language, literature, philosophy, religion, psychiatry, morality, and life and letters in the South display the imaginative versatility of an author considered by many to be one the greatest modern American writers.
"These moving pieces of nonfiction, some quite brief and terse, others more relaxed and spacious, offer 'signposts' that will help us understand not only the 'strange land' that is late-20th-century America, but the extraordinary mind of an especially alert and knowing observer."
— Robert Coles, Boston Sunday Glob
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4. A Thief of Peirce: The Letters of Kenneth Laine Ketner and Walker Percy, Patrick H. Samway, S.J., Editor (Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1995) (Correspondence) [posthumous]
View Table of ContentsThroughout his literary career Walker Percy read and studied the philosophical thought of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) in an attempt to re-present in language the world as Percy knew it. Beginning in 1984 and ending in 1990 (the year of his death), Percy corresponded with Peirce scholar Kenneth Laine Ketner of Texas Tech University about the semiotics of Peirce. Their letters — honest, instructive, and often filled with down-home humor — record an epistolary friendship of two men both passionately interested in Peirce's theory of signs. This volume of letters provides a rich philosophical perspective for better understanding the fiction and nonfiction of Walker Percy.
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5. Symbol and Existence: A Study in Meaning: Explorations of Human Nature by Walker Percy (Non-fiction book)
(PDF includes Foreword, Preface, Table of Contents)
Co-editors: Kenneth Laine Ketner, Karey Lea Perkins, Rhonda Reneé McDonnell, Scott Ross Cunningham, (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2019) [posthumous]View Table of Contents (Download PDF)Symbol and Existence will prove fascinating to Walker Percy scholars and fans who wish to decipher Percy's authentic philosophical stance. Percy, an existentialist Catholic at his core, was also a scientist seeking an objective paradigm to portray his views. Symbol and Existence demonstrates that Percy was quite methodical and logical in his thought and provides an entirely new perspective on his scholarship. Much of this book is unique and has never been published before; however, some sections were revised and published as isolated journal articles or book chapters, never presented as the unified whole that Percy intended. The orderly unity of Percy's work has not previously been accessible to scholars and fans.
Symbol and Existence's systematic presentation and its new material offer fresh insight and a more accurate view of Percy's ideas. His early philosophical writings were often revised and significantly modified by outside editorial intent to conform to prevailing intellectual currents of the time. Readers of some published articles with corresponding passages in Symbol and Existence will be surprised to discover major changes in meaning from Percy's initial writing due to editorial intrusion and loss of context upon their removal from Symbol and Existence.
As the only known systematic representation of Percy's general working theory, Symbol and Existence gives an important framework for his diverse intellectual background—philosophy and psychology, medicine and anthropology, semiotic and zoology—creating a coherent view of Percy's "radical anthropology."
Interview Collections
(Chronological)-
6. Conversations with Walker Percy, Victor A. Kramer, Lewis Lawson, Editors (Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1985)
View Table of ContentsThese collected interviews, like a visit with Percy at his home on the Bogue Falaya River, provide refreshing close-up encounters with one of America's most celebrated writers. These twenty-seven interviews cover a period of twenty-two years, from the time of the publication of Percy's first novel, The Moviegoer, in 1961, until 1983, when he was interviewed about his friendship with Thomas Merton. These unabridged interviews, collected from a variety of sources, will give reading pleasure to general readers who wish to know Percy and his works more closely, and they will be of great use to Percy scholars.
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7. More Conversations with Walker Percy, Victor A. Kramer, Lewis Lawson, Editors (Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1993) (Correspondence) [posthumous]
View Table of ContentsThis collection of interviews supplements Conversations with Walker Percy and occasions an additional two dozen pleasurable encounters with Percy. Primarily from the last ten years of Percy's life, they show how his presence was stimulating thought in much of humanistic America, in literature, linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, and in cultural life in general. Although this acclaimed author of The Moviegoer, Lancelot, and Love in the Ruins never overcame his shyness with interviewers, he continued to grant interviews as long as his health permitted. This act of openness illustrates his humility before his ideas and his desire to help others understand them. Although the questions he was asked almost invariably became predictable, he always managed to add an anecdote, an illustration, a topical reference, that would breathe new life into the responses he was making.
The interviews in this collection show him at the height when he knew that his illness would not allow him to write any more books, and that the only way to restate his ideas and offer a valediction to the large audience to whom he had always been kind, patient, and appreciative was to speak out. Percy despised the posture of many modern self-proclaimed intellectuals who delight in cloaking ideas in jargon and abstraction. He always tried to express himself clearly and as free of reservations as possible. These interviews reflect that clarity. With this book readers will welcome yet more close encounters with him.
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8. The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy, Jay Tolson, Editor (New York: Norton/DoubleTake, 1996) (Correspondence) [posthumous]
View Table of ContentsIn the late 1940s, Walker Percy and Shelby Foote, friends since their teenage years in Greenville, Mississippi, began a correspondence that would last until Percy's death in 1990. Walker Percy, the highly regarded author of The Moviegoer, wrote six novels, two volumes of philosophical writings, and numerous essays. Shelby Foote met with early success as a novelist, but his reputation today rests more upon his massive three-volume narrative history of the Civil War, and his role as commentator in Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War. The correspondence between Percy and Foote traces their lives from the beginning of their respective careers, when they were grappling fiercely and openly with their ambitions, artistic doubts, and personal problems. Although they discuss such serious matters as the death of Foote's mother and Percy's battle with cancer, their letters are full of sly humor and good-natured ribbing. Jay Tolson has selected, edited, and annotated the letters of these two remarkable writers to shed light on their relationship and their literary careers. Includes an eight-page insert with photographs of the writers chronicling their friendship.
*Editor's Note: Various book descriptions have been slightly edited for relevance, additional detail, and clarity.