is here. Percy was a Catholic and Southern writer, and with books ranging from The Moviegoer (his first and winner of the National Book Award) to Lost in the Cosmos ("The Last Self Help book") he wrote about the separation of consciousness and self consciousness, about Humankind's ability to name others yet inability to name oneself. In Love in the Ruins (1971) he wrote about a world much like the one we find ourselves in today.
Generally Percy's only "solution" is unearned grace, the rough grace of the sinner, not the taught, imposed grace of the Pharisee.
Every so often it's good to return to that thought.
Percy had a distinct gift for representing the speech of the sententious. Flann O'Brien did so also, but not everyone does, even among good novelists. Proust can't give you the pomposity of a Norpois without making you feel the weight of the boredom.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, he didn't seem to know what he sounded like. The progress from The Moviegoer through The Last Gentleman to The Second Coming seems to me steadily downhill, with him sounding ver more like Walker Percy.
George I have noticed similarities among his books and characters, but they became more interesting and sophisticated in his later books I thought. And I've always adored Percy's description of his (slightly unstable) characters' thoughts, from the beams of The Moviegoer shooting out at the other characters to the young woman's listening to Schubert (?) and the movement of the trout within the piece. Maybe it's my own instability ...
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