Tell me a bit about Walker Percy's fiction/non-fiction

See also the well-written and informative biography Pilgrim In The Ruins. As can be guessed from his work, suicide ran in the family, but you might not know that it was on both sides. You will also understand his relationship with two very different Southern States, Louisiana and Mississippi.

More random factoids from the bio:
He had the same psychoanalyst as Alfred Kazin, Janet Mackenzie Rioch.
The German translator of The Moviegoer was Peter Handke.

In addition to 'The Moviegoer' I think 'Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book' is really good and funny.

I started it, and will finish it one day.

OK, probably gonna hit Strand today to find this biography. If they don't have that, Love in the Ruins, LitCosmos, or anything else that catches my fancy.

Thx for the recs.

I just finished The Moviegoer and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It's certainly good, I'm just not sure how good. It definitely gives the reader a glimpse into another world, it's just that it's a rather small, restricted glimpse. I kept feeling like I was waiting for the preliminaries to be over and the 'real' action of the book to kick in, almost to the very end. I still feel as if I don't know who Binx Bolling (or anyone, really, save, Aunt Emily) is...this might be one that takes two reads to really see the book's true merits.

"As John Cheever said, the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment.

Work is disappointing. In spite of all the talk about making work more creative and self-fulfilling, most people hate their jobs, and with good reason. Most work in modern technological societies is intolerably dull and repetitive.

Marriage and family life are disappointing. Even among defenders of traditional family values, e.g., Christians and Jews, a certain dreariness must be inferred, if only from the average time of TV viewing. Dreary as TV is, it is evidently not as dreary as Mom talking to Dad or the kids talking to either.

School is disappointing. If science is exciting and art is exhilarating, the schools and universities have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of rendering both dull. As every scientist and poet knows, one discovers both vocations in spite of, not because of, school. It takes years to recover from the stupor of being taught Shakespeare in English Lit and Wheatstone's bridge in Physics.

Politics is disappointing. Most young people turn their backs on politics, not because of the lack of excitement of politics as it is practiced, but because of the shallowness, venality, and image-making as these are perceived through the media--one of the technology's greatest achievements.

The churches are disappointing, even for most believers. If Christ brings us new life, it is all the more remarkable that the church, the bearer of this good news, should be among the most dispirited institutions of the age. The alternatives to the institutional churches are even more grossly disappointing, from TV evangelists with their blown-dry hairdos to California cults led by prosperous gurus ignored in India but embraced in La Jolla.

Social life is disappointing. The very franticness of attempts to reestablish community and festival, by partying, by groups, by club, by touristy Mardi Gras, is the best evidence of the loss of true community and festival and of the loneliness of self, stranded as it is as an unspeakable consciousness in a world from which it perceives itself as somehow estranged, stranded even within its own body, with which it sees no clear connection.

But there remains the one unquestioned benefit of science: the longer and healthier life made possible by modern medicine, the shorter work-hours made possible by technology, hence what is perceived as the one certain reward of dreary life of home and the marketplace: recreation.

Recreation and good physical health appear to be the only ambivalent benefits of the technological revolution."

http://readingroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/binx-bollings-voice/

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/travel/literary-new-york.html

GOING TO Correction: May 14, 2006, Sunday "Going to Literary New York," an article on Page 12 of the Travel section today, refers erroneously to Central Park. No part of the park has ever been known as the Great Meadow; the term was used by Walker Percy in his novel "The Last Gentleman." (The park does include the Sheep Meadow and the Great Lawn.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC27yRuE6yo

The Last Gentleman -- yes?

Yes

I can’t believe I never posted to this thread. Love this dude.

Seem to recall you posting to another thread about him.

Also, looks like Alfred took a decade to get around to reading this one: Winter Is Here and the Time Is Right For A "Whatchoo Reading?" Thread

I'm closer -- I'm in the library, the original hardcover edition beside me.

Why don’t you just flip a coin? Heads you read it now, tails you wait another decade.

What happened? Really would love to hear your opinion of that book, a personal favorite. Seems like you have some resistance to reading it for some reason.

I lost interest in him after struggling thru Love After the Ruins.

I did check The Last Gentleman out btw

IN the Ruins obv

So, as to why I put “Mexican Divorce” at number one:

Ha, trying to post to two threads at once in Zing doesn't work too well.

Came to say that one is bad, written when he was a cranky older dude. The Last Gentleman is of a piece with The Moviegoer. Some people seem to have a strong preference for one over the other, but both of them much better than his later novels.

A lot of significant action does take place in New Mexico, however, and two of the most important characters are divorced.

In college, I met this girl who was stuck in a paper on Percy: when she finished it, she could graduate, so... Meanwhile, I went home for the summer, read The Moviegoer, slipped into the cadence x density, loved it, but somehow one was enough. Although he also figures on my Essential Southern Reading List via Confederacy of Dunces, which he was more or less forced to discover when the suicided author's mother badgered him into looking at the manuscript. Initial reaction was something like, "I read on, with the sinking feeling that it was too good to dismiss."

The beginning of your post is itself like something out of a Walker Percy novel.

I made the grisly mistake yesterday afternoon of reading Percy's 1980 column on abortion.

I checked out The Last Gentleman anyway.