WALKER PERCY b. MAY 28TH 1916

A memorable night. The only difficulty was that though the universe had been disposed of, I myself was left over. There I lay in my hotel room with my search over yet still obliged to draw one breath and then the next. But now I have undertaken a different kind of search, a horizontal search. As a consequence, what takes place in my room is less important. What is important is what I shall find when I leave my room and wander in the neighborhood. Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion. - Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

“Death in the form of death genes shall not prevail over me, for death genes are one thing but it is something else to name the death genes and know them and stand over against them and dare them. I am different from my death genes and therefore not subject to them. My father had the same death genes but he feared them and did not name them and thought he could roar out old Route 66 and stay ahead of them or grab me and be pals or play Brahms and keep them, the death genes, happy, so he fell prey to them.”
- Walker Percy, quoted by Phil Rockstroh

Check Heidegger. I would agree with him that we do a lot better treating anxiety (some forms, at least) as a kind of beckoning of the self to a self rather than as a symptom of illness. This is why in writing novels I often find that it works to turn things upside-down and to set forth a character‹say, a woman with severe free-floating anxiety‹as more interesting, more hopeful, possessing greater possibilities than, say, another perfectly adjusted symptom-free woman. To say this is to say a good deal more than that illness is more interesting than health.
-Interview - Walker Percy


a great southern writer. somewhere in salinger's catcher in the rye, holden caulfield talks about writers who while your reading their work make you feel like you want to have a drink w/them. i always felt that w/percy. i always wanted to sit down w/him & some george t. staggs neat & chat about jacques maritain or galatoire's or john crowe ransom & the agrarian movement or women. re-reading the moviegoer this week brought back those feelings. this page has lots to follow up with.