Walker Percy's Audience

L. Lamar Nisly, "Walker Percy: The Writer as Diagnostic Canary to Pilgrim Wayfarers" in Wingless Chickens, Bayou Catholics, and Pilgrim Wayfarers: Constructions of Audience and Tone in O'Connor, Gautreaux, and Percy. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2011.


Nisly thinks that Percy and O'connor looked at their audience differently. O'connor saw her audience as more hostile. Nisly asserts, "Though Percy set out to confront his readers, he envisioned a greater affinity between himself and his audience than did O'Connor--even though he did not see them as congenial as Gautreaux's companions" (154). Walker Percy seems to see his readers as fellow-wayfarers. Percy was not separated from the secular world or the world of unbelievers. For example, he had a life-long close relationship with Shelby Foote, an agnostic. Brinkmeyer thinks that Percy thought he had two kind of readers, "an alienated reader who knows he is alienated and an alienated reader who imagines he is not" (Brinkmeyer "Percy's Bludgeon" 82). Nisly thinks that Percy saw his reader as something like himself before he became a believer. A person that lacked meaning and was looking for a way to find meaning in his life. Percy thought his book, The Moviegoer, was misunderstood: The Moviegoer was "almost universally misunderstood" : "My warmest admirers usually totally misunderstood the book. They usually read it as a novel of despair, rather than a novel about despair but with hope, which was my intention" (Samway, Life, 224). Percy saw his himself "as writing for people on a journey, readers who needed to be pointed in the right direction so that they do not despair" (155). This journey is made up "of fellow-wayfarers" or pilgrims on the journey of life. Percy would include himself in this fellowship. Even after conversion, Percy continued to see himself as a wayfarer and he believed the nature of man is that of a wayfarer.

Percy wrote about his search and its connection to his authorship: "My theory of literature and art is that the best transaction that can take place is when the reader or viewer is told something he doesn't know he knows. The good thing that happens is that the reader has the shock of recognition. He says, 'Oh yeah, that;s the way it is.' It's a curious combination. My medical career has something to do with it. [...] It was a diagnostic search I made, to find out what had gone wrong, and I found unconsciously I transferred that mindset to writing novels and other kinds of writing where there is something wrong in the world, something wrong with society, something wrong with the times. [...] What makes [writing] really exciting is that I'm exploring in the novel for myself as well as the reader" (MCWP 42).

Nisly sees certain changes in Percy's intentions in his career as a novelist. The early novels are more interested in "connecting with his reader and hinting at the way to avoid despair;" the later novels are more explicit in its presenting the Christian faith as the answer to the alienation of man (155). Nisly thinks, however, Percy consistently sees an audience "who is lost, a shipwrecked castaway who needs to receive a message in a bottle" (155). The message in the bottle was a metaphor for the good news of the Gospel. Nisly argues that Percy because of his marginal stance in Covington and the Catholic Church, his critique and acceptance of the Second Vatican Council, was uniquely situated to speak to his alienated audience. Percy was on the margins of these different communities, part of them, and at a distance from them which allowed him to see both the postive and negative elements of these communities. Nisly writes, "Like his wayfaring audience, Percy knew how it felt to be lost. Yet in both his adopted hometown and his newly embraced faith, Percy found himself living on the edge, feeling at home, yet not fully subsumed. From this liminal position, Percy found it congenial to address his readers in their own pilgrim status, searching for, hoping for some solid spot on which to stand" (156).

Walker Percy: Biography Part II

L. Lamar Nisly, "Walker Percy: The Writer as Diagnostic Canary to Pilgrim Wayfarers" in Wingless Chickens, Bayou Catholics, and Pilgrim Wayfarers: Constructions of Audience and Tone in O'Connor, Gautreaux, and Percy. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2011.

Nisley asserts, "Percy's conversion offered him a place of certainty, a stable world view" (145). Percy married Bunt Townsend. Soon after they received instruction from a priest to join the Catholic church. Percy and his wife decided to live in Covington, Louisiana. Nisly thinks this choice had an impact for Percy's life and writing. When they moved to Covington in 1948, it was a community of 6,000. This part of Louisiana was known as the Florida Parishes. This part of Louisiana had a independent streak. Percy would describe Covington as a "pleasant nonplace" (146). Covington, Louisiana is part of the deep south. Like O'Connor, Percy would be surrounded by Fundamentalist Protestants. He lived what was called the Bible belt.

Covington, Louisiana is about thirty minutes from New Orleans. Nisly states, "What made covington attractive for Percy was that it allowed him the anonymity while also providing him easy access to New Orleans, with its intense sense of place and history" (146). In addition, Percy thought he would get more writing done in Covington. He wanted a place where he was not know to the community. Covington was an excellent place "given Percy's own stance as a satiric writer" (147). Tolson believed that Percy chose "to write from within a community" (147). Although Percy did not want to be overwhelm by the deep south culture of New Orleans, he valued community and he and his family "forged significant relationships within the community and the local Catholic church. Many of the locals liked him, but he thought he was strange since he did not go off to work. The positive thing is that people did not bother him, and they accepted him even though he seemed strange.  Nisly asserts, "Percy was both engaged in and separate from his larger community; he was both an involved participant and an outside observer and critic" (147).

A major part of Percy's community came from his involvement in St. Peters Catholic church in Covington. Percy's daughters went to the Catholic school in Covington. Percy also became connected to ST. Joseph's abbey. He would go on regular religious retreats at the abbey. The president of the college at the abbey became his spiritual adviser. Percy also developed relationships with Catholic authors. Percy basically affirmed the Second Vatican Council, but he critiqued certain parts of it. He did have great admiration for Pope John Paul II. Like his situation in Covington, "Percy stakes out a position that allows him to be part of the Church, but also to have enough distance to be able to critique multiple positions in the Church" (153). Percy was a person who was on the margins of communities he participated in which allowed him to critique things that he thought were wrong in the community.

Walker Percy: Biography

L. Lamar Nisley, "Walker Percy: The Writer as Diagnostic Canary to Pilgrim Wayfarers" in Wingless Chickens, Bayou Catholics, and Pilgrim Wayfarers: Constructions of Audience and Tone in O'Connor, Gautreaux, and Percy. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2011.


Early Years

Percy early years were spent in Birmingham, Alabama. He was born into an aristocratic family with a history going back to England. Both his father and grandfather were lawyers, and were well respected. Sadly, both of them committed suicide. After his father;s suicide in 1929, Percy and his family moved to Athens, Georgia to live with his mother's family for a year. It was eventually decided that they would move to Greenville, Mississippi to live with his cousin, Will Percy, referred to as Uncle Will. Soon after moving to Greenville, Walker's mother died in a car accident or suicide. William Alexander Percy (Uncle Will) would adopt the two boys and raise them. There were teenagers when they moved in with Uncle Will.

Walker attended University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and graduated in Chemistry. he would go on to medical school at Colombia University in New York. During his pathology internship, Walker contracted tuberculosis which caused him to spend a few years at two sanitariums. It was at this time Percy began reading the existentialists and Kierkegaard and others. This reading would transform his life. He would experience three conversions at the same time: convert to Roman Catholicism, get married, and commit to the vocation of a novelist.

Uncle Will would be a major influence on Will. The Percy family was highly respected in Greenville and artists, writers, musicians, and scholars gathered regularly at Uncle Will's house. It was through Uncle Will that Walker Percy would meet Shelby Foote and they will become life-long friends. Uncle Will's worldview was Southern Stoicism, best represented by Binx's aunt in The Moviegoer. Nisley states, In much of his writing, Percy identifies the philosophical stance of his relatives as stoical, influenced more by a Roman than a Christian value system" (141).

Walker's move to Greenville would be an "immersion in the old south." It would also be his first introduction to Roman Catholicism. Walker and his family had attended a liberal Presbyterian church in Birmingham, and his family on his mother's side were Presbyterian. Religion on his father's side was a household made up of "lapsed-Catholic Episcopalian looseness, very sociable, with people drifting in and out of the house" (141). Uncle Will had one time considered becoming a priest, but he was discouraged out of it by his family. Uncle Will would always have a great respect for the Roman Catholic intellectual tradition. Uncle Will rejected traditional beliefs, but maintained contact with the Catholic Church.

Uncle Will had an important influence on Walker as previously mentioned. He taught Walker about literature, music, and the arts. Walker described Uncle Will as his teacher: "But he was more than a teacher. What he was to me was a fixed point in a confusing world. This is not to say I always took him for my true north and set my course accordingly. I did not. [...] But even when I did not follow him, it was usually in relation to him, whether with him or against him, that I defined my own self and my own direction" (LOL xi). Nisley suggests that Percy's view of community began with his Uncle Will. It seems Uncle Will's relation to Roman Catholicism might have had some influence on Walker's later conversion. Although, Walker was an agnostic from his teenage years  until he converted after contracting tuberculosis. Uncle Will did not go to church, but he "was always talking about the Great Catholic tradition" (142). Nisley adds, "While the parallel is inexact, since Percy came to a deep acceptance of traditional Catholic faith instead of Will's skepticism, one could argue that Uncle Will provided Percy with a model for maintaining enough distance from church tradition to critique it even while recognizing its benefits" (142). If nothing else, Uncle Will introduced Percy to the Roman Catholic community.

Percy and his brothers did attend the Presbyterian Church as a teenager in Greenville, but it did not answer his questions. His uncle's stoicism was no help either. It seems Percy was looking for certainty in an uncertain world. He did find answers in science and had an "exaggerated faith in science" better known as scientism (142-43). While at Columbia University, Percy met with a psychiatrist for three years as part of his medical training. It seems that he probably would have become a psychiatrist if he would have continued in medicine.

Besides Uncle Will, Percy had models of Roman Catholicism from different people in his college years. One of them lived in his fraternity house at the University of North Carolina. When he was in the Sanatorium, a Roman Catholic argued philosophy and theology with him. Nisley states, "In his desire to win these debates, Percy began reading Augustine and Aquinas, Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky. After he was more mobile, he visited a Catholic church with Arthur Fortugno out of curiosity. These readings and conversations began to show Percy some of the shortcomings of science" (144). Percy would later say that Kierkegaard was influential in his conversion. Percy states, "Kierkegaard helped me see them [weaknesses in science]. He said, 'Hegel told everything about the world except one thing: what it is to be a man and live and die" (CWP 11).

Walker Percy: The Writer as Diagnostic Canary to Pilgrim Wayfarers

L. Lamar Nisley, "Walker Percy: The Writer as Diagnostic Canary to Pilgrim Wayfarers" in Wingless Chickens, Bayou Catholics, and Pilgrim Wayfarers: Constructions of Audience and Tone in O'Connor, Gautreaux, and Percy. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2011.

In this chapter, Nisley situates Percy in his historical context: "Situating Walker Percy within a Catholic community and with relationship to Vatican II presents a variety of richly challenging complications, the most important of which is that Percy was a convert to Catholicism and adopted Covington, Louisiana as his hometown as an adult" (137). Covington is outside of New Orleans. It is interesting that Percy chose not to live in New Orleans. It reminds me of Binx in the moviegoer who chooses to live in Gentilly, instead of New Orleans. I lived 30 minutes from Covington during my college years. However, I was not aware of Percy until after his death. I first became interested in Percy when I heard on the radio about him. I soon after went to read all his works. That was over twenty years ago and I am still reading Percy.

Nisley thinks Percy's relationship with his audience is different that O'Connor's. She saw her audience as hostile, but Percy saw his audience "as more indifferent, or even confused" (135). Percy sees his readers as pilgrims and wayfarers like himself. Nisley thinks that Percy writings "grows from his Catholic placement" (136). Percy asserts, "there is hardly a moment in my writing when I am not aware of where, say, my main character--who is usually some kind of Catholic, bad, half-baked, lapsed, whatever--of where he or she stands vis-a-vis the Catholic faith" (SSL 368). For example, Dr. Tom Moore in Love in the Ruins describes himself as a bad Catholic. Why does Percy describe him in this way?

Percy believed that his Christian faith was a help, not a hindrance to his writing. It gave him the picture of the human condition: man as an alienated creature. This corresponded with the Fall of man. Percy also thought "the value placed on the individual and the sacramental quality of the ordinary serve[d] wonderful" (137-138). Percy writings emphasize both the individual and the sacramental aspect of life. Nisley thinks that the way Percy describes his characters tells how Percy looked at his audience: "You have a man in a predicament and on the move in a real world of real things, a world which is a sacrament and a mystery; a pilgrim whose life is a searching and a finding" (SSL 369). Maybe, the way Percy describes his writing indicate his view of his audience: "The novelist is less like a prophet than he is like a canary that coal miners used to take down into the shaft to test the air. When the canary gets unhappy, utters plaintive cries, and collapses, it may be time for the miners to surface and think things over" (MB 101). Percy compared his work to a canary on several occasions, so it was a consistent view of how he saw his writing. He wrote in Lost in the Cosmos that "the artist is both thin-skinned and prophetic and, like the canary lowered into the mine shaft to test the air, has caught a whiff of something lethal" (120). Percy saw himself as warning his audience of the dangers surrounding them that they are not aware.

Nisley thinks that Percy's decision to live in Covington, Louisiana tells us something else about Percy. His decision to live in Covington, "on the border between Catholic Southern Louisiana and the northern Bible belt section of Louisiana, also reflects Percy's own stance of maintaining enough distance from the Church as well as the broader culture to attack satirically the wrongs he saw in the Church and society" (138). I can see Percy as a psychoanalyst in this role. He keeps enough distance to evaluate the Church and society objectively. In the next post, we will look at Percy's biography.

Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer

Smith, Brian A. Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2017.

Brian Smith's Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer is a analysis of Percy's writings from the viewpoint of political philosophy. Most of the published writings on Percy consider his work as a novelist or his work in linguistics. Smith co-edited an earlier work with Peter Lawler on Walker Percy: A Political Companion to Walker Percy. As far as I know, these are the only two published works that looks at Percy as a political thinker. Smith is associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University.

Smith compares Percy with Alexis de Tocqueville. He thinks like Tocqueville, "Percy investigated the temptation to seek complete solutions to life's persistent dilemmas, and traces the moral, political, and theological consequences of these challenges" (xv). Reading Smith's book, I thought that Percy and Saint Augustine had similar ideas. Both argued that the city of God was not to be expected in this world, and that a moderate politics should be attempted in this world. Smith's book "explores the ways Percy deploys his understanding of the human person as a wayfarer with particular attention to its effects on our understanding of society and politics" (xv). The condition of wayfarer points at the restlessness of the human condition and how complete fulfillment cannot be achieved in this life. This seems similar to Saint Augustine's idea of the restless heart in his confessions.

Percy emphasized that alienation was a permanent situation of the human condition and the desire to eliminate it could lead to negative consequences. Percy also thought many people go wrong in describing the human condition. An example, would be social scientists who see man as an organism like any other organism. Smith asserts, "Today's best scientific approaches still cannot explain why a person can be well-fed, comfortable, have many friends, a romantic partner, and a good job but still feel unhappy" (xv). Percy believed that alienation could teach us about the human condition.

Percy's wayfaring view was based on the Christian faith. Percy did not seek to convert people directly through his writings. He sought to make the case for a Christian view of the human condition indirectly. Percy believed that we lived in a secular, postmodern age and that direct attempt at evangelism would not be effective. Instead, he concentrated  on an indirect and "multi-faceted approach" (xvii). There is controversy over whether Percy was trying to evangelize his readers. It seems although Percy was concerned about people welfare, he was committed to the art of writing novels. This is evident because of the awards he won for his novels. However, he did seek to make a case for the Christian faith indirectly.

Smith's Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer includes three parts. The first part is "diagnosing the malaise." Chapter one focuses on Percy's description of different human attempts to develop a theory of man: new age philosophy and spirituality, existentialism, psychotherapy, materialism, and others. Percy did not think that these theorist presented a "coherent" theory of man. In chapter two, Smith explores the consequences of these theories. Percy criticized scientism and materialism because it describes people as organisms in an environment that leaves out the scientist doing the observing. Part two describes attempts to cure the condition of alienation. Chapter three analyzes people constant movement. Chapter four describes Southern Stoicism and how it conflicts with Christianity. Chapter five looks at the connections between boredom, alienation, "death-in-life," violence and Percy's emphasis on the apocalypse. The last part discusses ways to cope with alienation. Chapter six uses Percy's essays to indicate a path to a new social science. The last chapter describes "Percy's vision of family, community, and faith." Smith thinks that Percy provides a way to live with alienation in this life without turning to the extremes of the Left and Right.

Brian Smith's Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer is a good addition to the abundant secondary literature of Walker Percy. He makes a strong case that Percy should be considered as more than a novelist, but as an important political and social thinker for our time. It is highly recommended for all those interested in Percy's work and political science in modern times.

The Gospel and the Mind

Green, Bradley G. The Gospel and the Mind: Recovering and Shaping the Intellectual Life. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2010.

Bradley G. Green, professor of Christian studies at Union University, shows in his book, The Gospel and the Mind, how the Gospel can help Evangelicals to recover the intellectual life. This book is also shaped by an Augustinian perspective of the life of the mind. In addition, Green demonstrates how the Gospel is soon followed by the Academy.

The Gospel and the Mind includes six chapters. The first chapter discusses the importance of creation and history. Chapter two discusses the telos of learning and chapter three focuses on the cross of Jesus Christ and crucified understanding. Words and language are analysed in chapters four and five. The last chapter is on the moral nature of knowledge.

The two theses of the book are: "The Christian vision of God, man, and the world provides the necessary precondition for the recovery of any meaningful intellectual life." Second, "The Christian vision of God, man, and the world offers a particular, unique understanding of what the intellectual life might look like."

Green presents a realistic view of the world. History and creation "remind us that some things simply are and have their existence apart from our wills and intellect" (31). A realistic view or a belief of reality outside of ourselves depends on an affirmation of creation. An important aspect of this creation is that it was created good. Marion Montgomery "suggests education is concerned with coming in contact with the truth of things" (360). The centrality of history is also important to a program of education because the Christian faith is basically incarnational. Kierkegaard said that "We live forward, but we can only think backward" (43). The Christian faith provides a reason to study the past. Green believes that any Christian and liberal arts education "will be one in which students are immersed in the central texts of the past" (47). In addition, study of the past helps us to take our contemporary "blinders" off.

Green emphasizes the position of faith seeking understanding. He asserts that all "knowledge is ultimately rooted in faith commitments" (83). MacIntyre has shown how the "liberal project of universal rationality and presuppositionless reasoning is fallacious and fantasy" (85). Everyone pursues education from some tradition. Macintyre argue that "moral enquiry without some kind of presupposed prior agreements is barren" (86). Sin effects our knowing. Green asserts, "Our intellectual development as Christians should always be seen as part of our being conformed to the image of Christ" (92). Augustine emphasized that our decisions are shaped by our desires. To follow God rightly our loves must not be disorderly.

Green has shown in The Gospel and the Mind how the Gospel does not have to lead to anti-intellectualism. Everywhere the gospel was planted, the academy was soon to follow. He uses the thought of Augustine to show how to pursue the life of the Mind in a Christ-centered way.

Cicero and Aquinas

This is the author's version of a book review that was submitted/accepted for publication in the following source:

Shaffett, John E. Catholic Library World Vol. 88, No. 2 December 2017. p. 114. A Comparative Analysis of Cicero and Aquinas: Nature and the Natural Law by Charles P. Nemeth. Bloomsbury, 2017. 192 pages.

In A Comparative Analysis of Cicero and Aquinas, Charles P. Nemeth investigates whether Aquinas and Cicero’s writings on natural law are compatible. Both these authors were prolific writers and influential in their own time and after. Is it possible to compare writers whose occupations and historical periods were very different? Nemeth, in this book, investigates these two authors views on “nature and the natural order,” “nature and reason,” and the natural law. Nemeth suggests several agreements between Aquinas and Cicero after his investigation. First, their ideas of nature and the natural order were similar. Nemeth disagrees with the opinion that Cicero was “comfortable with the natural determinism residing in Stoicism” (25). The Stoics saw God and nature as identical; in contrast, Cicero thought of God as “metaphysically transcendent—overseeing a universe He created, not just existing” (25). Both Cicero and Aquinas emphasized the role of reason in knowing and applying the natural law. Nemeth asserts, “For St. Thomas, the natural law is known by all, imprinted on all, and discoverable by all” (66). Cicero thought that reason provided the “proper mechanism for making moral decisions” (51). Both authors believed that there existed a divine component of law that was higher than human law. Though there were basis similarities in Aquinas and Cicero’s writings on natural law, there were also differences. Cicero tends not to apply the natural law to troubling social issues. For example, Aquinas applies the natural law to specific moral issues: abortion, suicide, and homosexuality. Nemeth does a good job in showing both the similarities and differences of Aquinas and Cicero’s writings on natural law. This book is recommended for both universities and seminaries.   

 Reviewed by John E. Shaffett, Director of Library Services, The Baptist College of Florida, Graceville, Florida.