Walker Percy Was a Writer Who Refused to Be Defined

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Walker Percy Was a Writer Who Refused to Be Defined

NEW ORLEANS From Bienville to Bourbon Street to bounce. 300 moments that make New Orleans unique. WHAT HAPPENED Walker 1718 ~ 2018 Percy’s ‘The Moviegoer,’ was published 300 n 1961. TRICENTENNIAL Walker Percy was a writer who refused to be defined. Yet his work, specifically “The Moviegoer,” defined what many in the world thought of New Orleans. A first edition of ‘The Percy, who lived in New Orleans for a short time Moviegoer,’ which was and then in Covington for 40 years, eschewed published in 1961. It won a National Book descriptions of him as a “Catholic” or “Southern” Award in 1962. writer. Yet he was called both the best Southern and best Catholic writer of the time. Percy was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and spent his adolescence in Greenville, Mississippi. Though he studied A sculpture of Walker medicine, a diagnosis of tuberculosis set him on Percy by Covington a different path. He read European existentialists, sculptor Bill Binning commissioned by the especially Kierkegaard, during his convalescence. Public Art for Covington When he recovered, he moved to New Orleans. He Fund. THE NEW ORLEANS ADVOCATE decided to take the ideas he’d learned in his study of psychiatry and in his reading and translate them into a fictional novel. He set the novel “The Mov- iegoer” in post-war New Orleans. The novel won a National Book Award for fiction and was Percy’s most popular work. After “The Moviegoer,” Percy’s novels included “The Last Gentleman”(1966), “Love in the Ruins” (1971), “Lancelot” (1977), “The Second Coming” (1980) and “The Thanatos Syndrome” (1987). Per- cy also taught at Louisiana State University and Loyola University. While at Loyola, John Kennedy Toole’s mother, Thelma Toole, approached Percy with the unpublished “ A Confederacy of Dunces.” The novel had been rejected by eight publishers when Toole killed himself in 1969. Percy helped get the novel published in 1980, and it won the Pulitzer Walker Percy in his Covington yard in 1977. Prize in 1981. Percy died in 1990. PRESS ASSOCIATED.

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Walker Percy's Cultural Critique in Love in the Ruins
The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Master's Theses Summer 8-2013 Solving the World's Problems: Walker Percy's Cultural Critique in Love in the Ruins Jeremy Ryan Gibbs University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses Recommended Citation Gibbs, Jeremy Ryan, "Solving the World's Problems: Walker Percy's Cultural Critique in Love in the Ruins" (2013). Master's Theses. 483. https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/483 This Masters Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The University of Southern Mississippi SOLVING THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS: WALKER PERCY'S CULTURAL CRITIQUE IN LOVE IN THE RUINS by Jeremy Ryan Gibbs A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate School ofThe University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Approved: August 2013 ABSTRACT SOLVING THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS: WALKER PERCY'S CULTURAL CRITIQUE IN LOVE IN THE RUINS by Jeremy Ryan Gibbs August 2013 This thesis examines Walker Percy's manipulation of time in Love in the Ruins as a component of indirectly communicating his solution to problems in twentieth-century Western society: existential authenticity. By examining this often overlooked novel, I clarify the process by which Percy conveys his solution and the difficulties inherent in his attempts to do so. Research shows how Percy perceived such problems stemmed from the tendency of postmodern thought to place human subjective experience within an overarching, objective framework.
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