Ever since moving back to the American South people have told me that I would like the writer Walker Percy. I finally got around to ordering a couple of his books last week and took The Second Coming with my up to camp.
Well, I loved it and can't wait to re-read it. Then, as I was carrying it around with me Mrs Trufant (more about camp and the Trufant family later) spotted it and said, "My mother is here. You have to meet her. She was good friends with Walker Percy."
So sure enough, there was the Grandmama up from Louisiana (where the Trufants come from) and she lives in Covington and knew Walker Percy and his family and she filled me in on some of the details. Then there were some seminarians there who are studying at the seminary which is part of the Benedictine Abbey and Brad (who's a seminarian and on the camp staff) told me Percy was a Benedictine oblate and is buried there and I was moved and very please indeed to have found a kindred spirit.
I'm not a Southerner, and have spent most of my life in England, but I wonder if it is too late for me to be a minor hanger on, an imitator or a pale ghost of the great company of Southern Catholic writers. The list of them is pretty venerable already, and there are some contemporary voices emerging that continue the tradition.
More on The Second Coming soon.
9 comments:
I would recommend The Last Gentleman. It, in rather unusual fashion, demonstrates the implicitly Catholic mentality of the south - even when Catholicism is not dominant. The Moviegoer is also interesting.
I've only read Percy's Thanatos Syndrome but found it quite relevant to our modern nutty culture of death. I highly recommend it.
(1) Brad who?
(2) The best introductions to Walker Percy, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton and Flannery O'Connor and their work are in "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" by Paul Elie.
(3) And don't miss Percy's often overlooked "Signposts in a
Strange Land" and "Lost in the Cosmos." Man! You're in for a lot of fun!!!
Southern, Fr. Dwight, is a state of mind and you are there....
Oooh, "Lost in the Cosmos"! You must read it!
I only read one other one of his, "Love in the Ruins," and it was very strange... I liked it, but I didn't understand parts of it, which I think only made sense if you live in the south, which I don't.
It all starts with Faulkner; from there you can go to O'Connor. And read "I'll Take my Stand" by the Nashville Agrarians (Tate was Catholic and the anti-progressivism of the book is fundamental to Southern identity).
As for poetry, the essentials are R. P. Warren and our own Dickey (though Davidson's "Sanctuary" and "Lee in the Mountains" are seminal for an understanding of the enduring values). Every Southern writer is first of all a poet.
Christ, family, and the land (and resistance to tyranny, especially of the Northern variety). Grasp these core principles, develop an appreciation for bourbon, summer heat, and football, and you've at least begun.
Just before I became Catholic, I dreamed that Walker Percy was on the other side of a bridge I was trying to cross. He was telling me to want what he had, not him.
I would recommend reading the contemplative essay, "The Delta Factor," in _Message in a Bottle_. It makes me cry. It's too beautiful--and is the most brilliant assessment of the human condition I have ever read.
I also love his stuff on language.
Oh my gracious.....see how the Lord works?
Father, my dad's family is from Louisiana. His aunt lived in Covington. I spent every summer there as a child (because, obviously, when you live in the Midwest, you should go to the South FOR THE SUMMER, for Pete's sake--but there it is...). My father had a great deal to do with the pipe organ at St. Joseph Abbey before the most recent renovation there. My fondest memories of that time have everything to do with the Abbey, the frescoes, the grounds, the monks there, and the music and liturgies we experienced--the sweet smell of incense, the sound of our shoes on the wood flores which used to be beneath the pews, the sound of the brothers chanting, the delicious smells from the kitchen. While Mom would stay with us kids at Nonnie's house, Pop would go to work at the Abbey. Some days we would come along and fish in the pond, or sit in tne reception room next to the refectory and drink "cold chocolate" kindly made by Brother Raphael or Brother Anselm.
Oh, you bring up fond memories indeed...
...and apparently, I'm so lost in thought that I spelled "flores" rather than "floors"..... :)
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