Walker Percy

I read The Moviegoer and Love in Ruins, but it's been a couple of decades.

May be time for a reread.

Try “The Second Coming.”

I downloaded the Second Coming for my trip to BTR, it's better than I remember it but not as good as The Moviegoer and Love in the Ruins.

I've never read his essays either.

Walker Percy and his two brothers were adopted by their relative William Alexander Percy (son of Senator Leroy Percy).

Will Percy's Lanterns on the Levee is a must read for every Southern gentleman and lady. A copy should be kept on your bedside table.

Walker Percy contributed the introduction to the 1973 edition.

Big fan. Got a couple of first printing/first issue.

I really enjoy all of his stuff but Love in the Ruins is probably my favorite. The Moviegoer is a remarkable work, especially as a first effort. It’s a favorite because the territory of deals with in New Orleans and environs are so familiar to me.

Love in the Ruins is funny and dark simultaneously and fairly balanced between the two with a large dose of sardonic cynicism. A lot like his other works, but some of them are weighted more to the dark side than others, notably Lancelot and The Thanatos Syndrome.

In Ruins a hypocritical pair of English new age gurus groom Dr. Thomas More’s wife, out for her money to fund a commune in Mexico. Dr. More, commenting on the Englishmen, says they “sat on their broad potato fed asses, spoke of the Hindu reverence for life and fell on my steaks like jackals.”

Mrs. Schexnaydre is a vigorous pony-size blond who wears sneakers summer and winter. She is very good to me and sees to it that everything is kept spick-and-span. The poor woman is quite lonely; she knows no one except the painters and carpenters and electricians who are forever working on her house. She has lived in New Orleans all her life and knows no one. Sometimes I watch television with her and share a bottle of Jax and talk about her years at MacDonough No. 6 school, the happiest period of her life. It is possible to do this because her television will bring in channel 12 and mine won't. She watches the quiz programs faithfully and actually feels she knows the contestants. Sometimes I even persuade her to go to the movies with me. Her one fear in life is of Negroes. Although one seldom sees Negroes in this part of Gentilly, our small yard is enclosed by a hurricane fence eight feet high; every window is barred. Over the years she has acquired three dogs, each for the reason that it had been reputed to harbor a special dislike for Negroes. - The Moviegoer