Walker Percy
Walker Percy
Walker Percy, Obl.S.B.was an American author from Covington, Louisiana, whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is known for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans, Louisiana, the first of which, The Moviegoer, won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. He devoted his literary life to the exploration of "the dislocation of man in the modern age." His work displays a combination of existential questioning, Southern sensibility, and deep Catholic faith...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth28 May 1916
CountryUnited States of America
Nothing remains but desire, and desire comes howling down Elysian Fields like a mistral.
If I had the choice of knowing the truth or searching for the truth, I'd take the search.
The present age is demented. It is possessed by a sense of dislocation, a loss of personal identity, an alternating sentimentality and rage which, in an individual patient, could be characterized as dementia.
Why is it that no other species but man gets bored? Under the circumstances in which a man gets bored, a dog goes to sleep.
For some time now the impression has been growing upon me that everyone is dead. It happens when I speak to people. In the middle of a sentence it will come over me: yes, beyond a doubt this is death. There is little to do but groan and make an excuse and slip away as quickly as one can.
I am not ashamed to use the word class. I will also plead guilty to another charge. The charge is that people belonging to my class think they're better than other people. You're damn right we're better. We're better because we do not shirk our obligations either to ourselves or to others. . . .we live by our lights, we die by our lights, and whoever the high gods may be, we'll look them in the eye without apology.
What is the nature of the search? you ask. Really it is very simple, at least for a fellow like me; so simple that it is easily overlooked. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. This morning, for example, I felt as if I had come to myself on a strange island. And what does such a cast away do? Why he pokes around the neighborhood and he doesn't miss a trick. To become aware of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Ignorance, if recognized, is often more fruitful than the appearance of knowledge.
Boredom is the self being stuffed with itself.
In this world, goodness is destined to be defeated.
Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.
Being uneducated is no guarantee against being obnoxious.
Your discovery, as best as I can determine, is that there is an alternative which no one has hit upon. It is that one finding oneself in one of life's critical situations need not after all respond in one of the traditional ways. No. One may simply default. Pass. Do as one pleases, shrug, turn on one's heel and leave. Exit. Why after all need one act humanly?
Americans are the nicest, most generous, and sentimental people on earth. Yet Americans have killed more unborn children than any nation in history.