Walker Percy

Three Dangerous Philosophical Novels

In a culture in which algorithms control the content we consume—what movies to watch, what goods to buy, what news to listen to—the choice to read a book whose philosophy opposes our own and questions our sacred assumptions is nothing short of revolutionary...

Anthropology and the Death of the Individual

Do you believe in a higher power, something that transcends the “human organism”? If this question is trivialized or ignored, we enter the very sound and soul of despair... Anthropology is the scientific study of human beings....

The Grace of Bourbon

Will Barrett, the protagonist of Walker Percy’s novel The Last Gentleman, complains that he cannot figure out “how to live from one minute to the next on a Wednesday afternoon.” Even Christians, with a solid theological...

Malaise and Wonder in Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer

Walker Percy prefaced The Moviegoer with a line from Søren Kierkegaard: “The specific character of despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being despair.” And from that starting point Percy slowly crafts a portrait...

On the Measure and Conservation of Human Things

For the truth of knowledge is measured by the knowable object. For it is because a thing is so or is not so that a statement is known to be true or false,...

Sins Unatoned: The Gothic Imagination of Bruce Springsteen

In 1989, the year before his death, the great Southern novelist Walker Percy wrote a letter to rock-and-roll legend Bruce Springsteen, which reads, in part: This is a fan letter—of sorts. I’ve always been an...

Thanatos Syndrome: Life and Death Matters

Review of The Thanatos Syndrome, by Walker Percy. In spite of his six widely read novels, his two works of nonfiction (with their original contributions to the study of language and...

The Lonely Self? Walker Percy vs. Carl Sagan

Here's the third part of my celebration of Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos. This is a thought experiment, and you're perfectly free to disagree with it, have contempt for it, or just hate it. Walker...

Walker Percy and Carl Sagan

The title Lost in the Cosmos is meant to be a correction to Carl Sagan’s “splendid picture book” Cosmos, which Walker Percy understands as a failed self-help book. Sagan aims to get our...

Did Walker Percy Really Write the Last Self-Help Book?

So lots of readers (about six) have written me asking for advice on what book they should read to turn their lives around. Here's my recommendation:  Lost in the Cosmos by the philosopher-physician-novelist...

Walker Percy: A Man Must go down Fighting

“I no longer pretend to understand the world...The world I knew has come crashing down around my ears. The things we hold dear are reviled and spat upon....It’s an interesting age you will...

Extraordinary Contentment in the Ordinary Life

As Advent approaches, and the leaves change colors, and the country grows increasingly befuddled, I find myself appreciating the idiosyncrasies associated with working for a small business. Specifically, my own family's business, run by my tax attorney...