Walker Percy

Walker Percy ( born May 28, 1916 in Birmingham, Alabama; † 10 May 1990 in Covington, Louisiana ) was an American writer.

Life

Walker Percy grew up with his two brothers on with his cousin William Alexander Percy in Greenville ( Mississippi). His parents, he lost early in a tragic way: The father committed suicide when Percy was thirteen, his mother broke two years later by car the railing of a bridge and came to this. Officially declared as an accident, Walker Percy kept this incident for another suicide. His grandfather had been, committed suicide in front of Percy's birth.

Another cousin is William Armstrong Percy.

Walker Percy studied chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After graduating in 1937, he studied medicine at Columbia University in New York, where he received his license in 1941 and from then on worked as a pathologist. In 1942, he became infected with tuberculosis at autopsy and had to give up his medical profession for several years. During the following sanatorium stay, he dealt with philosophical and religious questions, read a lot, themselves decided to write and finally converted to the Catholic Church. In 1946 he married Mary Bernice Townsend; Percy and his wife adopted a girl and had a biological daughter. In 1950 he settled in Covington, Louisiana. There he lived until his death from cancer in 1990. One of Percy's friends was the novelist and historian Shelby Foote.

Work

Prior to his conversion to Catholicism in 1947, he worked intensively with the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and Charles Sanders Peirce. At Percy's first published works include philosophical journal article, especially for character theory. Kierkegaard's existential philosophy characterizes especially Percy's first novel moviegoers; the confrontation with Peirce takes place mainly through his essays (collected in Message in the Bottle and Signposts in a Strange Land), to be ironic - time- critical book Lost in the Cosmos, but also for his novel The Return. He interprets his religious attitude in his debut The moviegoer hardly of them is clearly visible in his later novels ( esp. love in ruins and Thanatos Syndrome ). In strong ironically, however, Percy avoids preaching tone, herein, in an explicit reference to Kierkegaard.

His criticism of the U.S. presence, particularly evident in the novels Lancelot, love in ruins and Thanatos Syndrome, he reinforced with apocalyptic undertones. A characteristic of his prose is the reference to the society of the American South; Percy is so in the vicinity of William Faulkner, who greatly influenced Anton Chekhov and Dostoevsky next to Percy. After Faulkner's death, Percy was the voice of the literature of the South. On the question of why the South have produced so many great writers, he replied with the now famous phrase " Because we got beat" ( "Because we were beaten ").

In essays and lectures, he devoted himself to the American South, its history and culture, the role of the writer as time diagnostician, the threat of man by technological progress and - in a famous text - the bourbon.

In 1962 he won with his first novel The moviegoer the National Book Award.

Works

  • The Moviegoer (novel, 1960), ISBN 0-413-77327-2
  • The Last Gentleman (novel, 1966), ISBN 0-8041-0379-8
  • Love in the Ruins (novel, 1971), ISBN 0-8041-0378- X
  • The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other ( essays, 1975), ISBN 0-312-25401-6
  • Lancelot (novel, 1977), ISBN 0-312-24307-3
  • The Second Coming (novel, 1980), ISBN 0-312-24324-3
  • The Thanatos Syndrome (novel, 1987), ISBN 0-312-24332-4
  • Signposts in a Strange Land ( essays, 1991), ISBN 0-374-26391-4

Secondary literature

  • Harold Bloom, ed Modern Critical Views: Walker Percy. Chelsea House, New York 1986.
  • January Nordby Gretlund, Karl -Heinz Westarp (ed.): Walker Percy: Novelist and Philosopher. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, 1991.

Biographies

  • Patrick H. Samway, SJ Samway: Walker Percy. A Life. 1999, ISBN 0-8294-1268-9.
  • Jay Tolson: Pilgrim in the Ruins. A Life of Walker Percy. 1994, ISBN 0-8078-4447-0.
May 10 Covington (Louisiana) Greenville (Mississippi) William Armstrong Percy III Peter Handke Name Authority File
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