View source for Walker Percy

{{Short description|American novelist (1916–1990)}}
{{Infobox writer
| name             = Walker Percy
| honorific_suffix = [[Oblate of Saint Benedict|OblSB]]
| image            = Walker_Percy.jpg
| caption          = Percy in 1987
| birth_date       = {{birth date|1916|05|28}}
| birth_place      = [[Birmingham, Alabama|Birmingham]], [[Alabama]], U.S.
| death_date       = {{death date and age|1990|05|10|1916|05|28}}
| death_place      = [[Covington, Louisiana|Covington]], [[Louisiana]], U.S.
| occupation       = Writer
| alma_mater       = [[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill]] ([[Bachelor of Arts|BA]])<br>[[Columbia University]] ([[Doctor of Medicine|MD]])
| period           = 1961–1990
| genre            = [[Philosophical fiction|Philosophical novelist]], memoir, essays
| subject          = 
| movement         = [[Southern Gothic]]
| notableworks     = ''[[The Moviegoer]]''
| spouse           = {{marriage|Mary Bernice Townsend|1946}}
| children         = 2
| relatives        = [[William Alexander Percy]]
}}

'''Walker Percy''', [[Oblate of Saint Benedict|OblSB]] (May 28, 1916 &ndash; May 10, 1990) was an American writer whose interests included [[philosophy]] and [[semiotics]]. Percy is noted for his philosophical novels set in and around [[New Orleans]]; his first, ''[[The Moviegoer]]'', won the [[National Book Award for Fiction]].<ref name=nba1962/>

Trained as a physician at [[Columbia University]], Percy decided to become a writer after a bout of [[tuberculosis]]. He devoted his literary life to the exploration of "the dislocation of man in the modern age."<ref name="NYT_Conversattions">Kimball, Roger. [https://www.nytimes.com/1985/08/04/books/existentialism-semiotics-and-iced-tea.html?scp=1&sq=Existentialism%2C+Semiotics+and+Iced+Tea&st=nyt Existentialism, Semiotics and Iced Tea, Review of Conversations with Walker Percy] New York Times, August 4, 1985. Retrieved 2010-06-12.</ref> His work displays a combination of existential questioning, [[Southern United States|Southern]] sensibility, and deep [[Catholicism|Catholic]] faith. He had a lifelong friendship with author and historian [[Shelby Foote]] and spent much of his life in [[Covington, Louisiana]], where he died of prostate cancer in 1990.

== Early life and education ==
Percy was born on May 28, 1916, in [[Birmingham, Alabama]], the first of three boys to LeRoy Pratt Percy and Martha Susan Phinizy.<ref name="unc">{{cite web|title=Walker Percy|url=http://www2.lib.unc.edu/rbc/percy/percy.html|work=Walker Percy From Pen to Print|publisher=UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries|access-date=7 May 2014}}</ref> His father's [[Mississippi]] [[Protestant]] family included his great-uncle [[LeRoy Percy]], a US senator, and [[LeRoy Pope Walker]], a pro-slavery secessionist in Antebellum America and the first [[Confederate States Secretary of War]] during the [[American Civil War]].<ref>{{cite web|title=LeRoy Pope Walker|url=https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/leroy-pope-walker/|publisher=Encyclopedia of Alabama|access-date=28 June 2023}}</ref> In February 1917, Percy's grandfather died by [[suicide]].

In 1929, when Percy was 13, his father died by suicide.<ref name=unc /> His mother took the family to live at her own mother's home in [[Athens, Georgia]]. Two years later, Percy's mother died in a suspected suicide when she drove a car off a country bridge and into [[Deer Creek (Mississippi)|Deer Creek]] near [[Leland, Mississippi]], where they were visiting. Percy regarded this death as another suicide.<ref>Samway, Patrick. ''Walker Percy: A Life''. (Loyola Press USA, 1999) p. 4.</ref> Walker and his two younger brothers, LeRoy (Roy) and Phinizy (Phin), were taken in by their first cousin once removed, [[William Alexander Percy]], a bachelor lawyer and poet living in [[Greenville, Mississippi]].<ref name="NYT-Book Review-03231941">{{cite news |last1=Brickell |first1=Herschel |title=The Revealing Memoirs of a Southern Planter |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1941/03/23/issue.html |access-date=24 May 2023 |work=New York Times Book Review |date=March 23, 1941 |page=9}}</ref>

Percy was raised as an [[agnostic]], but he was nominally affiliated with a theologically liberal [[Presbyterian]] church.<ref>O'Gorman, Farrell. Extract from "Walker Percy, the Catholic Church and Southern race relations (ca. 1947–1970)", The Mississippi Quarterly, Winter, 1999/2000.</ref> William Percy introduced him to many writers and poets.<ref>{{harvnb|Elie|2003|p=18}}: "Percy was already being raised on books by his Uncle Will."</ref>

Percy attended [[Greenville High School (Mississippi)|Greenville High School]] and the [[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill]], where he majored in [[chemistry]] and joined the Xi chapter of [[Sigma Alpha Epsilon]] fraternity. He wrote essays and book reviews for the school's ''Carolina Magazine''. He graduated with a [[Bachelor of Arts|B.A.]] in 1937.{{sfnp|Tolson|1998|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=6XHf0N6lzxQC&pg=PA3 3]}}

=== Friendship with Shelby Foote ===
After moving to Greenville, Mississippi, in 1930, [[Shelby Foote]] became Percy's lifelong best friend. As young men, Percy and Foote decided to visit [[William Faulkner]] in [[Oxford, Mississippi]]. However, when they arrived at his home, Percy was so in awe of the literary giant that he could not bring himself to speak. Foote and Faulkner had a lively conversation.
{{external media| float = right| video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?77879-1/the-correspondence-s-foote-w-percy Interview with Foote on ''The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy'', December 8, 1996], [[C-SPAN]]}} 
Percy and Foote were classmates at both Greenville High School and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Although Foote was not permitted to join Percy's fraternity because of his partly Jewish heritage, he and Percy stayed close friends during their two overlapping years. They went on dates together, made regular trips to nearby [[Durham, North Carolina]], to drink and socialize, and journeyed to [[New York City]] during one of their semester breaks. When Percy graduated in 1937, Foote dropped out and returned to Greenville.{{sfnp|Tolson|1998|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=6XHf0N6lzxQC&pg=PA4 4]}}

In the late 1940s, Percy and Foote began a correspondence that lasted until Percy's death in 1990. A collection of their correspondence was published in 1996.<ref name="Men of Letters">{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/01/books/men-of-letters.html|title=Men of Letters|newspaper=The New York Times|date=December 1996|last1=Wilson|first1=Robert}}</ref>

== Medical training and tuberculosis ==
[[File:Lower Saranac Lake, Adirondack Mountains, New York, 1902.jpg|thumb|[[Lower Saranac Lake]] in the [[Adirondack Mountains|Adirondacks]], where Percy spent time recovering from tuberculosis]]
Percy received an [[Doctor of Medicine|M.D.]] from [[Columbia University]]'s [[Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons|College of Physicians and Surgeons]] in [[New York City]] in 1941, intending to become a [[psychiatrist]].<ref name=unc /> There, he spent five days a week in [[psychoanalysis]] with Janet Rioch, to whom he had been referred by [[Harry Stack Sullivan]], a friend of Uncle Will. After three years, Walker decided to quit the psychoanalysis and later reflected on his treatment as inconclusive.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/15/books/an-inheritance-of-death.html|title=An Inheritance of Death|newspaper=The New York Times|date=15 November 1992|last1=Bell|first1=Madison Smartt}}</ref> Percy became an intern at [[Bellevue Hospital]] in Manhattan in 1942 but contracted [[tuberculosis]] the same year while he was performing an autopsy at Bellevue.<ref name="NYTimes Obituary"/> At the time, there was no known treatment for the disease other than rest. While he had only a "minimal lesion"<ref>{{cite book|author=Walker Percy|title=More Conversations with Walker Percy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bEGV97VHLAMC&pg=PA218|year=1993|publisher=University Press of Mississippi|isbn=978-0-87805-623-1|page=218}}</ref> that caused him little pain, he was forced to abandon his medical career and to leave the city. Percy spent several years recuperating at the [[Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium|Trudeau Sanitorium]] in [[Saranac Lake, New York|Saranac Lake]], in the [[Adirondack Mountains]] of [[Upstate New York]]. He spent his time sleeping, reading, and listening to his radio to hear updates on [[World War II]]. He was envious of his brothers, who were both enlisted in the war and fighting overseas.<ref>{{harvp|Wilson|2018|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=sMFVDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA11 11]}}.</ref> During this period, Percy used Trudeau's Mellon Library, which held over 7,000 titles. He read the works of Danish [[existentialism|existentialist]] philosopher [[Søren Kierkegaard]] as well as [[Fyodor Dostoevsky]], [[Gabriel Marcel]], [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], [[Franz Kafka]], and [[Thomas Mann]]. He began to question the ability of science to explain the basic mysteries of human existence. He began to rise daily at dawn to attend [[Mass (liturgy)|Mass]].<ref name="hanley"/><ref name="Jessica Hooten Wilson 12">{{harvp|Wilson|2018|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=sMFVDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA12 12]}}.</ref>

In August 1944, Percy was pronounced healthy enough to leave Trudeau and was discharged. He traveled to New York City to see [[Huger Jervey]], dean of [[Columbia Law School]] and a friend of Percy. He then lived for two months in [[Atlantic City, New Jersey]], with his brother Phin, who was on leave from the Navy.{{sfnp|Elie|2003|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=EOZqLmBU4NoC&pg=PA141 141]}} In the spring of 1945, Percy returned to Columbia as an instructor of pathology and took up residence with Huger Jervey. In May, an X-ray revealed a resurgence of the [[Mycobacterium tuberculosis|bacillus]].{{sfnp|Wyatt-Brown|1996|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=bMbnCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA304 304]}} Percy consequently traveled to [[Wallingford, Connecticut]], to stay at Gaylord Farm Sanatorium.<ref>{{cite book|author=William Rodney Allen|title=Walker Percy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0xOHT2xGU9MC&pg=PA15|year=1986|publisher=Univ. Press of Mississippi|isbn=978-1-61703-535-7|page=15}}</ref><ref>{{cite thesis |last=Nicholson |first=Joseph |date=April 2006 |title=Listening to the Dead: Marginalia in Walker Percy's Private Library |type=Masters Paper |publisher=[[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill]] |url=https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/masters_papers/t722hd64d |access-date=29 June 2019}}</ref><ref name="Jessica Hooten Wilson 12"/>

Years later, Percy reflected on his illness with more fondness than he had then felt at the time: "I was the happiest man ever to contract tuberculosis, because it enabled me to get out of Bellevue and quit medicine."{{sfnp|Wyatt-Brown|1996|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=bMbnCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA303 303]}}

==Career==
===Early career===
In 1935, during the winter term of Percy's sophomore year at Chapel Hill, he contributed four pieces to ''The Carolina Magazine''. According to scholars such as Jay Tolson, Percy proved his knowledge and interest in the good and the bad that accompany contemporary culture with his first contributions. Percy's personal experiences at Chapel Hill are portrayed in his first novel, ''[[The Moviegoer]]'' (1961), through the protagonist Binx Bolling. During the years that Percy spent in his fraternity, [[Sigma Alpha Epsilon]], he "became known for his dry wit," which is how Bolling is described by his fraternity brothers in ''The Moviegoer''.<ref name=":03">{{Cite book|title=Pilgrim in the Ruins: a Life of Walker Percy|last=Tolson|first=Jay|publisher=Simon and Schuster|year=1992}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=The Moviegoer|last=Percy|first=Walker|publisher=Alfred A. Knopf|year=1961}}</ref>

Percy had begun in 1947 or 1948 to write a novel called ''The Charterhouse'', which was not published and Percy later destroyed. He worked on a second novel, ''The Gramercy Winner'', which 
also was never published.<ref name="Men of Letters"/>

Percy's literary career as a Catholic writer began in 1956 with an essay about race in the Catholic magazine ''[[Commonweal (magazine)|Commonweal]]''.{{sfnp|Elie|2003|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=EOZqLmBU4NoC&pg=PA247 247–248]}} The essay "Stoicism in the South" condemned [[segregated South|Southern segregation]] and demanded a larger role for Christian thought in Southern life.<ref>{{cite book|last=Percy|first=Walker|title=Signposts in a Strange Land|year=2000|publisher=Macmillan Publishers|pages=83–88|isbn=9780312254193|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EEzOeBHWnoIC&pg=PA83}}</ref>

=== Later career ===
After many years of writing and rewriting in collaboration with editor [[Stanley Kauffmann]], Percy published his first novel, ''The Moviegoer'', in 1961. Percy later wrote of the novel that it was the story of "a young man who had all the advantages of a cultivated old-line southern family: a feel for science and art, a liking for girls, sports cars, and the ordinary things of the culture, but who nevertheless feels himself quite alienated from both worlds, the old South and the new America."<ref name="name">Andrews, Deborah. Annual Obituary, 1990. St. James Press, 1991. 317. Print.</ref>

Later works included ''[[The Last Gentleman (novel)|The Last Gentleman]]'' (1966), ''[[Love in the Ruins]]'' (1971), ''[[Lancelot (novel)|Lancelot]]'' (1977), ''[[The Second Coming (Percy novel)|The Second Coming]]'' (1980), and ''[[The Thanatos Syndrome]]'' in 1987. Percy's personal life and family legends provided inspiration and played a part in his writing. ''The Thanatos Syndrome'' features a story about one of Percy's ancestors that was taken from a family chronicle written by Percy's uncle, Will Percy.<ref name=":03"/> Percy's vision for the plot of ''The Second Coming'' came to him after an old fraternity brother visited him in the 1970s. He told Percy the story of his life where he is burned out and does not know what to do next. The trend of Percy's personal life influencing his writing seemingly held true throughout his literary career, beginning with his first novel.<ref name=":22">{{Cite book|title=Understanding Walker Percy|last=Hobson|first=Linda Whitney|publisher=University of South Carolina Press|year=1988}}</ref> Percy also published a number of nonfiction works exploring his interests in [[semiotics]] and [[existentialism]], his most popular work being ''[[Lost in the Cosmos]]''.

In 1975, Percy published a collection of essays, ''[[The Message in the Bottle|The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other]]''. Percy attempted to forge a connection between the idea of [[Judeo-Christian]] ethics and rationalized science and behavioralism. According to scholars such as [[Ann E. Berthoff|Anne Berthoff]] and Linda Whitney Hobson, Percy presented a new way of viewing the struggles of the common man by his specific use of anecdotes and language.<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal|last=Berthoff|first=Anne E|date=Summer 1994|title=Walker Percy's Castaway|journal=Sewanee Review|volume=102|pages=409–415}}</ref><ref name=":22"/>

Percy taught and mentored younger writers. While teaching at [[Loyola University of New Orleans]], he was instrumental in getting [[John Kennedy Toole]]'s novel ''[[A Confederacy of Dunces]]'' published in 1980. That was more than a decade after Toole committed suicide, despondent about being unable to get recognition for his book. Set in New Orleans, it won the [[Pulitzer Prize for Fiction]], which was posthumously awarded to Toole.<ref>{{Cite journal
  | last = Simon
  | first = Richard Keller 
  | title = John Kennedy Toole and Walker Percy: Fiction and Repetition in a Confederacy of Dunces
  | journal = Texas Studies in Literature and Language
  | volume = 36
  | issue = 1
  | page = 99
  | location = Austin, TX
  | year = 1999
  }}</ref>

In 1987, Percy, along with 21 other noted authors, met in [[Chattanooga, Tennessee]], to create the [[Fellowship of Southern Writers]].

== Personal life ==
Percy married Mary Bernice Townsend, a medical technician, on November 7, 1946. Both studied Catholicism and were received into the [[Roman Catholic Church]] in 1947.<ref name="hanley">Hanley, Lorene Duquin. ''A Century of Catholic Converts''. Our Sunday Visitor, 2003. 151-53. Print.</ref> Fearing that Percy was sterile, the married couple adopted a first daughter, Mary Pratt, but later conceived a second daughter, Ann, who became deaf at an early age. The family settled in [[Covington, Louisiana]], across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. Percy's wife and one of their daughters later had a bookstore, where the writer often worked in an office on the second floor.

=== Views ===
Percy was strongly anti-abortion. In 1981, he authored a ''[[New York Times]]'' opinion article, in which he called abortion a "banal atrocity".<ref>{{cite news|last=Percy|first=Walker|title=A View of Abortion with Something to Offend Everybody|url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/08/reviews/percy-abortion.html|work=[[New York Times]]|date=8 June 1981}}</ref> On another occasion, Percy once told an interviewer:

<blockquote>If I had anything to say to the [[liberalism in the United States|liberals]], it is that I agree with them on almost everything: their political and social causes, and the [[ACLU]], God knows, the right to freedom of speech, to help the homeless, the poor, the minorities, God knows the blacks, the third world—their hearts are in the right place. It’s actually a mystery, a bafflement to me, how they cannot see the paradox of being in favor of these good things and yet not batting an eyelash when it comes to destroying unborn life.<ref name="First">{{cite news|last=Van Maren|first=Johnathon|title=Walker Percy and Abortion|url=https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/04/walker-percy-and-abortion|work=First Things|date=3 April 2023}}</ref></blockquote>

Percy's final novel, ''[[The Thanatos Syndrome]]'', condemns [[eugenics]], [[senicide]], and [[abortion]].<ref name="First"/> Percy was a member of the anti-communist organization the [[Information Council of the Americas]] (INCA).<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Carpenter |first1=Arthur E. |title=Social Origins of Anticommunism: The Information Council of the Americas |journal=Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association |date=1989 |volume=30 |issue=2 |pages=117–43 |jstor=4232725 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4232725}}</ref>

== Illness and death ==
Percy underwent an operation for [[prostate cancer]] on March 10, 1988, but it had already [[metastasized]] to surrounding tissue and [[lymph nodes]].{{sfnp|Tolson|1998|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=6XHf0N6lzxQC&pg=PA301 301]}} In July 1989, he volunteered to allow his doctors at the [[Mayo Clinic]], in [[Rochester, Minnesota]], to use experimental medicines. Percy enrolled in a pilot study to test the effects of the drugs [[interferon]] and [[fluorouracil]] in cancer patients. In his correspondence with Foote, Percy expressed frustration over the frequent travel and hospital stays: "Hospitals are no place for anyone, let alone a sick man."{{sfnp|Tolson|1998|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=6XHf0N6lzxQC&pg=PA302 302]}}<ref name="LawlerSmith2013">{{cite book|author1=Peter Augustine Lawler|author2=Brian A. Smith|title=A Political Companion to Walker Percy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rSQRAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA27|date=19 July 2013|publisher=University Press of Kentucky|isbn=978-0-8131-4189-3|page=27}}</ref> Although the [[side effects]] of the experimental treatment were debilitating, Percy had a revelation when he saw children with cancer waiting in the lounges. He decided to continue the treatment at Mayo as long as he could so that the results of his treatment might be of value to others.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://isi.org/intercollegiate-review/walker-percy-and-suicide/|title=Walker Percy and Suicide|date=8 October 2014|publisher=[[Intercollegiate Studies Institute]]}}</ref>

He died of prostate cancer at his home in Covington in 1990, eighteen days before his 74th birthday.<ref name="NYTimes Obituary">{{cite news|title=Walker Percy, Is Dead at 74; A Novelist of the New South|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/11/obituaries/walker-percy-is-dead-at-74-a-novelist-of-the-new-south.html|work=The New York Times|date=11 May 1990 |access-date=7 May 2014|last1=Pace |first1=Eric }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Mattix|first=Micah|title=Whither Walker Percy?|url=http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2010/05/whither-walker-percy|work=First Things|date=10 May 2010 |access-date=7 May 2014}}</ref> He is buried on the grounds of [[St. Joseph Benedictine Abbey]], in [[St. Benedict, Louisiana]]. He had become a secular [[oblate]] of the Abbey's monastic community, making his final [[oblation]] on February 16, 1990, less than three months before his death.<ref>[http://plasticbeatitude.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/remembering-walker-percy-as-a-benedictine-oblate/ "Remembering Walker Percy as a Benedictine Oblate"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111111220815/http://plasticbeatitude.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/remembering-walker-percy-as-a-benedictine-oblate/ |date=2011-11-11 }}, Plastic Beatitude blog.</ref>

==Legacy and honors==

=== Influence ===
Percy's work, which often features protagonists facing displacement, influenced other Southern authors. According to scholar Farrell O'Gorman, Percy's vision helped bring a fundamental change in southern literature where authors began to use characters concerned with "a sense of estrangement".<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last=O'Gorman|first=Farrell|date=Spring 2002|title=Languages of Mystery: Walker Percy's Legacy in Contemporary Southern Fiction|journal=Southern Literary Journal|volume=34|issue=2|pages=97–119|doi=10.1353/slj.2002.0009|s2cid=159886725}}</ref> His writing serves as an example for contemporary southern writers who attempt to combine elements of history, religion, science, and the modern world.<ref name=":22"/> Scholars such as Jay Tolson state that Percy's frequent use of characters facing spiritual loneliness in the modern world helped introduce different ways of writing in the south post-war.<ref name=":03"/>

=== Awards and honors ===
In 1962, Percy was awarded the [[National Book Award for Fiction]] for his first novel, ''[[The Moviegoer]]''.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal|last=Underwood|first=Thomas A.|date=December 2004|title=A Visit With Walker Percy: An Interview and a Recollection|journal=Mississippi Quarterly|volume=58|pages=141–159}}</ref>

In 1985, Percy was awarded the [[St. Louis Literary Award]] from the [[Saint Louis University]] Library Associates.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://lib.slu.edu/about/associates/literary-award |title=Recipients of the Saint Louis Literary Award |author=Saint Louis University Library Associates |access-date=July 25, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160731082313/http://lib.slu.edu/about/associates/literary-award |archive-date=July 31, 2016 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.slu.edu/libraries/associates/award.html |title=Website of St. Louis Literary Award |access-date=2016-07-26 |archive-date=2016-08-23 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160823003924/http://www.slu.edu/libraries/associates/award.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>

In 1989, the [[University of Notre Dame]] awarded Percy its [[Laetare Medal]], which is bestowed annually to a Catholic "whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the Church, and enriched the heritage of humanity".<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://newsinfo.nd.edu/content.cfm?topicId=21727 |title=Notre Dame website |access-date=2007-08-23 |archive-date=2007-06-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070609194112/http://newsinfo.nd.edu/content.cfm?topicid=21727 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Also in 1989, the [[National Endowment for the Humanities]] chose him as the winner for the [[Jefferson Lecture]] in the Humanities. He read his essay, "The Fateful Rift: The San Andreas Fault in the Modern Mind".<ref>[http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/id/159052 Walker Percy, "The San Andreas Fault in the Modern Mind"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121009145433/http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/id/159052 |date=2012-10-09 }}, C-Span Video, Jefferson Lecture, National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved 2010-04-01.</ref>

[[Loyola University New Orleans]] has multiple archival and manuscript collections related to Percy's life and work.<ref>{{cite web |title=Archival & Manuscript Collections |url=http://library.loyno.edu/research/speccoll/archival_collections.php |website=Special Collections & Archives, J. Edgar & Louise S. Monroe Library, Loyola University New Orleans |access-date=17 July 2018 |archive-date=1 August 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180801221531/http://library.loyno.edu/research/speccoll/archival_collections.php |url-status=dead }}</ref>

In 2019, a [[Mississippi Writers Trail]] historical marker was installed in [[Greenville, Mississippi]], to honor Percy's literary contributions.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Mississippi Writers Trail markers for Shelby Foote and Walker Percy unveiled in Greenville {{!}} Mississippi Development Authority|url=https://www.mississippi.org/news-room/mississippi-writers-trail-markers-for-shelby-foote-and-walker-percy-unveiled-in-greenville/|access-date=2020-06-16|website=www.mississippi.org}}</ref>

==Works==

=== Novels ===
* ''[[The Moviegoer]]''. New York: Knopf, 1961; reprinted Avon, 1980 — winner of the [[National Book Award]]<ref name="nba1962">{{Citation | url = https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1962 | title = National Book Awards | year = 1962 | publisher = [[National Book Foundation]] | access-date = 2012-03-30}}.  With essays by Sara Zarr and Tom Roberge from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.</ref>
* ''[[The Last Gentleman (novel)|The Last Gentleman]]''. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1966; reprinted Avon, 1978.
* ''[[Love in the Ruins|Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World]]''. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1971; reprinted Avon, 1978.
* ''[[Lancelot (novel)|Lancelot]]''. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1977.
* ''[[The Second Coming (Percy novel)|The Second Coming]]''. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1980.
* ''[[The Thanatos Syndrome]]''. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1987.

=== Nonfiction ===
Several of the following texts are mere pamphlets, reprinted in ''Signposts in a Strange Land'' (ed. Samway).
* ''[[The Message in the Bottle]]: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other''. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1975.
* ''Going Back to Georgia''. Athens: University of Georgia, 1978 (also in Signposts, 1991.)
* ''Questions They Never Asked Me''. Northridge, California: Lord John Press, 1979 (also in Signposts, 1991.)
* ''Bourbon''. Winston-Salem, North Carolina: Palaemon Press, 1982 (also in Signposts, 1991.)
* ''[[Lost in the Cosmos|Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book]]''. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1983.
* ''How to Be an American Novelist in Spite of Being Southern and Catholic''. Lafayette: University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1984 (also in Signposts, 1991.)
* ''The City of the Dead''. Northridge, California: Lord John Press, 1985 (also in Signposts, 1991.)
* ''Conversations with Walker Percy''. Lawson, Lewis A., and Victor A. Kramer, eds.  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985.
*''Diagnosing the Modern Malaise''. New Orleans: Faust, 1985. (Also in Signposts, 1991.)
*''Novel-Writing in an Apocalyptic Time''. New Orleans: Faust Publishing Company, 1986. (Also in Signposts, 1991.)
*''State of the Novel: Dying Art or New Science''. New Orleans: Faust Publishing Company, 1988. (Also in Signposts, 1991.)
*''Signposts in a Strange Land''. Samway, Patrick, ed. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1991.
*''More Conversations with Walker Percy''. Lawson, Lewis A., and Victor A. Kramer, eds.  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993.
*''A Thief of [[Charles Sanders Peirce|Peirce]]: The Letters of Kenneth Laine Ketner and Walker Percy''. Samway, Patrick, ed. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995.
*''The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy''. Tolson, Jay, ed. New York: Center for Documentary Studies, 1996.
*''Symbol and Existence: A Study in Meaning: Explorations of Human Nature by Walker Percy''. Edited by Ketner, Kenneth Laine, Karey Lea Perkins, Rhonda Reneé McDonell, Scott Ross Cunningham. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2019. Percy's previously unpublished book on his working theory.

==See also==
*[[William Alexander Percy]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

===Works cited===
* {{cite book |last=Elie |first=Paul |year=2003 |title=The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage |publisher=Farrar, Straus & Giroux |isbn=0-374-25680-2}}
* {{cite book |first1=Shelby |last1=Foote |first2=Walker |last2=Percy |editor-last=Tolson |editor-first=Jay |title=The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy |year=1998 |publisher=W. W. Norton |isbn=978-0-393-31768-8 |ref={{harvid|Tolson|1998}} }}
* {{cite book |first=Jessica Hooten |last=Wilson |title=Reading Walker Percy's Novels |year=2018 |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |isbn=978-0-8071-6878-3}}
* {{cite book |first=Bertram |last=Wyatt-Brown |title=The House of Percy: Honor, Melancholy, and Imagination in a Southern Family |year=1996 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-510982-5}}

==Further reading==
* {{cite book |last=Coles |first=Robert |title=Walker Percy: An American Search |publisher=Little, Brown & Co. |year=1979 |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |last=Desmond |first=John F. |title=Fyodor Dostoevsky, Walker Percy, and the Age of Suicide |publisher=Catholic University of America Press |year=2019 |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |last=Dupuy |first=Edward J. |title=Autobiography in Walker Percy: Repetition, Recovery and Redemption |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=1996 |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |last=Harwell |first=David Horace |title=Walker Percy Remembered: A Portrait in the Words of Those Who Knew Him |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |year=2006 |ref=none}}
* {{cite journal |last=Hughes |first=Leonard |title=''The Great Gatsby'''s Southern Exposure: Walker Percy's Debt to F. Scott Fitzgerald in ''The Moviegoer'' |journal=The Mississippi Quarterly |volume=73 |number=4 |date=2021 |pages=479–505 |doi=10.1353/mss.2021.0002 |s2cid=245191641 |ref=none}}
* {{cite journal |last=Mooneyham |first=Laura |title=The origin of consciousness, gains and losses: Walker Percy vs Julian Jaynes |journal=Language and Communication |date=July 1993 |volume=13 |issue=3 |pages=169–182 |issn=0271-5309 |doi=10.1016/0271-5309(93)90024-H |postscript=.&nbsp; (Reprinted in Kuijsten, M. (ed.), ''Gods, Voices and the Bicameral Mind''.&nbsp;Julian Jaynes Society, 2016, pp. 175-197.) |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |last=Marsh |first=Leslie |title=Walker Percy, Philosopher |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |year=2018 |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |last=Smith |first=Brian A. |title=Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer |publisher=Lexington Books |year=2017 |ref=none}}
* {{cite journal |last=Tillman |first=Jane G. |title=The intergenerational transmission of suicide: Moral injury and the mysterious object in the work of Walker Percy |journal=Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association |volume=64 |number=3 |date=2016 |pages=541–567 |doi=10.1177/0003065116653362 |pmid=27273888 |s2cid=4790667 |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |last=Wood |first=Ralph C. |title=The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists |publisher=University of Notre Dame Press |year=1988 |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |last=Wyatt-Brown |first=Bertram |title=The Literary Percys: Family History, Gender & the Southern Imagination |place=Athens and London |publisher=University of Georgia Press |year=1994 |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |last=Swirski |first=Peter |chapter=We Better Kill the Instinct to Kill Before It Kills Us or Violence, Mind Control, and Walker Percy's ''The Thanatos Syndrome'' |title=American Utopia and Social Engineering in Literature, Social Thought, and Political History |place=New York |publisher=Routledge |year=2011 |ref=none}}
* {{cite journal |last=Wilson |first=Franklin Arthur |title=Percy Following Faulkner: A Different Path? |journal=Renascence |volume=68 |number=4 |date=2016 |pages=294–310 |doi=10.5840/renascence201668420 |ref=none}}

==External links==
{{wikiquote|Walker Percy}}
*[http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/p/Percy,Walker.html Inventory of the Walker Percy Papers, circa 1910–1992], in the [[Southern Historical Collection]], [[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill|UNC-Chapel Hill]]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20070304101303/http://thefsw.org/page/members/charter-members/walker-percy Bio], The Fellowship of Southern Writers
*[http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/ The Walker Percy Project: An Internet Literary Center]
*[http://www.lib.unc.edu/rbc/percy/ ''Walker Percy: From Pen to Print''], a 2002 exhibit at the Rare Book Collection, UNC-Chapel Hill.
*{{cite journal | url = http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2643/the-art-of-fiction-no-97-walker-percy | title = Walker Percy, The Art of Fiction | number = 97| first = Zoltán | last = Abádi-Nagy|date=Summer 1987 | journal =The Paris Review| volume = Summer 1987 }}
*[http://www.librarything.com/profile/WalkerPercy Walker Percy's library], [[LibraryThing]]
*[http://walkerpercymovie.com/ Walker Percy: A Documentary] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160927053012/https://mediam.ca/production/2204-Walker-Percy-A-Documentary-Film#production |date=2016-09-27 }}
*[http://hnoc.minisisinc.com/thnoc/catalog/3/9382 The Maple Street Book Shop Walker Percy collection] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230408063007/http://hnoc.minisisinc.com/thnoc/catalog/3/9382 |date=2023-04-08 }} at [https://www.hnoc.org/  The Historic New Orleans Collection]

{{NBA for Fiction 1950–1974}}
{{Walker Percy}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Percy, Walker}}
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