Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer
By (author) Brian A. Smith
Not available to order
Publication date:
04 August 2017Length of book:
230 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9781498537551
Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer, Brian A. Smith makes the case that we should understand Percy’s novels and essays together as a guide to living in a complex world.
Percy cultivated a philosophical and literary approach that revealed the fault lines in the modern mind. He portrayed man as a wayfarer: peristantly unsatisfied and wandering in search of a perfectly complete solution to life’s dilemmas. His writing captures the restlessness of the human heart and allows us to comprehend our temptation to escape our sense of alienation and longing. Drawing ideas from philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and literature, Percy’s multidimensional account of American political life shows the ways that today’s approaches to life often fall short and leave us more unsatisfied with ourselves and others than ever.
Percy hoped we would evade the temptations to escape the life of the wayfarer and accept our misplaced longings, alienation, depression, and anxiety as part of the human condition. Failing to do this might lead us to accept ever more extreme political and social ideas as the basis for life. The promise of embracing Percy’s political teaching is that we might then be able to accept ourselves as we really are in order to join with others in authentic community.
Percy cultivated a philosophical and literary approach that revealed the fault lines in the modern mind. He portrayed man as a wayfarer: peristantly unsatisfied and wandering in search of a perfectly complete solution to life’s dilemmas. His writing captures the restlessness of the human heart and allows us to comprehend our temptation to escape our sense of alienation and longing. Drawing ideas from philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and literature, Percy’s multidimensional account of American political life shows the ways that today’s approaches to life often fall short and leave us more unsatisfied with ourselves and others than ever.
Percy hoped we would evade the temptations to escape the life of the wayfarer and accept our misplaced longings, alienation, depression, and anxiety as part of the human condition. Failing to do this might lead us to accept ever more extreme political and social ideas as the basis for life. The promise of embracing Percy’s political teaching is that we might then be able to accept ourselves as we really are in order to join with others in authentic community.
This is an elegant and meticulous presentation of the political thought in existential context of America's most original and deepest thinker of the 20th century. It's obviously the result of years of reflection, and it might well be the best book ever published on Walker Percy. Smith, in fact, has not just written a book on this philosopher-novelist, but on the truth about who we are and what we're supposed to do.