More Conversations with Walker Percy

Publisher Marketing: This collection of interviews supplements Conversations with Walker Percy and occasions an additional two dozen pleasurable encounters with Percy. Primarily from the last ten years of Percy's life, they show how his presence was stimulating thought in much of humanistic America, in literature, linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, and in cultural life in general. Although this acclaimed author of The Moviegoer, Lancelot, and Love in the Ruins never overcame his shyness with interviewers, he continued to grant interviews as long as his health permitted. This act of openness illustrates his humility before his ideas and his desire to help others understand them. Although the questions he was asked almost invariably became predictable, he always managed to add an anecdote, an illustration, a topical reference, that would breathe new life into the responses he was making. The interviews in this collection show him at the height when he knew that his illness would not allow him to write any more books, and that the only way to restate his ideas and offer a valediction to the large audience to whom he had always been kind, patient, and appreciative was to speak out. Percy despised the posture of many modern self-proclaimed intellectuals who delight in cloaking ideas in jargon and abstraction. He always tried to express himself clearly and as free of reservations as possible. These interviews reflect that clarity. With this book readers will welcome yet more close encounters with him.

Contributor Bio:  Kramer, Victor A Victor A. Kramer is the founding editor of "The Merton Annual" and a coeditor of "The Complete Journal of Thomas Merton, Volume Four," He has been engaged in Merton-related studies for 30 years. He lives in Decatur, Georgia. Contributor Bio:  Percy, Walker Walker Percy (1916-1990) was one of the most prominent American writers of the twentieth century. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, he was the oldest of three brothers in an established Southern family that contained both a Civil War hero and a U. S. senator. Acclaimed for his poetic style and moving depictions of the alienation of modern American culture, Percy was the bestselling author of six fiction titles--including the classic novel "The Moviegoer" (1961), winner of the National Book Award--and fifteen works of nonfiction. In 2005, "Time "magazinenamed "The Moviegoer" one of the best English-language books published since 1923.