The recent tropical weather, 95 degrees and 100% humidity, has regenerated my interest in Southern literature, because if I’m hot and sweaty I might as well be so in the company of great Southern writers. I originally planned to attend a book festival this weekend, but it’s too damned hot. So I have declared my house a Southern literature sanctum and my air-conditioned living room a Walker Percy zone.
What does this mean?
It means I’ve pulled some Southern literature off my shelves: Percy, Flannery O’Connor, Elizabeth Spencer, Carson McCuller,, and Kennedy O’Toole. I’m starting with Walker Percy (1916-1990). Yes, his books are stacked on the table. I’m reading his 1980 novel, The Second Coming, and am simply in awe. How did this writer escape my attention when I was young? I read The Moviegoer, his 1961 National Book Award winner, many years ago, but was discouraged by one of his later books.
Honestly, I can see why The Second Coming wasn’t originally my kind of thing. Much of the action of the first hundred pages takes place during a golf game.
But I’ve become more tolerant as an adult, and even concede, much as sports bore me, that golfers may be human.
Will Barrett, the hero, a retired widower, is playing no ordinary golf game. He is hallucinating on the course, slicing balls into the woods, falling down repeatedly, pointing his golf club like a gun, and having flashbacks to his childhood, when his father shot him on a hunting trip. And, while a friend tries to distract his attention with crude jokes, Will is wondering about the point of life–why he wasted so much time in New York, making money, before returning to the South.
Meanwhile, Allison, a young woman who is not quite sure what year it is, has escaped from a mental hospital after an ECT session and is living in a greenhouse near the golf course. She plans to refurbish the greenhouse and has complicated plans for moving a big wood-burning stove. Their paths cross when Will smashes a ball through the window. And an odd friendship develops.
I can’t tell you more about this now, because I don’t really want to blog much tonight. And there are a lot of Catholic metaphors and symbols, birds, ball games, stained glass, aphasia, and more, to think about. Or at least I’m pretty sure there is, but I haven’t read enough of the book yet.
Here’s the book at the top of my TBR: The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage by Paul Elie a biography of four Southern Catholic writers, Percy, Flannery O’Connor, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton.
Walker Percy is a writer certainly in danger of being forgotten. Thanks for bringing him back. I read a few of his novels in the Eighties, not “The Second Coming”.
I’m surprised by how much I’m enjoying The Second Coming. It’s a difficult book, but the prose is beautiful. He has faded out of sight in a way that Flannery O’Connor hasn’t.
Maybe The Library of America needs to take him up!
It’s far too hot for me as well. Anything over 80 is not my kind of weather, but 95 + humidity is downright nasty. I’ve been thinking of finding something icy to read–a good story with a blizzard in it! 🙂 However, since you are talking about Southern Lit, I can see the appeal at the moment, too. For some reason I’ve not read many Southern writers, though I’ve been thinking of reading a bit more of Carson McCullers. And I’ve always meant to read The Moviegoer. What about Eudora Welty? I just read a wonderful essay by her last weekend. Some of these authors you list in your post are new to me, so I look forward to seeing who you pick up to read!
Eudora Welty is great–typically of me, I’ve read her novels more recently than her short stories. Yes, I want to read all of these Southern writers, I am glued to Walker Percy, but am not sure if I’ll “binge” on him or not. The Second Coming is a beautiful book, but a lot of work. Lots of philosophy and madness.
Icy literature in the heat makes a lot of sense. It’s the solution!