Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer

(Hardback)

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Walker Percy is one of Americas great novelists, and he ought to be known as a political thinker as well. In Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer, Brian A. Smith makes the case that we should understand Percys 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 lifes 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, Percys multidimensional account of American political life shows the ways that todays 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 Percys 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.

Reviews

Smiths book has excellent insights on Percys relevance to race, social science, and philosophy. * Christianity Today *
Brian A. Smiths Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer is an extraordinary exploration of the writings of a sadly underappreciated observer of the American soul. . . . Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer is a significant accomplishment and deserves careful reading. Smith has the uncanny ability to weave the disparate threads of Percys writings into a cogent narrative understandable even to those less familiar with the authors work. . . . As for Smiths work, perhaps the greatest among its many merits is that it whets the appetite just enough to entice readers to revisit Percys novels yet again. * Interpretation *
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. -- Peter Augustine Lawler, Berry College

Author Bio

Brian A. Smith is associate professor and deputy chair in the Department of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University.