Signposts in a Strange Land
Essays
Published on 29. March 2011
428 pages
978-1-4532-1637-8 (ISBN)
Description
Writings on the South, Catholicism, and more from the National Book Award winner: "His nonfiction is always entertaining and enlightening" ( Library Journal). Published just after Walker Percy's death, Signposts in a Strange Land takes readers through the philosophical, religious, and literary ideas of one of the South's most profound and unique thinkers. Each essay is laced with wit and insight into the human condition. From race relations and the mysteries of existence, to Catholicism and the joys of drinking bourbon, this collection offers a window into the underpinnings of Percy's celebrated novels and brings to light the stirring thoughts and voice of a giant of twentieth century literature.
More details
Person
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 as one of the best English-language books published since 1923.
Content
- Intro
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Table of Contents
- One Life in the South
- Why I Live Where I Live
- New Orleans Mon Amour
- The City of the Dead
- Going Back to Georgia
- Mississippi: The Fallen Paradise
- Uncle Will
- Uncle Will's House
- A Better Louisiana
- The American War
- Red, White, and Blue-Gray
- Stoicism in the South
- A Southern View
- The Southern Moderate
- Bourbon
- Two Science, Language, Literature
- Is a Theory of Man Possible?
- Naming and Being
- The State of the Novel: Dying Art or New Science?
- Novel-Writing in an Apocalyptic Time
- How to Be an American Novelist in Spite of Being Southern and Catholic
- From Facts to Fiction
- Physician as Novelist
- Herman Melville
- Diagnosing the Modern Malaise
- Eudora Welty in Jackson
- Foreword to A Confederacy of Dunces
- Rediscovering A Canticle for Leibowitz
- The Movie Magazine: A Low "Slick"
- Accepting the National Book Award for The Moviegoer
- Concerning Love in the Ruins
- The Coming Crisis in Psychiatry
- The Culture Critics
- The Fateful Rift: The San Andreas Fault in the Modern Mind
- Three Morality and Religion
- Culture, the Church, and Evangelization
- Why Are You a Catholic?
- A "Cranky Novelist" Reflects on the Church
- The Failure and the Hope
- A View of Abortion, with Something to Offend Everybody
- Foreword to The New Catholics
- If I Had Five Minutes with the Pope
- An Unpublished Letter to the Times
- Another Message in the Bottle
- The Holiness of the Ordinary
- Epilogue An Interview and a Self-interview
- An Interview with Zoltán Abádí-Nagy
- Questions They Never Asked Me
- Bibliography and Notes
- Biography
- Copyright Page
