It’s excellent news to learn that novelist Walker Percy may be getting more attention with the upcoming documentary Walker Percy: A Documentary Film. A man of the South and a Roman Catholic, his books tackle the big moral and spiritual questions that modern novelists, regrettably, have long since abandoned.
It’s interesting how often his novel The Moviegoer, which won the National Book Award in 1962, is mentioned as a beloved book by writer of all stripes. I recently heard an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Schultz who cited the book as a special influence on him as a teenager. “I think it was the first time I read something that provoked in me a level of emotion that painting did,” He said. “I loved Percy’s passion for philosophical insight and his lyrical, ever-spiraling ideas.”
Of his own work, Percy said he was looking for:
A theory of man, man as more than organism, more than consumer––man the wayfarer, man the pilgrim, man in transit, on a journey.
The film will appear on PBS next month. Watch a preview: