At the Crossroads: Ethical and Religious Themes in the Writings of Walker Percy

WHITSTON PUBLISHING

John F. Desmond

— Walker Percy's novels and essays are crossroads or points of intersection where the main lines of intellectual and moral concern converge and focus on a central question: how can human beings live in the twentieth century?

In his book, John Desmond sheds light on the issues Percy confronts at these crossroads. He examines Percy's engagement with these issues and with the influential religious (Jesus, St. Augustine, and St. Theresa of Liseux), philosophical (philosophers Soren Kierkegaard, St. Thomas Aquinas and Charles Sanders Peirce; philosophical writers Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus), and literary figures (William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Don Delillo) who "lived" with Percy in a community of mutual concern and searching.

At the Crossroads brings the reader into that community of interest and concern Percy so brilliantly created in his writings, to make them fellow journeyers with Percy and his "friends" as he reveals our predicament and paradoxically enriches our lives in the process.

John F. Desmond is Mary A. Denny Professor of English at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. He is the author of Risen Sons and Walker Percy's Search for Community.

Publication Date: 1997