Understanding Walker Percy

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA PRESS

Linda Whitney Hobson

This volume in the Understanding Contemporary American Literature series seeks to provide instruction on how to identify and explicate Percy's material, themes, use of language, point of view, structure, symbolism, and responses to experience. Hobson discusses Percy's six novels, and shows the links between pairs of novels with the same heroes. She also considers Percy's themes and symbols, keeping in mind that Percy the novelist is also Percy the scientist, who uses art to reveal truths about human predicament; his Catholicism which affirms the importance of transcending everydayness; his views's on existentialism; and his attempt to view man as a sovereign wayfarer.

About the Understanding Contemporary American Literature Series
Understanding Contemporary American Literature is as a series of guides or companions for students as well as non-academic readers. The word "understanding" in the series title was deliberately chosen. Many willing readers seek a clear understanding of how contemporary literature works: that is, what the author is attempting to express and the means by which it is conveyed. The series makes that its aim.

Linda Whitney Hobson is author of Walker Percy: A Comprehensive Descriptive Bibliography (1988). She is a writer and teacher in New Orleans. She received a B.A. in English from Denison University, a Masters in English from Duke University and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Alabama. In addition to teaching writing and American literature at the Isidore Newman School in New Orleans, she does freelance editing and journalism. She is a book reviewer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and an arts columnist for Louisiana Life magazine.

Publication Date: 1988

Pages: 203