The Fiction of Walker Percy:

...Unlike other books about Percy- books that focus on Percy as Southerner, Roman Catholic, philosopher, physician, scientist-books more interested in Percy the man or Percy the man of ideas, Hardy's book is primarily a study of Percy as literary artist, of Percy's virtuosity in the handling of character, plot, theme, imagery, narrative technique, and language...

...In addition to reading Percy's fiction as fiction, Hardy makes some nice connections between Percy the man and Percy the novelist...

...Each chapter of Hardy's book provides a close reading of a Percy novel (from The Moviegoer through The Than-atos Syndrome), and these readings range from discussions of the symbolic significance of Percy's use of names and places...

...James P. Degnon In an age, today's, when university presses seem obsessed with publishing critical rubbish-I mean the nonsense of the decon-structionists (structuralists et al...

...to the major targets of Percy's satire, "scientific Salvationists of the left, myth-mongers, sexual liber-ationists.'' Considering that such groups include "most readers of . . . serious fiction," Hardy says, " it is not difficult to understand the critical antagonism his [Percy's] work has provoked...

...A highly original, always readable, richly detailed and documented study of and tribute to Walker Percy, The Fiction of Walker Percy is a splendid example of what criticism should be...

...Hardy speculates, for example, that Percy's lifelong financial independence may be the source of a serious defect in the novelist's "social vision," a defect that accounts for the fact that there are no major characters in Percy's novels who must work for a living, no major characters who, Hardy observes, "must face life without some material legacy...

...to Percy's use of Arthurian legend and Miltonic imagery in novels like Lancelot and The Second Coming...

...to the "painterly character" of Percy's style (i.e., how Percy's interest in the art of painting has influenced the voice informing his fiction...

...telling us that words have no meaning, that literature is not about life but about its "own textual problems," and that interpretation is more important and "creative" than the literary works being interpreted-it is a delight to discover that the University of Illinois Press has published a first-rate critical book that runs entirely counter to the above mentioned nonsense: John Edward Hardy's The Fiction of Walker Percy...

...and without as good a formal education as they are willing to accept...

...Erudite, beautifully reasoned and written, Hardy's book illustrates what is best about modern criticism...