Pilgrim in the Ruins

...No one has explored Percy's early PILGRIM IN THE RUINS A Life of Walker Percy Jay Tolson Simon and Schuster, $27.50, 519 pp...

...BOOKS The seer of Covington wo years ago this past May Walker Percy died at home in Covington, Louisiana, his departure still an aching absence for many readers who regarded his six novels and two books of philosophical reflection as something a good deal more than a major contribution to American letters and to late twentieth- century moral inquiry--as a singular voice, maybe, crying in the wilderness, a voice that helped lots of us begin to come to our senses, and at least try to find our bear- ings...

...He con- veys an entire world--the aristocratic Percys, whose roots go back to eigh- teenth-century America, and whose var- ious members came to mean so much to the life of states such as Mississippi and Alabama...

...No book, of course, can bring back such an important presence (what Percy had become by the 1980s) but it is a trib- ute to Jay Tolson's biography of him, the first that encompasses the entire span of his life, that Percy does, indeed, come alive on the printed page, and as a result, I sus- pect, many of his fans will be immense- ly grateful...

...Robert Coles life with the thoroughness and knowing subtlety Tolson has managed...

...Still, as Jane Austen knew, long before there were disciplines called psychology or psychiatry, the mind has its own compelling dramatic life, as do families--and Percy's personal back- ground, not to mention his idiosyncratic, highly charged and penetrating moral sen- sibility, enable his biographer, a clear, vig- orous writer, to more than hold the reader' s attention throughout...

...Percy's father, LeRoy (he, too was a prominent Birm- ingham lawyer) also committed suicide...

...Walker Percy, needless to say, would struggle all his life with that matter of melancholy and its consequences, not only in connection with his father, who shot himself fatal- ly when his son was only thirteen, but his mother, who was killed in an auto- mobile accident when he was not yet six- teen--she had reportedly been somewhat agitated as she drove, her youngest son, (Continued on page 26) The North American Paul Tillich Society q Call for papers/ rl Tillich 's Theological Legacy: and Community International Conference on Paul Tillich New Harmony, Indiana June 17th to June 20th, 1993 For information about participation in the conference or attending the sessions, please contact: Prof...

...Walker Percy's grandfather (they bore the same name) was one of the leading citizens of Birmingham, Alabama--a lawyer of great distinction who committed suicide...

...Early chapters of this book pro- vide an instructive social history of the so-called New South--the effort of a re- gion's leaders to pick up the pieces after the Civil War, turn away from the ghosts and obsessions of the past in favor of a fresh start for a region all too recently wasted, defeated...

...John J. Carey Agnes Scott College Decatur, GA 30030 Commonweal 6 November 1992:23...

...At first glance Percy's life (in contrast to his work) does not seem to lend itself to the kind of sustained presentation Tolson offers: halfa thousand pages of exposition that tell of a writer who was a resolutely private man, who lived a decent, faithful, monogamous life, who was a loving, con- scientious father and grandfather, who kept loyal, affectionate contact with his two brothers and their families, who didn't travel far and wide, or welcome attention when it arrived, and who had no inclina- tion to be a performer when he did appear before the public...

...Dark funks ran deep in the Percy fam- ily line," we are told--and then a dis- cussion of the psychology of depression as it connects with a regional culture strong on obligation and even self-sac- rifice as a code of honor for certain dis- tinguished families...