Question for the Day: Are You Lost in the Cosmos?

Currently I'm reading Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos: the Last Self Help Book. I was intrigued to find out that it's one of philosopher Peter Kreeft's favorite books. Percy is a favorite of mine as well. His novels, in my opinion, fit the description "southern writers weird" -- like Flannery O'Connor. Percy didn't like to think of himself as a southern writer and, in fact, parodied the tradition through the character, Sam Yerger, in The Moviegoer. Nevertheless, I can never separate him from the southern genre.

The Wisdom of Walker Percy

We were in a restaurant in Meridian, Mississippi recently and on the stairs leading to the second floor there were photographs of Mississippi's favorite sons (and daughters). Among them were Walker Percy, the MD turned novelist and his Uncle Will whom Percy often mentions in his essays. Uncle Will (who was really a cousin) raised Walker and his brother after their dad committed suicide and their mother died two years later. Walker had great affection for him. Seeing Percy's photo on the wall got me thinking about him. I'm a big fan and have a goal to read all his work, both fiction and non-fiction. 

Would Walker Percy Be Surprised? Not Hardly!

Thanatos, the Greek god of death

‘Death Panel’: European Court Says Terminal Baby Must Die Despite Parents Funding Extra Care

The Thanatos Culture at work!

In Greek mythology Thanatos was the personification of death. He is the minor god that most inspires the morally bankrupt culture of death. Those who worship death, like the English death panel, are like the false mother in the Solomon story. The child must die to justify her grief. Misery loves company. It isn't grief that these doctor ghouls are justifying -- it's their lust for power and control. They think they are gods with the power over life and death. WE decree that WE know better than the parents and by OUR decree baby Charlies must "DIE WITH DIGNITY!" 

Not only would Walker Percy not be surprised. He wrote about this in The Thanatos Syndrome. His character, Fr. Smith, describes his World War II experience liberating Eglfing-Haar, a famous hospital outside Munich with a children's ward called the Kinderhaus. The English death panel could have worked there doing their dirty business:

What Would Walker Percy Think?

Anyone who's followed this blog for awhile knows I love to read. I'm pretty eclectic in my choices. My book club is reading Ratzinger's
Spirit of the Liturgy and will move from there to Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. Thinking about the liturgy got me to pick up the Ottaviani Intervention and I also just finished re-reading Walker Percy's The Thanatos Syndrome which is fascinating, especially in view of the "thanatos culture" we live in.

After reading Percy's fiction, I picked up a book of his essays which contains an interview with Zoltan Abady-Nagy conducted shortly after Percy celebrated his 70th birthday, a milestone I reached myself a few months ago. One thing really struck me in the interview. Addressing the question of whether literature is more "cognitive" or "morally judgmental" Percy said this:

Words of Wisdom from One of My Favorite Catholic Writers

Walker Percy wrote this comment in an essay called Why Are You a Catholic in the late 80s which is why his abortion figure is way too low. You can read the essay in a book of his essays published posthumously in 1991 called Signposts in a Strange Land.

Americans are the nicest, most generous, and sentimental people on earth. Yet Americans have killed more unborn children than any nation in history. ... It is not "horrible" that over a million unborn children were killed in America last year. For one thing, one does not see many people horrified. It is not horrible, because in an age of theory and consumption it is appropriate that actions be carried out as the applications of theory and the needs of consumption require.

Percy's comment is especially ironic in view of the recent outcry over the "horrible" shooting of Cecil the lion. The press has spent many times over the ink on Cecil than on the recent expose of Planned Parenthood's callous brutality. Many Americans have sentimentalized Cecil to the point of absurdity, but they have nothing but indifference for the little one in the womb literally ripped limb from limb as we've seen in the videos released by the Center for Medical Progress.