Walker Percy

Walker Percy was born into a well-off Alabama family, the eldest of three sons. His life was marked by tragedy: when Percy was 13, his father committed suicide (as Percy’s grandfather had also done), and three years later, his mother was killed in a car accident. He and his brothers then lived in Mississippi with their uncle William Alexander Percy (to whom The Moviegoer is dedicated). William Alexander Percy was an educated, cultured Southern gentleman who had a profound influence on his nephew. Walker Percy attended the University of North Carolina followed by medical school at Columbia University, where he became interested in disease pathology. While working as an intern at Bellevue Hospital, Percy caught tuberculosis, and it was while recovering that he began to write in earnest. Around the same time, he had become interested in philosophers Thomas Mann, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Soren Kierkegaard, and he came to believe that the philosophical novel could diagnose the modern world’s diseases, much as a doctor diagnoses medical conditions. He ended up walking away from a medical career. Following in his Uncle Will’s footsteps, Percy (along with his wife, Mary Bernice “Bunt” Townsend) converted to Catholicism, which he believed truthfully addressed the modern world’s problems. While his young daughter attended a nearby school for the deaf, Percy spent his days alone in a New Orleans house and worked on The Moviegoer, which, to his surprise, won the National Book Award. Percy ultimately wrote six novels and published a variety of essays touching on topics such as race, ethics, Christian thought, and language. Percy also taught at New Orleans’s Loyola University, where he mentored younger writers.