The Search for Place in Walker Percy's Novels (1975)

For writer whose professed view of man is that of man voyager, wayfarer, exile and castaway, Walker Percy shows remarkable concern for places in his three novels. At first it seems ironic, but actually such concern is motivated by sense of homelessness and by need for a place in world. Percy says in Man on Train, commuter who does feel home, seeing passing scene as series of meaningful projects full of signs which he reads without difficulty is unaware of his despair and is in worse condition than alienated commuter who at least recognizes his predicament. (1) An alienated homelessness is controlling concept in much of Percy's fiction, as he admitted to Carlton Cremeens: Alienation, after all, is nothing more or less than very ancient, orthodox Christian doctrine. Man is alienated by nature of his being here. He is here as stranger and as pilgrim, which is way alienation is conceived in my books. (2) would be unwise to try to define too narrowly nature of pilgrimage of Percy's characters, but seeing one aspect of it as search for place in world, mode of existence, illuminates one of Percy's major themes while at same time revealing his developing sense of place in his novels. Percy has repeatedly expressed his concern for concrete place, as in his recent interview with Zoltan Abadi-Nagy: It is true that I am interested in philosophical, religious issues and in my novels I use particular in order to get at general issues. For example, The Moviegoer is about New Orleans, one part in New Orleans, young man in New Orleans. (3) In an earlier interview with John Carr he directly related his philosophy to his fiction: As I say, I fell out with philosophy and started to [write] and philosophy I was interested in was what was then called existential philosophy. Of course, word no longer means much. still means concrete view of man, man in situation, man in predicament, man's anxiety, and so on. And I believed that this view of man could be handled very well in novel, and I was interested in phenomenology, which is very strongly existentialist: idea of describing accurately how man feels in given situation. And that's certainly novelistic. (4) Percy has written no aesthetic statement about place in fiction to compare with that of Eudora Welty, for example, writer he has called the best fiction writer in South. (5) His essays are directly concerned with his philosophy, either existential, linguistic or cultural. Thus he also has not presented us with piece comparable to Flannery O'Connor's Fiction Writer and His Country. But close look at use of places in his novels can show us something about his development as fiction writer. Gaston Bachelard's statement about space pertains to Percy's use of spatial metaphors: Space that has been seized by imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to measures and estimates of surveyor.... Images do not adapt themselves very well to quiet ideas, or above all, to definitive ideas. The imagination is ceaselessly imagining and enriching itself with new images. (6) Percy is not writing poetry, of course, but use of places in successive novels reveals less cerebral control as his imagination seizes upon them. Certainly Percy's view of man is an integral part of each novel's action and resolution, but he has progressed to point that his philosophy is more successfully integrated into novelistic form. Places are used in Percy's novels in three ways: as vehicles of his philosophy, particularly of some specific points drawn from Kierkegaard; as illustrations of artificial as opposed to authentic environments, with heavy emphasis on former; and finally, in each of novels one of structures emerges as representative metaphor for mode of existence of protagonist and condition of his society. …