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person1916–1990

Walker Percy

Disciplines:
philosophy
fiction
catholicism
america/american south

Summary

American novelist and essayist — author of The Moviegoer, The Last Gentleman, and Love in the Ruins — who converted to Catholicism after contracting tuberculosis in medical school — the most philosophically sophisticated American Catholic novelist.

Core Contribution

Creates American existentialist Catholic fiction — Percy's novels explore the malaise (existential alienation of modern life) from a Catholic perspective; The Moviegoer is the most precise fictional description of modern alienation and the search for meaning.

Notable Works & Achievements

The Moviegoer

The Last Gentleman

Love in the Ruins

The Second Coming

Lost in the Cosmos

Historical Influences

Søren Kierkegaard Fyodor Dostoevsky Albert Camus

Intellectual Lineage

Birmingham, Alabama University of North Carolina Columbia College of Physicians and SurgeonsTuberculosis sanatoriumCatholic conversionCovington, LouisianaThe Moviegoer

Contemporaries & Peers

Flannery O'Connor Shelby Foote

Minds Influenced

American philosophical fiction

Intellectual Posterity

The Moviegoer The Last Gentleman Lost in the Cosmos American Catholic fiction

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Walker Percy

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