Walker Percy-A brief glance at his work and message.

 Walker Percy: Life and Thought

It was through a casual event that I came across the name of Walker Percy. As I was browsing through the back issues of "Saturday Review", I  saw a book review of Percy's "Lancelot" which was published a few months ago. The review inspired me to read all the novels and collections of essays published until that time. One of the happiest moments of my life was when I had the chance to be in the audience when he delivered the Jefferson lecture at the National Museum of History in 1989. After the talk, I met him and showed him a copy of my book, "Prophecy in American Fiction." Excitedly, he called me by my name and signed my book.

Walker Percy was born on May 28, 1916. He was orphaned at an early age when his father, LeRoy Percy, committed suicide, and his mother was later killed in an automobile accident. He and his brothers were adopted by their uncle, William Alexander Percy, under whose guidance they grew up.

William Alexander Percy was a lawyer, a well-known planter in the South, and an accomplished author. His home was a gathering place for great writers, including William Faulkner. Unsurprisingly, Percy’s early college essays revealed the influence of Faulkner’s prose style. After completing his undergraduate studies, Percy pursued a career in medicine. He earned his medical degree from Columbia University and began his residency at Bellevue Hospital in 1941. The following year, however, he contracted tuberculosis and was forced to leave his medical career behind. Percy spent a long period of convalescence in a sanatorium at Lake Saranac in the Adirondacks.

This slow recovery gave him ample time for reading and reflection. It was during this period that Percy encountered the works of Søren Kierkegaard, whose writings prompted him to question the limitations of the scientific method, particularly when applied to human beings and the human spirit. He later wrote, “I gradually began to realize that as a scientist—a doctor, a pathologist—I knew very much about man but had little idea of what man is.”

Following his recovery, Percy returned to the South and immersed himself in the works of philosophers such as Gabriel Marcel, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Among them, however, it was Kierkegaard who had the most profound influence on him. Percy credited Kierkegaard—especially the essay “The Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle”—with leading him to Catholicism. Kierkegaard distinguished between the genius, who seeks knowledge, and the apostle, who is willing to sacrifice his life for the truth he bears. For Kierkegaard, the Christian message is transmitted through apostles rather than geniuses, and this insight deeply shaped Percy’s faith.

The most striking feature of Percy’s fiction is his ability to integrate philosophy, religion, and modernity. His experimentation with narrative form in novels such as Love in the Ruins, Lancelot, and The Second Coming places him among the most innovative contemporary American novelists. At the same time, Percy belongs to the small circle of successful Catholic novelists whose works are profoundly informed by faith without being overtly doctrinal.

Rather than presenting theological arguments, Percy’s novels explore the human need for intersubjectivity—that is, authentic interpersonal relationships—as the foundation of genuine human existence. His fiction embodies the hallmarks of contemporary literature: sharp wit, irony, and linguistic experimentation. Yet beneath these features lies a serious critique of modern secular life.

Percy believed that the secular spirit exercised an overwhelming influence on the modern mind, often leading to a condition of malaise or spiritual lethargy. Through his novels, he diagnosed this condition with the precision of a physician and, like a prophet, pointed toward renewal through spiritual regeneration and openness to the divine.