Illustrated with black-and-white photographs. The dust jacket is protected by a Brodart mylar cover and is not price-clipped. Not an ex-library copy. No remainder marks. No names or marks in the text. Most books shipped within 24 hours. All books mailed with Delivery Confirmation. The dust jacket front interior flap has some creasing at the fore edge. Very good + condition in very good dust jacket. Included is a genealogical chart. ; Black-and-white phot; 8vo.; 544 pages.

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Bibliographic Details

Title: PILGRIM IN THE RUINS: A LIFE OF WALKER PERCY
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, New York
Publication Date: 1992
Language: English
ISBN 10: 0671657070
ISBN 13: 9780671657079
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition; First Printing
Condition: Very Good+
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

The first major biography of Walker Percy traces his literary career back to his childhood days spent carousing with Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, and Eudora Welty on his uncle's plantation. 17,500 first printing.

Reviews

This study of the life and work of Southern author Walker Percy (1916-1990), though competently written and researched, is flawed by Wilson's overt sympathy with Percy's philosophical outlook. The author was burdened by the angst of his father's and grandfather's suicides, and his essays--as well as his skilled and interesting novels, the National Book Award-winning The Moviegoer (1961), Love in the Ruins (1971) and The Thanatos Syndrome (1987)--reflect his quest for moral meaning in life, as Tolson shows. He found this in a conversion to Roman Catholicism, the ideas of the early existentialists and a rejection of modern secularism. Tolson is on firm ground when he details Percy's strong commitment to his wife and children, his friendship with writer Shelby Foote and his struggle to reach a moral position on civil rights, but his evaluation of Percy's work lacks critical distance. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Percy the novelist was arguably the most legitimate apologist for orthodox Christianity in modern letters. A convert to Catholicism, Percy mourned this century's loss of a sense of sin, destroyed by the sensations and temptations offered by the richest country on earth. As a result, he created characters who sought the source of their alienation. Tolson's biography is a skillful synthesis of the trivia of Percy's life, the evolution of his thought, and the substance of his novels. Echoing Percy's belief that history and family history are hopelessly interwoven, Tolson dwells perhaps more than usual on the author's forebears in the South, where they had been prominent for generations. Percy trained as a doctor but contracted tuberculosis while autopsying cadavers at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, which influenced his decision to become a writer. It was his reading of Kierkegaard that alerted him to the useful paradox that true individuality is won only through submission to a higher authority. A substantial biography of a very substantial writer.
- Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cumberland, Md.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Established in 1984, Black Swan Books is housed in building constructed in 1912. Our 3,000 square feet of floor space is filled with well organized shelves devoted to Kentuckiana, Horses, Military History, Literature, Poetry,Art, Americana, European and British History and Children's books etc. Our books are selected for condition as well as content. Many of our titles reflect the fact that we are located only a couple of blocks from the University of Kentucky. Our shop is pictured in Southern Writers, has been written up on the New York Times blog. and was used in a program produced for National Public Television. We have hosted readings as well as book signings of many regional authors, including Wendell Berry (of whom we have a large inventory)& Bobbie Ann Mason. E-mail us to be placed on our mailing list.

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