Walker Percy's VoicesUniversity of Georgia Press, 2000 - 238 pages Walker Percy's novels are fraught with characters struggling toward a destiny and purpose in life who must sort through conflicting inner voices and the voices of family, friends, therapists, and mentors until they finally find their own paths. Through trial, error, and retrial, Percy's characters continuously reinvent themselves, struggling until they reach solutions, satisfaction, and maturity. In this multifaceted work, Michael Kobre analyzes Walker Percy's major fiction works--The Moviegoer, The Last Gentleman, Love in the Ruins, Lancelot, The Second Coming, and The Thanatos Syndrome--in terms of the Russian philosopher and literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin's critical theory. Kobre begins with an introduction to Percy's view of language and consciousness and a clear, accessible explanation of Bakhtin's ideas. His subsequent discussion of the novels connects each work in turn with Percy's advancing career and explores the deepening conflict in Percy's fiction between his desire to express his own religious and moral beliefs and his commitment to the essential freedom of his art--the play of many voices in his narratives. |
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abstraction actions Allie Allie's assimilates aunt aunt's Bakhtin Bantus Barrett becomes behavior beliefs Belle Isle Binx Binx Bolling Binx's Binx's father Blue Boy calls characters Comeaux consciousness course Cutrer death despair detached dialogue discourse Dostoevsky echoes Emily Emily's explains faith Father Smith father's voice Faulkner's Gentilly hear heavy sodium honor human ideological Immelmann insists interaction Jamie Jamie's Kate Kate's kind Kitty Lancelot language lapsometer Last Gentleman Leroy live Lonnie Lonnie's Love Margot microdialogue moral moralist movie Moviegoer narrative narrator novel novelist once Paradise Estates passage past patrician Percy's fiction perhaps perspective posture of objectivity priest protagonists Quentin Compson Ruins satire scientific scientism Second Coming seems sense sexual South southern speaks stoic stoicism story struggle suggests suicide Sutter talk tells Thanatos Syndrome thing tion Tom's ultimately Vaught vertical search vision Walker Percy Will's William Alexander Percy William Rodney Allen words writes