Walker Percy

And if, like I said, it calls back to, um, if you read, uh, if, If you read what these Confederate, like, mental letters were writing about, I mean, that was their mythology.

They were calling upon Athens, okay? I mean, later, you know, you read everything from Walker Percy to Michael Shara, you know, the guy with the killer angels.

You know, they evoke, like, Arthurian legend and stuff.

But, I mean, really the way the Southerners thought of themselves, it was like that.

Burkert's ruminative essayistic approach not only conceded that there were gains as well as losses with the introduction of computers and related technologies, but he also acknowledged that he was not the first to dwell on the ways that electronic media were reshaping contemporary consciousness.

generously citing the work of thinkers like Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, Neil Postman, and Walker Percy.

And yet, Burkerts extended the work of his predecessors by examining the impact of the electronic world on reading itself.

The tone of his essays deftly balances urgency, concern, and realism with an unhurried, judicious weighing of the evidence.

And I think it, to me, it's fascinating because of the many facets of artificial intelligence that we could discuss, you know, certainly one of them goes back to my question of solitude versus connectedness, because how many times have we read stories about people who, in a sense, fall in love with their AI, right? I think of the film Her, you know, like someone who starts talking to Siri and gets involved.

right

because that goes back to that hunger you know and you have this weird thing going on right now where we're we're more and more abstracted from the flesh from each other and more and more addicted to the abstract um so it's it's a strange um dualism you know and i think and i appreciated your your sighting of walker percy because you know to me he he was so good at at describing that dualism, you know, that capacity of contemporary human beings to live in increasingly abstract technologies and yet still have their fleshly human dimension.

And what is it that Percy said? He said, modern man has his brain in Harvard Square and his balls in Times Square.

And just a weird thing about the way people... process certain kind of tragedies and extreme events.

Walker Percy, the novelist, wrote about this.

It can be exciting for people because it's something new.

It's something different.

And then this – I didn't understand what happened because in between leaving my apartment and getting on the street, the second plane had hit.

And, Hugh, one thing that really shocks people but is kind of true, Walker Percy, the great novelist and social critic, wrote about this.

Parts of people get excited by natural disasters or things that are different.

There are people from staffers from the grocery store underneath me who are running laughing to Fifth Avenue to get a look at this.

It's got a kind of quietly happy vibe throughout, as well as an orchestral throughline.

The title's taken from a novel by Walker Percy.

To be honest, the mix doesn't really have anything to do with the book beyond the title.

But credit where credit's due, right? Groove Electric regulars here are Lane 8 with Casbo and Bjorn, JD, Double Touch, Chris M, MOS, Durante with Hannah and Gorhae Hewick, Nora N.

Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother charged with murdering her three young children, has become a rallying point for thousands of women who believe that she was the true victim.

Walker Percy understood decades ago that when institutions fail to form us...

When culture no longer operates with a particular purpose, people try to crave, actually begin to crave, the intensity of rupture.

As her hearing was declared a mistrial today, we look at the environment that led to her support with Anne Hendershot.

sad I just find them and they're not thinking clearly and so I wrote about them really that's what I want to kind of focus on if we can because I think they have affected the jury I think they've I think they've painted any future jury because so much of the media is focused on these women who are carrying these signs and with their bows and their hair and their pink shirts and talking about the husband having done it or Lindsay was betrayed by the medical system.

I'm interested in how we got here.

And I'm glad you brought up Walker Percy because I do.

I love Walker Percy's books.

What gives you hope right now that we're not anywhere near the abyss? And I'll argue with you if you think we are near the abyss, because I don't think we are.

Many years ago, the great Catholic novelist, Walker Percy, started one of his essays by saying, where are the Hittites? And he said, if you see a Jew on a train in Melbourne or Paris or London or New York, you don't think it's a miracle, but you don't ever see any Hittites.

And his point was that the endurance of the Jews is the proof of the providential hand in history, because it is a miracle.

The miracle of our people is quite remarkable.

And by virtue of being sacramental, they have this sense that the life of God, the grace of God, the power of God are experienced through material, physical things, not despite them or beyond them, or to see these material things as somehow problematic.

So a tradition like that, makes it possible for a Flannery O'Connor or Graham Greene or Walker Percy, anybody, let's say, in the 20th century who grows up and is profoundly formed by the Catholic tradition, the Catholic liturgical life, to believe that certain things are presumptively good.

Of course, we would seek the truth of things or the reality of things or the goodness of things through natural, physical, material, sensory things.

I don't think Flannery O'Connor necessarily needs a doctrine of creation in order to write her short stories.