From Conversations with Walker Percy (ht MS):
“The main difficulty is that of language. Of course the deeper themes of my novels are religious. When you speak of religion, it’s almost impossible for a novelist because you have to use the standard words like ‘God’ and ‘salvation’ and ‘baptism,’ ‘faith,’ and the words are pretty well used up. They’re old words. They’re still good words, but the trick of the novelist, as the Psalmist said, is to sing a new song, use new words. You mentioned Flannery O’Connor. She got around the difficulty through grotesquerie and exaggeration and and bizarre writing. As I recall, she said that for people who can’t see plainly or can’t see clearly you have to draw in caricatures — something like that — so the so-called Catholic or Christian novelist nowadays has to be very indirect, if not downright deceitful, because all he has to do is say one word about salvation or redemption and the jig is up, you know. So he has to do what Joyce did: he has to practice his art in cunning and in secrecy and achieve his objective by indirect methods.”
To order a copy of Paul Zahl’s New Persuasive Words DVD set (we’ve just received a new shipment!), which explores Percy’s diagnosis at length, go here.
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3 responses to “Walker Percy on New Persuasive Words”
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I've always loved these words of Percy's, both because they're so right on, and because when I first read one of his novels, expecting a "Christian" novel, I couldn't figure out where the Christianity was.
And Percy fans who have "Conversations with Walker Percy," don't forget "More Conversations with Walker Percy" by the same press!
Yes, but this is no longer true. The words "salvation" and "redemption" have literally no meaning at all to most people in the West today, except in hazy sorts of ways – and some of those fuzzy thoughts are actually positive, I think.
It's a good thing, actually, that the American "religious Right" got so enamored of and involved in politics; they forgot to talk about faith in their mad urge to power. Now the words are clean again, without resonance to anybody. (Of course, the phrase "family values" is all used up, and I guess so is "Bible-believing"….)