Tell me a bit about Walker Percy's fiction/non-fiction

Seem to recall you posting to another thread about him.

Also, looks like Alfred took a decade to get around to reading this one: Winter Is Here and the Time Is Right For A "Whatchoo Reading?" Thread

I'm closer -- I'm in the library, the original hardcover edition beside me.

Why don’t you just flip a coin? Heads you read it now, tails you wait another decade.

What happened? Really would love to hear your opinion of that book, a personal favorite. Seems like you have some resistance to reading it for some reason.

I lost interest in him after struggling thru Love After the Ruins.

I did check The Last Gentleman out btw

IN the Ruins obv

So, as to why I put “Mexican Divorce” at number one:

Ha, trying to post to two threads at once in Zing doesn't work too well.

Came to say that one is bad, written when he was a cranky older dude. The Last Gentleman is of a piece with The Moviegoer. Some people seem to have a strong preference for one over the other, but both of them much better than his later novels.

A lot of significant action does take place in New Mexico, however, and two of the most important characters are divorced.

In college, I met this girl who was stuck in a paper on Percy: when she finished it, she could graduate, so... Meanwhile, I went home for the summer, read The Moviegoer, slipped into the cadence x density, loved it, but somehow one was enough. Although he also figures on my Essential Southern Reading List via Confederacy of Dunces, which he was more or less forced to discover when the suicided author's mother badgered him into looking at the manuscript. Initial reaction was something like, "I read on, with the sinking feeling that it was too good to dismiss."

The beginning of your post is itself like something out of a Walker Percy novel.

I made the grisly mistake yesterday afternoon of reading Percy's 1980 column on abortion.

I checked out The Last Gentleman anyway.