Thomas Merton and Walker Percy

I have long been fascinated by the conflicted man revealed in Thomas Merton's Journals, all seven volumes of which I have read and regularly re-read.  He was a spiritual seeker uncomfortably perched between the contemptus mundi of old-time monasticism and 1960's social engagement and 'relevance,' to use one of the buzz words of the day.  He was hip to the '60s, its music and its politics, surprisingly appreciative of Dylan and Baez, and this despite being 50 years old in '65 when Dylan was 24. 

I recently came across a journal entry in which Merton praises Walker Percy's 1962 novel, The Moviegoer. Then I recalled that the philosopher and surfer Tim Mosteller who visited me a year or so ago, and acquitted himself well on a memorable hike in the Superstitions, had mentioned some work by Percy, whom I have never read, but will. A search turns up he following articles of interest to Merton aficionados:

An Interview with Walker Percy about Thomas Merton

Pilgrim in the Ruins

Merton's 'True Spirit'

Existentialism, Semiotics and Iced Tea   (Roger Kimball)

The Myth of the Fall from Paradise: Thomas Merton and Walker Percy

ADDENDUM (5/25)

Tim Mosteller writes,

I haven't read all of Percy's work, but I have enjoyed a lot of what I have read of him.

 

I simply can't recall which work of his I mentioned when I last saw you.

 

Here's his fiction that I have read:

 

The Moviegoer

The Last Gentleman

Love in the Ruins

Lancelot

The Thanatos Syndrome

 

I think that I looked over, but didn't really study his collection of philosophical essays, some of them quite good on C. S. Peirce and semiotics which were published in top-ranked philosophy journals.

 

Those essays are collected in The Message in the Bottle.  

 

Peter Kreeft is quite fond of Percy's Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book.  I think I've looked this one over too, but haven't read it.  Kreeft has an essay on this book in his C. S. Lewis for the Third Millenium, and I recall enjoying the essay.  In fact, I think that was how I got introduced to Percy.

 

I've enjoyed everything I've read by Percy.  It's rare to have a Christian writer who is a first rate philosopher (who was also a medical man) and a first rate novelist.  Some of his novels are quite graphic and disturbing, which as a rule I don't enjoy reading, but they are not gratuitous. 

 

Percy is too heavily influenced by Kierkegaard and C. S. Peirce, but his story-telling makes of for some of the things I disagree with from these thinkers. 

 

Here is a great video lecture which Percy gave which captures a lot of his views:  "Walker Percy The San Andreas Fault in the Modern Mind"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve1f83mxE7k

 

Hope this helps!