Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Interview With Walker Percy

Q: Do you regard yourself as a Catholic novelist?

A: Since I am a Catholic and a novelist, it would seem to follow that I am a Catholic novelist.

Q: What kind of Catholic are you?

A: Bad.

Q: No, I mean are you liberal or conservative?

A: I no longer know what those words mean.

Q: Are you a dogmatic Catholic or an open-minded Catholic?

A: I don't know what that means, either. Do you mean, do I believe the dogma that the Catholic Church proposes for belief?

Q: Yes.

A: Yes.

Q. How is such a belief possible in this day and age?

A: What else is there?

Q: What do you mean, what else is there? There is humanism, atheism, agnosticism, Marxism, behaviorism, materialism, Buddhism, Muhammadism, Sufism, astrology, occultism, theosophy.

A: That's what I mean.

Q: To say nothing of Judaism and Protestantism.

A: Well, I would include them along with the Catholic Church in the whole peculiar Jewish-Christian thing.

Q: I don't understand. Would you exclude, for example, scientific humanism as a rational and honorable alternative?

A: Yes.

Q: Why?

A: It's not good enough.

Q: Why not?

A: This life is much too much trouble, far too strange, to arrive at the end of it and then to be asked what you make of it and have to answer "Scientific Humanism." That won't do. A poor show. Life is a mystery, love is a delight. Therefore I take it as axiomatic that one should settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and the infinite delight, i.e. God. In fact, I demand it. I refuse to settle for anything less. I don't see why anyone should settle for less than Jacob, who actually grabbed aholt of God and wouldn't let go until God identified himself and blessed him.

Q: Grabbed aholt?

A: Louisiana expression