Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, a Signpost for Existentialism’s Reception in the American South

Abstract

The writings of Walker Percy are an underrecognized and underappreciated part of the reception of existentialism in the United States. They are not common inclusions in anthologies of existentialism, even when selections are drawn from American fiction. For example, Robert Solomon’s Existentialism, which includes selections from Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, excludes Percy. Gordon Marino’s Basic Writings of Existentialism, which fittingly includes a selection from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, also excludes Percy. Nor are Percy’s works commonly referenced in histories of or commentaries on existentialism. For example, Kevin Aho’s recent Existentialism: An Introduction ignores Percy despite making at least passing references to many American writers, including Chuck Palahniuk, Jack Kerouac, and Ellison. In fact, the scholarship on Percy’s work frequently acknowledges and explores the influence of existentialism on Percy, whose work consistently engaged—sympathetically—the writings of Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Gabriel Marcel, and—less sympathetically—the writings of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. So, Percy’s general exclusion from the set of existential literature cannot be defended by citing a lack of connection between him and existentialism. Rather, if the exclusion can be defended, it must be for lack of distinction or importance. This chapter attempts to show that Percy’s work is a distinct and important part of the international reception of existentialism. More specifically, while neither an exhaustive overview of Percy’s reception of existentialism nor a particularly close reading of his novel The Moviegoer, this attempt makes a case for Percy as a distinct and important signpost for the reception of existentialism in the American South.