Many people cried when they talked to me about Walker Percy. This was a bit surprising at first. When I set out to fill in some of the gaps in the Percy story, I was expecting stories and laughter, the primary elements I thought were missing from the biographies already written on Percy’s life. Invariably, however, the conversations turned to thoughts of Percy’s absence from the lives of the people who shared their stories with me, rememberances of his passing, and there was sadness in those memories. He was a much-loved man, and his loss is still felt by those who were close to him.
— From the Introduction to Walker Percy Remembered by David Harwell
Missing Walker
September 11, 2006 by at 4:48 pm
Tears will turn to joy when he meets them at the pearly gates with a grape Ne-Hi.
Is this the biography we’ve been waiting for?
I remember my housemate coming home from work one afternoon back in 1990 and asking rather nonchalalantly,
“Say, aren’t you a big fan of Walker Percy?”
“Yeah!” I answered, eagerly, thinking that maybe he’d picked up a copy of Love in the Ruins.
“Well, I heard on the radio just now that he died,” said my housemate.
I burst into tears and went and hid in my room for the rest of the day.