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The Walker Percy Project

A Descriptive Annotation

The Sovereign Wayfarer: Walker Percy's Diagnosis of the Malaise (Martin Luschei, 1972)

Annotated by Sandra Dow Gillis

Luschei, Martin. The Sovereign Wayfarer: Walker Percy's Diagnosis of the Malaise. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. viii, 261 pp.

Martin Luschei's book provides a metaphysical analysis of the first three novels. Published in 1972, it was the first book-length work on Percy, one that the author was able to remain in personal contact with Percy about during its composition.

The book includes a short preface and six chapters. Except for the first and last chapters, the chapters are quite lengthy, averaging 40-60+ pages. The first chapter provides a "brief intellectual biography" (viii), which elaborates upon Percy's own classification of "himself as a failed physician" (17) and describes the well-known correlation between Percy's convalescence from tuberculosis and his intensive study of literary and philosophical works. In a footnote Luschei states that while the interpretations in the chapter are his own, all the biographical facts were "authenticated by Percy himself" (3).

Following Sartre's advice (in regards to Faulkner) that "it is necessary to define a writer's metaphysics before evaluating his fictional technique" (vii), Luschei the entire second chapter to discussing the existentialists who influenced Percy, with particular emphasis on the writings of Gabriel Marcel and Soren Kierkegaard, especially the latter's Fear and Trembling and Marcel's Mystery of Being.

The third through fifth chapters provide successive explications of The Moviegoer, The Last Gentleman, and Love in the Ruins. Luschei does not claim to be after an analysis of Percy's artistry, but rather of the metaphysical underpinnings of the three novels. For example, Luschei structures his analysis of The Moviegoer around a "dialectical process in the life of Binx Bolling" (65), using the Hegelian subheadings "Thesis: the Inheritance" (66), "Antithesis: Exile" (70), and "Synthesis: the Leap" (100).

The final chapter, "Toward a Rediscovery of Being," completes Luschei's task by considering the novels "against the background of [Percy's] theory of art as a reversal of alienation" (233), and touches on Percy's inclinations to study the philosophy of language. Throughout the chapter, Luschei appeals to Percy's essay "Notes for a Novel about the End of the World."

Luschei's extensive footnotes are an interesting source of anecdotal and factual information as well as of interpretations from the utilized ancillary sources. His bibliography divides the citations into "Works by Walker Percy" (which are further subdivided into "Novels," "Excerpts from the Novels," "Philosophical Essays," "Other Essays," "Reviews" and "Letter" and "Works on Walker Percy," which are divided into "Critical" and "Interviews and Sketches." There is also a meticulously detailed and extensive index, including both subject and name entries.

Prepared as a requirement for Graduate Seminar
John R. May, Professor
Dept. of English
Louisiana State University
(Spring 1997)