Walker Percy's Sacramental Landscapes: The Search in the Desert

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Summary: All about Walker Percy, Literature, and The Human Condition
Review: I came to this book for a good literary discussion, which I know Pridgen can produce in abundance. What I found is a sense of the connectedness of all things, a strong defense of the Percy premise that a self alone is ridiculous, and a better understanding of the relationship between the literary elements of author, text, critic, and reader.

Pridgen's book Waker Percy's Sacramental Landscapes: the Search in the Desert is definitive on the subject of Walker Percy. I read or re-read the Percy novels and some of the Percy essays while reading Sacramental Landscapes for the first time. If you enjoyed The Last Gentleman but couldn't figure out the ending, or if you are still looking for words to connect the Will Barrett of that book to the Will Barrett in its sequel, search no more. Allen Pridgen has assembled the details of the character, along with the social, religious, ethical, and philosophical details of the novels. He gives the same fine analytical treatment to Love in the Ruins and The Thanatos Syndrome.

If you are a reader, you know that some books you forget and others you carry with you forever. What you may not know, and in a busy modern world may never take time to understand, is why this is so. Sacramental Landscapes is a discussion of the reason that Percy's books print themselves in your mind and become a part of you. If you have taken time to try to understand this reason, you are probably a writer. Or you might be a person with an advanced degree in philosophy, religion, or literature.

I am none of these except perhaps a little of a writer. What draws me to the Pridgen analysis of Percy is my heritage in Christian fundamentalism, my enduring interest in Mary as envisioned by the Catholic church in doctrine, sacrament, and legend, and my native tendency to see any occurrence of beauty or meaning as a magical effect of the energetic source that we all forever seek.

Sacramental Landscapes: the Search in the Desert is as compelling as its subject matter, which includes Walker Percy, Christian theology and tradition, and what it means to be human. With thorough scholarly attention to Percy, to the texts of Percy's books and essays, to the cultural and religious assumptions embedded in the works, and to previous critical comment, the book is also a clear revelation of the multifaceted nature of the literary experience for those who participate as readers, writers, critics, students, and teachers.