In 1962, Walker Percy (1916–1990) made a dramatic entrance onto the American literary scene when he won the National Book Award for fiction with his first novel, The Moviegoer. A physician, philosopher, and devout Catholic, Percy dedicated his life to understanding the mixed and somewhat contradictory foundations of American life as a situation faced by the wandering and won-dering human soul. His controversial works combined existential questioning, scientific investigation, the insight of the southern stoic, and authentic religious faith to produce a singular view of humanity's place in the cosmos that ranks among the best American political thinking.

An authoritative guide to the political thought of this celebrated yet complex American author, A Political Companion to Walker Percy includes seminal essays by Ralph C. Wood, Richard Reinsch II, and James V. Schall, S.J., as well as new analyses of Percy's view of Thomistic realism and his reaction to the American pursuit of happiness. Editors Peter Augustine Lawler and Brian A. Smith have assembled scholars of diverse perspectives who provide a necessary lens for interpreting Percy's works. This comprehensive introduction to Percy's "American Thomism" is an indispensable resource for students of American literature, culture, and politics.

Series Foreword vii

Introduction: Walker Percy, American Political Life, and Indigenous American Thomism by Peter Augustine Lawler and Brian A. Smith
1. Walker Percy: A Brief Biography by Ralph C. Wood
2. The Moviegoer's Cartesian Theater: Moviegoing as Walker Percy's Metaphor for the Cartesian Mind by Woods Nash
3. Walker Percy's Critique of the Pursuit of Happiness in The Moviegoer, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, and The Thanatos Syndrome by Elizabeth Amato
4. On Dealing with Man by James V. Schall, S.J.
5. Walker Percy's "Theory of Man" and the Elimination of Virtue by Nathan P. Carson
6. Confessing the Horrors of Radical Individualism in Lancelot: Percy, Dostoevsky, Poe by Farrell O'Gorman
7. Walker Percy's Alternative to Scientism in The Thanatos Syndrome by Micah Mattix
8. Love and Marriage among the Ruins by Richard M. Reinsch II
9. Walker Percy's Last Men: Love in the Ruins as a Fable of American Decline by Brian A. Smith
10. The Second Coming of Walker Percy: From Segregationist to Integrationist by Brendan P. Purdy and Janice Daurio
11. Walker Percy, Alexis de Tocqueville, and the Stoic and Christian Foundations of American Thomism by Peter Augustine Lawler

Selected Bibliography 267
List of Contributors