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Walker Alexander Percy,
a writer who was raised in Greenville, Mississippi,
was born on May 28, 1916,
in Birmingham, Alabama.
At thirteen, his
father, a lawyer in Birmingham, committed suicide by
shooting himself in their home with a shotgun. Two
years later, his mother drove her car off a country
bridge. Percy always suspected that his mother had
also taken her own life. He along with his
two brothers moved in with their father's cousin,
William Alexander Percy, a writer himself, in
Greenville, Mississippi. This second
cousin, who Percy would refer to as “Uncle Will”
proved an encouraging and strong influence on Percy.
Uncle Will may have been the best thing to happen in
young Percy's life.
Another influence was
Shelby Foote, who also grew up in Greenville,
Mississippi.
The two developed a lifelong friendship and wrote
regularly to each other. Their letters have been
published recently in a book called
Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy. In
a 1989 interview called
More
Conversations, Percy states: "I don’t like to be
described as a Southern writer. The danger is, if you're
described as a Southern writer, you might be thought
of as someone who writes about a picturesque local
scene like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Gone With
the Wind, something like that."
Walker Percy studied
chemistry at the University of North Carolina in
Chapel Hill. Upon graduation from college he decided
to enter medical school. He was accepted to the
College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia
University's medical school. In 1941, Percy
graduated and started an internship at Bellevue
Hospital in New York. He had to quit his internship
when he contracted tuberculosis. He later returned
to Columbia to teach.
Percy died from cancer
on May 10, 1990 at seventy-four years of age.
For more books by and about
Walker Percy
Click Here!
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SLR Recommends
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See our book review
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The Moviegoer. |
