Mar 16, 2021
Jessica Hooten Wilson is an author and speaker dedicated to the questions: What are the great stories and how do we pass them on? She is the Louise Cowan Scholar in Residence and a professor of Humanities and Classical Education at the University of Dallas. She is the 2019 recipient of the Hiett Prize in the Humanities. Jessica joins Grant to discuss the impact of Walker Percy on questions of evil and the modern human. They talk about Percy’s role as the great diagnostician, why Lost in the Cosmos is the last self-help book you’ll ever need, and how to develop your own Walker Percy Reading Plan. Topics include:
- Great books
- The existence of evil and the phenomenon of despair
- The spiritual urgency of Dostoevsky
- The quest for the tertium quid
- What a 21st-century Walker Percy protagonist looks like
- The profane as a conduit for grace and the sacred
- How to tend your garden
- A sacramental cosmology
- The contribution of Christian authors to Walker Percy's legacy
- Seeing the signs and know what they signify
Links:
The Moviegoer by Walker
Percy
Reading Walker Percy’s
Novels by Jessica Hooten Wilson
Walker Percy, Fyodor Dostoevsky,
and the Search for Influence by Jessica Hooten Wilson
The Idiot by Fyodor
Dostoevsky
Kierkegaard on despair
Tertium quid
Lost in the Cosmos by Walker
Percy
The Pale King by David
Foster Wallace
Prayer in the Night by Tish
Harrison Warren
The Last Gentleman by Walker
Percy
The Thanatos Syndrome by Walker
Percy
Love in the Ruins by Walker
Percy
Utopia by Thomas
More
Lancelot by Walker
Percy
Candide by Voltaire
Giving the Devil His Due by
Jessica Hooten Wilson
Flannery O’Connor
Virgil Wander by Leif
Inger
The Reason for Crows by
Diane Glancy
Father Elijah by Michael
O’Brien
Exiles by Ron Hansen
The Second Coming by Walker
Percy