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Signposts in a Strange Land: Essays Kindle Edition

by Walker Percy (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 50 ratings
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A captivating collection of writings on Southern life by one of the masters of American literaturePublished just after Walker Percy’s death, Signposts in a Strange Land takes readers through the philosophical, religious, and literary ideas of one of the South’s most profound and unique thinkers. Each essay is laced with wit and insight into the human condition. From race relations and the mysteries of existence, to Catholicism and the joys of drinking bourbon, this collection offers a window into the underpinnings of Percy’s celebrated novels and brings to light the stirring thoughts and voice of a giant of twentieth century literature.
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  1. Print length
    450 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Open Road Media
  5. Publication date
    March 29, 2011
  6. File size
    3485 KB
  7. Page Flip
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  8. Word Wise
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Moving pieces of nonfiction . . .” —Boston Sunday Globe“Percy is a brilliantly breathtaking writer.” —The New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Walker Percy (1916–1990) was one of the most prominent American writers of the twentieth century. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, he was the oldest of three brothers in an established Southern family that contained both a Civil War hero and a U.S. senator. Acclaimed for his poetic style and moving depictions of the alienation of modern American culture, Percy was the bestselling author of six fiction titles—including the classic novel The Moviegoer (1961), winner of the National Book Award—and fifteen works of nonfiction. In 2005, Time magazinenamed The Moviegoer as one of the best English-language books published since 1923.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004TLVNG6
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Open Road Media (March 29, 2011)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 29, 2011
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3485 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 450 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 50 ratings

About the author

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Walker Percy

Walker Percy

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Walker Percy (1916–1990) was one of the most prominent American writers of the twentieth century. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, he was the oldest of three brothers in an established Southern family that contained both a Civil War hero and a U.S. senator. Acclaimed for his poetic style and moving depictions of the alienation of modern American culture, Percy was the bestselling author of six fiction titles—including the classic novel The Moviegoer (1961), winner of the National Book Award—and fifteen works of nonfiction. In 2005, Time magazine named The Moviegoer one of the best English-language books published since 1923.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
50 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Marvin A. Brantley
5.0 out of 5 stars Better understanding of Percy
Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2019
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This provides excellent insight in the deep thinking of Percy not readily available in his novels.
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laura cannon wilson
5.0 out of 5 stars He has the wonderful ability to write quite serious stories that are hilariously ...
Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2016
Verified Purchase
Walker Percy is an author who's books I collect. He has the wonderful ability to write quite serious stories that are hilariously funny at the same time. I think he is one of the South's finest authors.
4 people found this helpful
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NINA DAMERON
4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliantly observed as always from this award winning
Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2017
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Essays about the South in 70's and 80's. Brilliantly observed as always from this award winning author
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D. Stearns
5.0 out of 5 stars A deeper look at some of the major ideas in Percy's other works
Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2015
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Great insights and expansions of themes in Percy's novels. Fun to dive in to whatever topic strikes your fancy at the time, and work your way through casually (but thoughtfully).
3 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2016
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Gift recipient loved it
One person found this helpful
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Hunter Baker
5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Percy Compilation
Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2002
This book is perfect as either an introduction to Walker Percy's thought or as a final collection of essays for the longtime fan. "Signposts" is the only book available that provides Percy's writing from virtually every stage of his life, including the period when he was completely unknown. That fact alone makes it worth the purchase.
24 people found this helpful
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R. M. Peterson
4.0 out of 5 stars Of art versus science, semiotics, Catholicism, Faulkner, "The Moviegoer", and mint juleps
Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2011
This book was issued in 1991, to collect under one cover some of the more important essays or pieces of non-fiction by Walker Percy, who had died in 1990. I happen to think that Percy is one of this country's more underappreciated novelists and men of letters. "The Moviegoer", in particular, is a classic of American literature from the second half of the 20th Century. But, as these essays demonstrate, Percy was not only a novelist, he was a relatively deep thinker, concerned with science versus art, religion and morality, language and semiotics, psychiatry, the South and "the New South", as well as literature.

The earliest essay in the book is from 1935, the latest from 1990. Most of the essays, and the best of the essays, are from 1968 through 1986. Not surprisingly, some of the essays are, in whole or in part, now rather dated. Percy's "essay voice" is relatively informal and easy to read, but he does not modulate it very much from piece to piece so that, when three or more pieces are read in succession, a measure of monotony creeps in.

Most of us, I suspect, believe we live in unusually unsettled and unsettling times. So it was with Percy too. He believed that "the modern world had ended" and that "society has been overtaken by a sense of malaise rather than exuberance, by fragmentation rather than wholeness." He further believed that the function of art was cognitive, and that the novelist's duty in these troubled times was to engage in a sort of diagnostic enterprise. That perspective informs the title of this collection of essays, which is further explicated in the following quote from Percy: "Instead of constructing a plot and creating a cast of characters from a world familiar to everybody, [the novelist] is more apt to set forth with a stranger in a strange land where the signposts are enigmatic but which he sets out to explore nevertheless."

Actually, from the retrospective vantage point of 2011, the terrain and many of the signposts encountered in this book are not so very strange. Still, it is a book worth reading, or at least dipping in and sampling. I was not converted by any of Percy's larger philosophical constructs, but many of his "smaller" and less abstract comments I found worth noting and marking in pencil (I always use pencil), including things he had to say about Charles Sanders Peirce, Soren Kierkegaard, William Faulkner, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and his own novels (especially "The Moviegoer"). I also enjoyed a piece he wrote for "Esquire" on bourbon whiskey, which included the following paragraph:

"The pleasure of knocking back Bourbon lies in the plane of the aesthetic but at an opposite pole from connoisseurship. My preference for the former is or is not deplorable depending on one's value system--that is to say, how one balances out the Epicurean values of cultivating one's sensory end organs with the greatest discrimination and at least cost to one's health, against the virtue of evocation of time and memory and of the recovery of self and the past from the fogged-in disoriented Western world. In Kierkegaardian terms, the use of Bourbon to such an end is a kind of aestheticized religious mode of existence, whereas connoisseurship * * * is the aesthetic of damnation."

If that appeals to you, you are a potential reader of SIGNPOSTS IN A STRANGE LAND. If it doesn't, maybe you should steer clear. But I can vouch for Percy's recipe for mint juleps, which I tried out four days ago at a mini-family gathering after burying my aunt after her 96 years in this strange land.
30 people found this helpful
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Arthem
4.0 out of 5 stars Repetitive, But Revealing
Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2003
This is not the place to start, if you haven't read Percy before. When read fresh, much of this collection of essays comes across as rambling, with the themes of "Southerner," "Catholic," "Author," "Southern Catholic Author," and "Fan o' Kierkegaard & Dostoevsky" running incessantly throughout the volume.
However, Percy's engaging wit keeps the essays entertaining, and it is interesting to watch his fixations and how they change (or don't change) over time.
Of particular value is the discourse on semiotics, which is a nice primer to the uninitiated, but doesn't help one make heads or tails of Umberto Eco.
Still, I would recommend reading Percy's fiction before tackling this collection.
14 people found this helpful
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