Editing Walker Percy (section)

==Career==
===Early career===
In 1935, during the winter term of Percy's sophomore year at Chapel Hill, he contributed four pieces to ''The Carolina Magazine''. According to scholars such as Jay Tolson, Percy proved his knowledge and interest in the good and the bad that accompany contemporary culture with his first contributions. Percy's personal experiences at Chapel Hill are portrayed in his first novel, ''[[The Moviegoer]]'' (1961), through the protagonist Binx Bolling. During the years that Percy spent in his fraternity, [[Sigma Alpha Epsilon]], he "became known for his dry wit," which is how Bolling is described by his fraternity brothers in ''The Moviegoer''.<ref name=":03">{{Cite book|title=Pilgrim in the Ruins: a Life of Walker Percy|last=Tolson|first=Jay|publisher=Simon and Schuster|year=1992}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=The Moviegoer|last=Percy|first=Walker|publisher=Alfred A. Knopf|year=1961}}</ref>

Percy had begun in 1947 or 1948 to write a novel called ''The Charterhouse'', which was not published and Percy later destroyed. He worked on a second novel, ''The Gramercy Winner'', which 
also was never published.<ref name="Men of Letters"/>

Percy's literary career as a Catholic writer began in 1956 with an essay about race in the Catholic magazine ''[[Commonweal (magazine)|Commonweal]]''.{{sfnp|Elie|2003|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=EOZqLmBU4NoC&pg=PA247 247–248]}} The essay "Stoicism in the South" condemned [[segregated South|Southern segregation]] and demanded a larger role for Christian thought in Southern life.<ref>{{cite book|last=Percy|first=Walker|title=Signposts in a Strange Land|year=2000|publisher=Macmillan Publishers|pages=83–88|isbn=9780312254193|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EEzOeBHWnoIC&pg=PA83}}</ref>

=== Later career ===
After many years of writing and rewriting in collaboration with editor [[Stanley Kauffmann]], Percy published his first novel, ''The Moviegoer'', in 1961. Percy later wrote of the novel that it was the story of "a young man who had all the advantages of a cultivated old-line southern family: a feel for science and art, a liking for girls, sports cars, and the ordinary things of the culture, but who nevertheless feels himself quite alienated from both worlds, the old South and the new America."<ref name="name">Andrews, Deborah. Annual Obituary, 1990. St. James Press, 1991. 317. Print.</ref>

Later works included ''[[The Last Gentleman (novel)|The Last Gentleman]]'' (1966), ''[[Love in the Ruins]]'' (1971), ''[[Lancelot (novel)|Lancelot]]'' (1977), ''[[The Second Coming (Percy novel)|The Second Coming]]'' (1980), and ''[[The Thanatos Syndrome]]'' in 1987. Percy's personal life and family legends provided inspiration and played a part in his writing. ''The Thanatos Syndrome'' features a story about one of Percy's ancestors that was taken from a family chronicle written by Percy's uncle, Will Percy.<ref name=":03"/> Percy's vision for the plot of ''The Second Coming'' came to him after an old fraternity brother visited him in the 1970s. He told Percy the story of his life where he is burned out and does not know what to do next. The trend of Percy's personal life influencing his writing seemingly held true throughout his literary career, beginning with his first novel.<ref name=":22">{{Cite book|title=Understanding Walker Percy|last=Hobson|first=Linda Whitney|publisher=University of South Carolina Press|year=1988}}</ref> Percy also published a number of nonfiction works exploring his interests in [[semiotics]] and [[existentialism]], his most popular work being ''[[Lost in the Cosmos]]''.

In 1975, Percy published a collection of essays, ''[[The Message in the Bottle|The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other]]''. Percy attempted to forge a connection between the idea of [[Judeo-Christian]] ethics and rationalized science and behavioralism. According to scholars such as [[Ann E. Berthoff|Anne Berthoff]] and Linda Whitney Hobson, Percy presented a new way of viewing the struggles of the common man by his specific use of anecdotes and language.<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal|last=Berthoff|first=Anne E|date=Summer 1994|title=Walker Percy's Castaway|journal=Sewanee Review|volume=102|pages=409–415}}</ref><ref name=":22"/>

Percy taught and mentored younger writers. While teaching at [[Loyola University of New Orleans]], he was instrumental in getting [[John Kennedy Toole]]'s novel ''[[A Confederacy of Dunces]]'' published in 1980. That was more than a decade after Toole committed suicide, despondent about being unable to get recognition for his book. Set in New Orleans, it won the [[Pulitzer Prize for Fiction]], which was posthumously awarded to Toole.<ref>{{Cite journal
  | last = Simon
  | first = Richard Keller 
  | title = John Kennedy Toole and Walker Percy: Fiction and Repetition in a Confederacy of Dunces
  | journal = Texas Studies in Literature and Language
  | volume = 36
  | issue = 1
  | page = 99
  | location = Austin, TX
  | year = 1999
  }}</ref>

In 1987, Percy, along with 21 other noted authors, met in [[Chattanooga, Tennessee]], to create the [[Fellowship of Southern Writers]].