Walker Percy Remembered

“Easily accessible . . . and certainly revelatory.” — Louisiana History

“The thirteen interviews here . . . will endear you to the man and introduce you to his many wonderful books.” — Acadiana LifeStyle

“Harwell’s [book] is about as folksy and down-home as it gets when delving into the life of a writer as complex as Percy” — Pilot

“These conversations not only shed light on a great American author, but also plunge readers into the rhythms of folksy Southern storytelling. Percy fans will relish this small jewel of a book.” — Publishers Weekly

“[An] illuminating and affectionate memoir. . . . A pleasure to read . . . recommend[ed] to anyone who loves Percy’s writings.” — Commonwealth

“The focus in these thirteen flavoursome conversations is on Percy as a friend and fellow citizen. . . . This is an unpretentiously excellent collection of interviews, valuable for its insights not only into Percy but into recent life in the Deep South.” — Times Literary Supplement

“I persuaded him once to buy a Lincoln from Chink Baldwin down there in Covington. He had it for two years, and he hated that car. It was ostentatious, and he’d rather be in a pickup or something. He was funny about that. He never bought expensive clothes or anything like that. He never wanted any indication that he was well-fixed. I think he was glad enough not to have to scramble for a living, but he never wanted to be ostentatious to any degree whatsoever.” — Shelby Foote, in an interview in Walker Percy Remembered

“'An extraordinary man in a very small town that hardly knew anything about him' is how his housekeeper, Carrie Cyprian, described Walker Percy. But the beauty of these interviews is that they show Percy touching the lives of friends and fellow townspeople in some of the same ways that he drew readers into his novels — with irony, humor, and self-effacing wisdom, to be sure, but, more important, with great fellow feeling and uncommonly generous displays of common decency.” — Jay Tolson, senior writer at U.S. News & World Report and author of Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy

“Walker Percy continues to fascinate us as a literary genius and also as someone endowed with uncommon wisdom, depth of character, and spiritual strength. David Harwell has felicitously assembled the reminiscences of a diverse group of Percy’s neighbors, close friends, and kinspeople. Through their sharp insights and telling anecdotes, we discover why he was so beloved by those who knew him well. All admirers of Walker Percy’s literary art will appreciate this remarkable, poignant collection.” — Bertram Wyatt-Brown, author of The House of Percy: Honor, Melancholy, and Imagination in a Southern Family and The Literary Percys: Family History, Gender and Legend