Walker Percy on the self, the other, and the world
Paul Elie:
[Walker] Percy’s point — in the language of pilgrimage — is that the modern predicament makes pilgrimage impossible. In the modern world (now generally called postmodern), all experience is always secondhand, planned and described for one’s consumption by others in advance. Even the rare authentically direct experience is spoiled by modern self-consciousness. The modern self is doomed to an imitation of life; the self cannot escape itself and know the world or the Other. The self can try, however. That is Percy’s real point.
The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage, p. 278
