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

Walker Percy and the Modern Search for Self