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