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Walker Percy

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Walker Percy was one of the most prominent American writers of the twentieth century. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, he was the oldest of three brothers in an established Southern family that contained both a Civil War hero and a U.S. senator. Acclaimed for his poetic style and moving depictions of the alienation of modern American culture, Percy was the bestselling author of six fiction titles, including the classic novel The Moviegoer (1961), winner of the National Book Award, and fifteen works of nonfiction. In 2005, Time magazine named The Moviegoer one of the best English-language books published since 1923.

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 accompanies 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.

Percy began in 1947 or 1948 to write a novel called The Charterhouse, which was not published, and Percy was later destroyed. He worked on a second novel, The Gramercy Winner, which also was never published. Percy's literary career as a Catholic writer began in 1956 with an essay about race in the Catholic magazine Commonweal.[24] The essay "Stoicism in the South" condemned Southern segregation and demanded a larger role for Christian thought in Southern life.

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The Moviegoer

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