A Mississippi Writers Trail historical marker was installed in Greenville, Mississippi, to honor Percy's literary contributions
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event

Figure timeline
Walker Percy, OblSB was an American writer whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is noted for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans; his first, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award for Fiction.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
science · American writer (1916–1990) · writer · novelist · philosopher · physician · also Walker Percy, Percy
Born 28 May 1916 · Died 10 May 1990 · Q176909
23 published statements · 0 followers
See & hear
2 photos
Media from Wikimedia Commons, hotlinked at the source under its own licence — see each file for author and terms.
Live now
Pulling headlines from trusted outlets — this usually takes a few seconds
Checking the wires…
Feed scan
These are live links, not archived citations — they only join the timeline once a collect run verifies and archives them.
Live pulse
Most recent outstanding titles, awards, and quotes
A Mississippi Writers Trail historical marker was installed in Greenville, Mississippi, to honor Percy's literary contributions
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Died 1990-05-10.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Awarded Jefferson Lecture (1989).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Won Laetare Medal (1989).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The National Endowment for the Humanities chose him as the winner for the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The University of Notre Dame awarded Percy its Laetare Medal, which is bestowed annually to a Catholic "whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the Church, and enriched the heritage of
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
But it had already metastasized to surrounding tissue and lymph nodes
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Percy, along with 21 other noted authors, met in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to create the Fellowship of Southern Writers
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Awarded St. Louis Literary Award (1985).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Authored a New York Times opinion article, in which he called abortion a "banal atrocity"
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Percy published a collection of essays, The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Awarded National Book Award (1962).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Percy was awarded the National Book Award for Fiction for his first novel, The Moviegoer
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“a young man who had all the advantages of a cultivated old-line Southern family: a feel for science and art, a liking for girls, sports cars, and the ordinary things of the culture, but who nevertheless feels himself quite alienated from both worlds, the old South and the new America.”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
With an essay about race in the Catholic magazine Commonweal
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Or 1948 to write a novel called The Charterhouse, which was not published and Percy later destroyed
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
But contracted tuberculosis the same year while he was performing an autopsy at Bellevue
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Foote dropped out and returned to Greenville
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
During the winter term of Percy's sophomore year at Chapel Hill, he contributed four pieces to The Carolina Magazine
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Shelby Foote became Percy's lifelong best friend
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
When Percy was 13, his father died by suicide
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Born 1916-05-28.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
In Birmingham, Alabama, the first of three boys to LeRoy Pratt Percy and Martha Susan Phinizy
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
a young man who had all the advantages of a cultivated old-line Southern family: a feel for science and art, a liking for girls, sports cars, and the ordinary things of the culture, but who nevertheless feels himself quite alienated from both worlds, the old South and the new America.
Connections