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life and works, see also, references, external links
''Walker Percy''' (1916-1960) was an American author. His works include ''The Moviegoer'' (1961), ''The Last Gentleman'' (1966) ''Love in the Ruins'' (1971), and ''The Thanatos Syndrome'' (1987). He won a National Book Award for ''The Moviegoer''.<ref>''The New York Public Library Student's Desk Reference''. Prentice Hall: New York, 1991.</ref>
'''Walker Percy''' (1916-1960) was an American author. His works include ''The Moviegoer'' (1961), ''The Last Gentleman'' (1966) ''Love in the Ruins'' (1971), and ''The Thanatos Syndrome'' (1987). He won a National Book Award for ''The Moviegoer''.<ref>''The New York Public Library Student's Desk Reference''. Prentice Hall: New York, 1991.</ref>
==Life and works==
Percy was born May 28, 1916, in Birmingham, Alabama.<ref>https://www.biography.com/people/walker-percy-9437373</ref> He was part of a prominent family; his father was a lawyer and he was able to attend Birmingham University School (now Altamont School).<ref>http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1285</ref> When Percy was thirteen, his father shot himself; two years later, his mother drove off a bridge; and so he was raised by his father's cousin in Greenville, Mississippi, where he developed a love for books (including his adoptive father's ''Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter’s Son'').<ref>http://www.mswritersandmusicians.com/mississippi-writers/walker-percy</ref> He enrolled in the University on North Carolina in 1934, studying chemistry, and in 1941 received a medical degree from [[Columbia University]].<ref>http://mwp.olemiss.edu/dir/percy_walker/</ref>
At North Carolina University, he met a boy named Shelby Foote who disagreed with them on the issue of segregation - Percy was in favor; Foote was not. Foote moderated him, but Foote's literary abilities discouraged his writing and he did not produce any notable fiction novels until ''The Moviegoer'' (1961).<ref>http://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/american-literature-biographies/walker-percy</ref> He had written some philosophy texts, which established him as a Roman Catholic existentialists and introduced the concept of Malaise, despair in a rootless, modern, liberal world, as was apparent in his later works: ''The Last Gentleman'' (1966), ''Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time near the End of the World'' (1971, a comedic science fiction novel), ''Lancelot'' (1977), an allegory of the tale King Arthur told by a wife-murderer in a mental facility; ''The Second Coming'' (1980); and ''The Thanatos Syndrome'' (1987).<ref>"Percy, Walker." ''Encyclopedia Britannica Online''.</ref> His ''The Thanatos Syndrome'', the story of a man imprisoned for selling drugs to truck drivers who attempts to contaminate a water supply, is an excellent warning of the dangers of a world of liberal doctrines.<ref>http://www.cslewisreview.org/2008/10/walker-percy-an-american-apologist/</ref>
Percy contracted tuberculosis while at medical school in the 1940s, and died May 10, 1990.
==See also==
*[[Saul Bellow]]
*[[Margaret Mitchell]]
*[[Flannery O'Connor]]
==References==
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{reflist}}
==External links==
*[http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/index.html#gsc.tab=0 Further Sources], miscellaneous
*[http://www.cslewisreview.org/2008/10/walker-percy-an-american-apologist/ Biography] by C.S. Lewis Review
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[[Category:American Authors]]
[[Category:American Authors]]
[[Category:Conservative Authors]]