For me, having the opportunity to share something Walker Percy wrote with my students is a special thing. "The Loss of the Creature" is an essay I really like. I can identify with Percy's discussion of sovereignty. In a sense, I tried to "recover the creature" as a student in a Walker Percy seminar, when I was working on my MA in English. This was before Percy's death in 1990.
In the class, we were reading all of Percy's novels, and the teacher said that the author was tough to study, because we had no authorized biography of him at that time. Percy was a very private person.
I guess I was a bit braver in those days than I am now, so I did a little research and found Percy's address for his home in Mississippi. I wrote him a letter and asked if he had ever though about letting someone write about him. I'm a bit embarrasses to admit it, but I sort of offered my writing services before I signed off. With much trepidation, I sent the letter, comforting myself with the thought that he would probably throw my query away with his junk mail.
In a few weeks, I was surprised and excited to see that I had a handwritten letter from Percy--such a scrawl you've never seen. He was very polite, but he said he was not particularly interested in using his time to work with a biographer, although he said he thought I might do a pretty go job if given the chance to undertake the task.
No graduate student has ever been more full of pride than I was when I went back to class with that letter. I'd not read "The Loss of the Creature" at the time I wrote Percy, but I can understand a bit more easily after having this experience how important it is to fight educational "packaging" and assume sovereignty over your own learning experiences.
I did write to Percy a couple of more times, and he always sent me a reply. He was truly a nice man. If I were to write a biography of him, I'd have to include that.
