Writer as Shaman, The: The Pilgrimages of Conrad Aiken and Walker Percy
| By author: | Spivey |
Product Code:
H182
ISBN:
9780865541993
Product Format:
Hardback
Not currently available.
(Backorder policy) |
Price:
$35.00
In the Writer as Shaman Ted R. Spivey argues that after lifelong pilgrimages both Conrad Aiken and Walter Percy have become authentic “men of letters” in an age when that class of human beings is nearly extinct. They serve as guides and helpers to many others who seek to make sense of the world in which science and technology often seem to represent the summit of human achievement. Both writers early absorbed the viewpoint of modern science and yet worked from youth onward in the realms of philosophy and literature. They saw the split between science and art as the fundamental problem of modern civilization. They grew up in different times and with different life goals; their solutions to the problem were formulated in somewhat different terms. yet underneath it all their common belief in an underlying unity that connects the arts and sciences emerged in the same way-as each became what Aiken calls a “divine pilgrim.”
Professor Spivey maneuvers with ease and confidence through a considerable mass of philosophical, psychological, and cultural thought, making it readily accessible to readers from a variety of disciplines. The Writer as Shaman does not simply compare Aiken and Percy; it is a cultural study of out times as reflected in the works and lives of two twentieth-century writers and pilgrims.