How the quest for the Holy Grail ends up at a tupperware party...
Saith Walker Percy:
"The Christendom of the Old South with its grim roadside signs--Prepare to Meet Thy God--served the novelist’s purpose better than Oral Robert’s cheerful announcement that "Something Good is Going to Happen to You." The Southern inkling was rather that something bad is going to happen to you, if it hasn’t happened already. The triumphant Christendom of the new Sunbelt creates problems for the Southern novelist, whether he is believer or unbeliever. If he is an unbeliever, he may feel like attacking it, but really hasn’t the heart. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Who needs another Elmer Gantry? If he is a believer, he is in a different kind of trouble. He finds himself in bed with the wrong bedfellows. What makes it difficult for him is that they are proclaiming the same Good News he believes in, using the same noble Biblical words, speaking of the same treasure buried in a field, but somehow devaluing it. If these are the fellows who have found the treasure buried in a field, then what manner of treasure is it? I hasten to say that his, the writer’s, discomfort has nothing to do with the ancient Catholic-Protestant quarrel. Catholic or Protestant, he is equally unhappy. He feels like Lancelot in search of the Holy Grail who finds himself at the end of his quest at a Tupperware party."
How true. Where has the glory, majesty and fear gone?
"The Christendom of the Old South with its grim roadside signs--Prepare to Meet Thy God--served the novelist’s purpose better than Oral Robert’s cheerful announcement that "Something Good is Going to Happen to You." The Southern inkling was rather that something bad is going to happen to you, if it hasn’t happened already. The triumphant Christendom of the new Sunbelt creates problems for the Southern novelist, whether he is believer or unbeliever. If he is an unbeliever, he may feel like attacking it, but really hasn’t the heart. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Who needs another Elmer Gantry? If he is a believer, he is in a different kind of trouble. He finds himself in bed with the wrong bedfellows. What makes it difficult for him is that they are proclaiming the same Good News he believes in, using the same noble Biblical words, speaking of the same treasure buried in a field, but somehow devaluing it. If these are the fellows who have found the treasure buried in a field, then what manner of treasure is it? I hasten to say that his, the writer’s, discomfort has nothing to do with the ancient Catholic-Protestant quarrel. Catholic or Protestant, he is equally unhappy. He feels like Lancelot in search of the Holy Grail who finds himself at the end of his quest at a Tupperware party."
How true. Where has the glory, majesty and fear gone?