A: This life is too much trouble, far too strange, to arrive at the end of it and then to be asked what you make of it and have to answer “Scientific humanism.” That won’t do. A poor show. Life is a mystery, love is a delight. Therefore I take it as axiomatic that one should settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and the infinite delight, i.e., God. In fact I demand it. I refuse to settle for anything less. I don’t see why anyone should settle for less than Jacob, who actually grabbed aholt of God and would not let go until God identified himself and blessed him.
Q: Grabbed aholt?
A: A Louisiana expression.
From Walker Percy’s interview with himself, published partially here.
I did a DuckDuckGo image search (yeah, yeah…) of Percy to go with this quote, and a picture of this guy popped up.
I thought, Is Zeljko Ivanek playing Walker Percy in a biopic? How’d I not know about this? No such luck. The picture is from an episode of Big Love where Ivanek plays a character named J. J. Percy Walker. I can see why the algorithm got confused.
If anyone were going to play Walker Percy, though, Ivanek would be a good choice. There’s no small resemblance between the two. See?
Christian Leithart 