When Walker Percy's first novel, The Moviegoer, appeared in 1961, the initial critical reaction was anything but encouraging-little more, in fact, than a few bland short notices in the New York Times and other major review outlets. It was just the sort of literary debut that has driven fledgling authors into real estate sales or computer software design.
But just as the The Moviegoer was beginning its quiet passage to that special oblivion reserved for unnoticed first novels, the New Yorker writer
A....