The Open Road Blog

Welcome back to Open Road’s fourth Critical Symposium. Our subject in this month’s series is Walker Percy, author of the classic novel The Moviegoer. Today’s contribution comes from Patrick Samway, who wrote the definitive Percy biography. In an enlightening personal essay, Samway describes his special friendship with the writer The New York Times called “our severest moralist, and one of our most philosophical novelists.” Please feel free to share with us your thoughts about Percy and the latest Critical Symposium in the comments section below.

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In the early spring of 1988, I spent a week in ...

Open Road’s Critical Symposium returns this week with a new series focusing on the great Southern novelist Walker Percy. The central theme of Percy’s work was the decline of religion and spirituality in modern society. We’ve therefore asked our contributors to discuss this aspect of Percy’s work and how he handled questions of faith in his own life.

We begin with an essay by Brent Short, who conducted an in-depth interview with Percy in 1990 after the publication of The Thanatos Syndrome. In his essay, Short describes how he became interested in Percy’s work and what it was ...

Your favorite show was on television. You had to walk the dog. You read the Cliff's Notes (or the review in the New York Times) and got the gist. And somehow, you never managed to actually read the book.

But when someone asks you about Bestseller X or Classic Novel Y at a dinner party, you fumble your way through the conversation and nod knowingly, right?

We consider ourselves smart, moderately well read folks. We’ve all got books that we meant to read—but just haven't gotten around to yet. We’ve got the best of intentions, but somehow there are ...

Iconic Ebooks Are Titles That Are Entrenched in Popular Culture
and Are Now Being Introduced to a New Generation of Readers Digitally

(October 18, 2011) Open Road Integrated Media, a digital publisher and multimedia content company, announced today that it will digitally publish and market Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, the groundbreaking international bestseller that revolutionized female sexuality, as an ebook throughout the world in the English language. Fear of Flying will be the first title in Open Road's new Iconic Ebooks imprint. The ebook, with a new cover and an illustrated biography featuring never-before-seen photos, goes on sale today....

No need to be entering the classroom yourself to stock up on great literature! Here's our back to school sale for grown-ups. These titles are $3.99 and up through September 13. Whether you like short stories, memoirs, suspense, experimental fiction, or more, we've got a title for you! (And if you are looking for our children's sale, here it is!)

Georgia Boy by Erskine Caldwell

Fourteen stories that follow a young boy coming of age in a dysfunctional family in the rural South. Meet William Stroop, a young son of the South whose charming voice and mordant observations of family and culture ...

In preparation for Hurricane Irene here on the East Coast, the New York Times has put up a very helpful Tracking Map. Stay safe, everyone!—Lara

I enjoyed John Tierney's essay on decision fatigue in the New York Times, adapted from his forthcoming book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. Tierney states that the very act of making decisions depletes our ability to make them well and asks how to navigate a world of endless choice given this reality. Click here for his interesting read on self-regulation.

Also: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone ...

Today would have been the 96th birthday of Walker Percy, author of the bestselling, critically-acclaimed novel The Moviegoer. To celebrate we decided to interview Padgett Powell (The Interrogative Mood), one of today's most respected Southern writers, about Percy's legacy.

Open Road Media: How did you first encounter the works of Walker Percy?

Padgett Powell: In college, probably sent to him by a remark in [James] Dickey’s Sorties that Percy is more “quietly original” than someone else, or maybe someone else was more quietly original than yet someone else, but Percy, whom I'd never heard of, was mentioned. ...

This month Open Road will be joining folks around the country celebrating Jewish American Heritage. We'll be posting and distributing brand-new articles, photos, and videos about many of your favorite authors. Here's a sneak peek at what's in the works:

• A post honoring Mary Glickman, author of Home in the Morning, which explores the Jewish Southern experience 
• An Open Road Albert Einstein Ebook Sweepstakes
• A piece about  Ruth Gruber, author of Haven, and  Lucy Dawidowicz, author of The War Against The Jews, on the Museum of Jewish Heritage Blog
• New video featuring Raphael Yglesias...

Personally, I was very excited to see this: A Spanish company is starting what can only be described as "Netflix for Books," launching later this summer. Also, Amazon to start Kindle Library Lending Program with Overdrive.—Pablo

This week in The Guardian, David Thomson writes about the movies of Terrence Malick and the anticipation surrounding the release of his latest film The Tree of Life. Malick is one of my favorite contemporary American directors and, like countless others, I'm anxious to see The Tree of Life. The movie is set to open May 4 in the U.K., but there ...

After the lunch conference I run into my cousin Nell Lovell on the steps of the library—where I go occasionally ...

National Book Award winner The Moviegoer, and eight additional titles from bestselling author Walker Percy are now available as ebooks from Open Road Integrated Media. The Moviegoer tells the story of New Orleans stockbroker Binx Bolling, a man torn between the traditions of his genteel Southern family and the temptations of the modern secular world. When the novel was originally published in 1961, Time wrote that Percy “appears, first time out, clothed in originality, intelligence and a fierce regard for man's fate.” The following year the novel won the National Book Award and has since become an American literary ...