The Daily Stoic

In 1961, Walker Percy published his great Stoic-inspired novel The Moviegoer. Like all classics, the book's success was by no means guaranteed. In fact, it became the subject of one of the strangest controversies in publishing history. You see, even though the novel was brilliant, its publisher, Alfred Knopf, was no fan. He even fired the editor who acquired it and had been so instrumental in shaping it into the masterpiece it became. When it came time to nominate one of his titles for the National Book Awards that year, Knopf submitted The Château by William Maxwell, a now mostly forgotten book. It was only a bit of random luck for Percy that followed—the husband of a woman on the committee happened to have read a review of Percy’s book in the paper, read the book, loved it, gave it to his wife, who gave it to the other committee members a few days before the final decision needed to be made. Out of nowhere, Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer—the first novel of a doctor, not a trained writer—ended up winning