Walker Percy was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on 28 May 1916. He married Mary Bernice Townsend in 1946, has two daughters, and is very much the family man and private person at his home in Covington, Louisiana. He claims to read little fiction and to associate with few other writers; he says he doesn't see himself as particularly literary. This current situation is in contrast with his upbringing.

Percy's lawyer father descended from a long line of lawyers who often wrote as an avocation; his mother came from a prominent Georgia family. When Percy was eleven, his father committed suicide; two years later his mother was killed in an auto accident. Percy and his two brothers were thereupon adopted by their father's cousin, William Alexander Percy, whose multifaceted abilities proved a strong influence on them. William Percy's house in Greenville, Mississippi, attracted many cultural enthusiasts; authors such as William Faulkner visited...