Next week at this time, I’ll be eating crawfish and drinking beer under the live oaks at the Walker Percy Weekend. Know who will be with us? Peter Augustine Lawler, who wrote about Percy at NRO this week. Excerpt:

But Percy, of course, was an American. The man who raised him, the poet-philosopher William Alexander Percy, was a genuine Southern Stoic, as well as a fervently patriotic American and a magnanimous community organizer. It’s the South, Tocqueville tells us, that adds an aristocratic dimension to our country. It was, from one view, one of the most monstrous aristocracies ever, rooted in the spirtualized despotism of race-based or modern slavery. Still, we can look to the South to find the virtues characteristic of any aristocracy — honor (often violent), courage, generosity, magnanimity, the leisurely enjoyment of life, an appreciation of the finer things for their own sake, a nonutilitarian view of education, and the more general thought that with privileges come responsibilities. And Will Percy tells us that the guide for Southern aristocrats was the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, who told each of us how to live as a self-sufficiently rational man who will never compromise who he is, even in the most desperate circumstances. If you can really rule yourself, then you’re worthy of ruling others. Think here of Admiral Stockdale, certain Tom Wolfe characters, and of course the most accessible role model of Stoic courage and magnanimity in American literature — Atticus Finch.

Well, Walker Percy sees the truth in the Stoic criticism of the classless, clueless, endlessly self-indulgent and vulgar consumerism of modern American middle-class life. But he also came to see the truth of the Christian — or loving, egalitarian, and personal (Kierkegaard and Pascal) — criticism of Stoicism, which led him to a measured and partial affirmation of the liberal and egalitarian understanding of justice. The result was a kind of homegrown American Thomism.

If you bought tickets to the Walker Percy Weekend, you’ll be able to talk about all this with Peter over crawfish and beer. You’ll be able to hear Peter the next morning, then see him again on Saturday night at the cochon de lait. And not just Peter, but Wilfred McClay, Ralph Wood, Micah Mattix, Caleb Stegall, Ari Schulman, Peter Connelly, Emily Jones, Win Riley, Ben Bergholtz, and others.

If you bought all-in-one tickets, or tickets to the dinners, you’re in for a special treat. Both nights will be catered by Chef Cody Carroll of Hot Tails, a Cajun restaurant that’s my favorite local place to eat. Cody is one of the hottest young chefs in Louisiana, and he loves to talk about cooking and eating real Louisiana food. He and his wife Samantha are two of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet — and you’ll get to meet them. Friday night is crawfish and Louisiana craft beer. Saturday night is a pig roast (cochon de lait), grilled oysters, fried catfish, and blackberry cobbler. I heard that there will be Bourbon also.

If you didn’t buy tickets, well, we’re sold out. But there’s always next year…