Walker Percy
THE MAN ON THE TRAIN
Three Existential Modes
There is no such thing, strictly speaking, as a literature
of alienation. In the re-presenting of alienation the category is revers–
ed and becomes something entirely different. There is a great deal of
difference between an alienated commuter riding a train and this same
commuter reading a book about an alienated commuter riding a train.
(On the other hand, Huck Finn's drifting down the River is some–
what the same as a reader's reading about Huck Finn drifting down
the River.) The nonreading commuter exists in true alienation which
is unspeakable; the reading commuter rejoices in the speakability of
his alienation and in the new triple alliance of himself, the alienated
character, and the author. His mood is affirmatory and glad: Yes!
that is how it is!-which is an aesthetic reversal of alienation. It is
related that when Kafka read his work aloud to his friends, they
would all roar with laughter until tears came to their eyes. Neither
Kafka nor his reader is alienated in the movement of art, for each
achieves a reversal through its re-presenting. To picture a truly
ali–
enated man, picture a Kafka to whom it had never occurred to write
a word. The only literature of alienation is an alienated literature,
that is, a bad art, which is no art at all. An ErIe Stanley Gardner
novel is a true exercise in alienation. A man who finishes his twentieth
Perry Mason is that much nearer total despair than when he started.
I hasten to define what I mean by alienation, which has become
almost as loose an epithet as existentialism (if you do not agree with
me, it is probably because you are alienated). I mean that whereas
one commuter may sit on the train and feel himself quite at home,
