Walker Percy: A Final Review : Books: The late lanky novelist, whose powerful works depicted the New South, gets a belated send-off in New York.

On a chilly afternoon, as Manhattan’s rush hour filled the streets and sidewalks, friends and admirers of the late Walker Percy gathered in a hushed midtown church Wednesday to remember his living legacy as a writer.

Percy, whose powerful novels about the South are studies in human faith and despair, was called a titan of American letters by such luminaries as Eudora Welty, Shelby Foote, Wilfrid Sheed, Mary Lee Settle and Stanley Kauffmann.

“He was, quite simply, the best we’ve got,” said Welty, speaking in a frail voice to a crowd of more than 400 at St. Ignatius’ Church.

“He’d always say, it’s the job of the novelist not to notice how things are, but (to show) that people don’t notice how awful things are. . . . He said there’s something worse than being deprived of life. It’s being deprived of life and not knowing it.”

Percy, the author of novels including “The Moviegoer,” “Love in the Ruins” and “The Thanatos Syndrome,” died of cancer on May 10 in Covington, La. Although he suffered a painful death, those who knew him best spoke of the lanky, good-humored author in the present tense, as if he was somehow listening to them in a pew at the back of the church.

“I heard of his passing by reading an obituary, and I suddenly felt a cold draft, as if somehow I had left the window open,” said writer Wilfrid Sheed. “But just looking at his wonderful books reminds me of how easily he can be brought back to life . . . and that’s why this day is a celebration.”

Percy came to the writing craft late in life, publishing his first novel, “The Moviegoer,” in 1961, when he was 45. Earlier, he had received a medical degree from Columbia University, but contracted tuberculosis after performing autopsies on derelicts and spent two years in a sanitarium.

There, undergoing an epiphany like the character of Hans Castorp in Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain,” Percy decided to drop medicine. Instead, he would explore himself and the world around him by becoming a writer.

In his six novels, Percy was one of the first American authors to depict the New South--a land of suburban malls, fast-food and spiritual pain cut loose from its historical moorings. A devout Roman Catholic, he portrayed the drabness and normalcy of modern life in a search for higher meaning, blending themes of existential doubt and religious faith.

Percy won the National Book Award for his first novel in 1962 and gained widespread recognition for his works thereafter. An accomplished essayist as well, Doc Percy, as he came to be known, was once described by critic Alfred Kazin as “the satiric Dostoevski of the bayou.”

“I didn’t know him, but I was his pupil,” said author Mary Settle. “He taught me really for the first time that everything can be magic . . . a trunk in an attic, the ninth green on a golf course. An old greenhouse could become a castle.”

Kauffmann, now a critic who edited “The Moviegoer” when it was published by Alfred A. Knopf, recalled a humorous side to the then-fledgling author. Although the first draft was brilliant in parts, he said, it needed to be rewritten. Percy obliged, retooling the book twice in 14 months.

When it was published, the novel was “favorably reviewed, but irritatingly, briefly reviewed,” Kauffmann said. He tried to cheer up Percy, telling him his career would take off, but didn’t think he was too convincing.

A year later, when the novel won the coveted National Book Award, Kauffmann said it was “lifted from oblivion to the top ranks of American literature, where it belongs. And Walker called me after he heard the news. For one minute, we laughed and laughed. Laughing with Walker Percy, it was a privilege, let me tell you.”

Author and historian Shelby Foote recalled that Percy once told the producers of the “Today” show that he couldn’t appear on their program, because he had no socks that would cover his calves.

But Foote grew somber as he recalled his last letter from Percy, when the author was fighting a losing battling against cancer. His friend of 60 years wrote him that “hospitals are no place for anyone, let alone a sick man.” The author noted that “death is no big thing,” because he still had his faith, but it was “an expense to others . . . and an indignity.”

“There was never anything sentimental between us. We didn’t want it to end that way,” Foote said, his voice breaking.

Toward the end of the ceremony, Patrick Samway SJ, recalled Percy’s May 12 funeral, noting that most of the attendees didn’t know each other.

“But all had come because of this one man who had charmed them in so many ways, by word and deed. And so we say to Walker: Requiescat in pace. “