"Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected."

When they were both young, Walker Percy and Shelby Foote took a road trip to William Faulkner's house in Oxford, Mississippi, intending to introduce themselves to the great man. On the curb outside, Percy chickened out and stayed in the car. From there, he got to watch his bolder friend Foote sipping whiskey on the porch with Faulkner, and I'd give anything to know what he was thinking. Frankly, in that scenario, I would be in the car with Percy, too much in awe to make the approach. 

Then again, I'd be too much in awe of Percy to sit with him in the car. I'd need some vantage point down the street where I could observe the scene twice removed. This is probably the best angle from which to view one's heroes anyway.

In The Thanatos Syndrome, Percy writes: "Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected." He has epidemiology in mind, though this could just as easily serve as a rationale for conspiracism (see Foucault's Pendulum). I take it, though, as a paraphrase of Henry James' dictum, "Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!" I don't imagine much was lost on Walker Percy, the quintessential observer, as he sat behind the wheel on Faulkner's curb.