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Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
Walker Percy's mordantly funny and wholly original contribution to the self-help book craze deals with the Western mind's tendency toward heavy abstraction. This favorite of Percy fans continues to charm and beguile readers of all tastes and backgrounds. Lost in the Cosmos invites us to think about how we communicate with our world.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
470 people are currently reading
5881 people want to read
About the author
Walker Percy
53 books814 followersWalker Percy was an American writer whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is noted for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans; his first, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award for Fiction.
Trained as a physician at Columbia University, Percy decided to become a writer after a bout of tuberculosis. He devoted his literary life to the exploration of "the dislocation of man in the modern age." His work displays a combination of existential questioning, Southern sensibility, and deep Catholic faith. He had a lifelong friendship with author and historian Shelby Foote and spent much of his life in Covington, Louisiana, where he died of prostate cancer in 1990.
Trained as a physician at Columbia University, Percy decided to become a writer after a bout of tuberculosis. He devoted his literary life to the exploration of "the dislocation of man in the modern age." His work displays a combination of existential questioning, Southern sensibility, and deep Catholic faith. He had a lifelong friendship with author and historian Shelby Foote and spent much of his life in Covington, Louisiana, where he died of prostate cancer in 1990.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 330 reviews
August 25, 2014
You have just finished Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos. You are prompted to give a brief review on the book. You describe the book as
1.) A unique and alternative way of storytelling, befitting roughly of your zeitgeist, with a tinge of satire and elbow ribbing, but ultimately a humorous book. Yes, it grapples with spiritual and metaphysical questions still unanswered in modern society, but it does not offer answers. Its primary function is to be funny, entertaining.
2.) It is a spiritually wholesome novel that must be taken seriously. It is an attack on the culture and the way we usually answer and grapple with questions. e.g. the ultimate shallowness of scientism, the fraudulence of self-help book genres and that the Self cannot ultimately help itself, the lack of understanding or even confronting of what the Self really is. This is a wakeup call and a dire one at that that has been largely ignored in the three decades even since its publication.
3.) It is a joke, but a joke in the most serious, Kafkaesque fashion. The joke ultimately being the reader itself and the book, much like the abyss, enjoying the last and everlasting laugh.
Choose one
A Robotics company out of Japan has just announced their launch of of new robotic dogs. The dogs are marketed and designed as companions, can be replicated to mimic any desirable pet (cat, dog, turtle &c) including hair, sounds, circadian cycles and even, to a degree movement of bodies. They are not service pets, they are meant to be companions.
An ambitious and popular marketing campaign is launched to try and appeal to the American consumer. No one is as fondly attached to pets as Americans, the research says. For instance, a dogbot is marketed as saving money on food, flea treatment, and waste management. The dog still walks and "wants" to play catch, can sleep on your bed at night, lick your toes, in short, do all the idiosyncratic, enjoyable things that a dog does.
Sales are not good. In fact they are bad, even though no one at the company wants to use that word. The robots are simply undesirable despite a popular TV commercial campaign. The following questionnaire is submitted to the company executives.
Of the following which option do you believe is the best description as to why the product failed.
1.) People know first and foremost that they are not pets. They are copies, replicas. They are therefore not the "original" or "real" and people want "originals" and "real" things especially when most pets are fairly affordable and not expensive to maintain, even factoring in food.
2.) People actually prefer the trouble of a dog peeing, pooping, carrying fleas and chewing up shoes. Not just from an authenticity issue, but people actually prefer flawed things and beings in their life. Every person sees themselves as flawed and sees all others around them as flawed. A Self is not a Self without flaw, sin.
3.) We live in an age and culture that celebrates the concept of "real" even though our definition of this word is tenuous at best. Real depends on perception, but also on the preconception that "real"ness a.) exists and b.) should be celebrated. It is not the product's fault, but instead we should seek to change the culture and attitude.
(Choose one).
You are writing a review for Lost in the Cosmos. You read the book in one sitting and are enthusiastic about sharing it with others. However, your internet goes out just as you sit down to the computer to type your review. In fact, the television says that the Internet is down for the foreseeable future all over the world. Your goal was to write a review that mimicked the form of Lost in the Cosmos and you knew that the only people that would appreciate it were the people that had already read it; that is, the people in the know about the format and style you are mimicking. None of your friends in real life have ever read the book. In fact, most of your friends don't read recreationally. Perhaps with the Internet down people will begin to read more but you can't be sure. Therefore without the Internet your review becomes unsharable.
Despite all this you write the review. Which of the following describes your feelings upon its completion?
1.) Disappointment. You can't share the review with anyone and the impetus of a review is that it shares criticism, thoughts, ideas about the book with another. Sharing is at least half of the nature of a review and without sharing it, it is not a review.
2.) Boredom. Overwhelmingly you miss the Internet. The review gave you something to do, but the Internet has engendered a What's Next syndrome in you in which you are always looking for the next thing to do. You are not really worried about the review itself so much as just being able to do something.
3.) Accomplishment. Despite the fact that no one is reading it besides yourself, you know that it is quite objectively a very good review, and you'd like to think that a good piece of work is good work and that whether or not people read it doesn't change the fact that what it is: a review, meaning the existence of an essence of sharing, the other essence present is that, at bare minimum, it is very good. You don't have anyone else to tell you it is good, you just know in a vague metaphysical way that it is.
(Choose one)
1.) A unique and alternative way of storytelling, befitting roughly of your zeitgeist, with a tinge of satire and elbow ribbing, but ultimately a humorous book. Yes, it grapples with spiritual and metaphysical questions still unanswered in modern society, but it does not offer answers. Its primary function is to be funny, entertaining.
2.) It is a spiritually wholesome novel that must be taken seriously. It is an attack on the culture and the way we usually answer and grapple with questions. e.g. the ultimate shallowness of scientism, the fraudulence of self-help book genres and that the Self cannot ultimately help itself, the lack of understanding or even confronting of what the Self really is. This is a wakeup call and a dire one at that that has been largely ignored in the three decades even since its publication.
3.) It is a joke, but a joke in the most serious, Kafkaesque fashion. The joke ultimately being the reader itself and the book, much like the abyss, enjoying the last and everlasting laugh.
Choose one
A Robotics company out of Japan has just announced their launch of of new robotic dogs. The dogs are marketed and designed as companions, can be replicated to mimic any desirable pet (cat, dog, turtle &c) including hair, sounds, circadian cycles and even, to a degree movement of bodies. They are not service pets, they are meant to be companions.
An ambitious and popular marketing campaign is launched to try and appeal to the American consumer. No one is as fondly attached to pets as Americans, the research says. For instance, a dogbot is marketed as saving money on food, flea treatment, and waste management. The dog still walks and "wants" to play catch, can sleep on your bed at night, lick your toes, in short, do all the idiosyncratic, enjoyable things that a dog does.
Sales are not good. In fact they are bad, even though no one at the company wants to use that word. The robots are simply undesirable despite a popular TV commercial campaign. The following questionnaire is submitted to the company executives.
Of the following which option do you believe is the best description as to why the product failed.
1.) People know first and foremost that they are not pets. They are copies, replicas. They are therefore not the "original" or "real" and people want "originals" and "real" things especially when most pets are fairly affordable and not expensive to maintain, even factoring in food.
2.) People actually prefer the trouble of a dog peeing, pooping, carrying fleas and chewing up shoes. Not just from an authenticity issue, but people actually prefer flawed things and beings in their life. Every person sees themselves as flawed and sees all others around them as flawed. A Self is not a Self without flaw, sin.
3.) We live in an age and culture that celebrates the concept of "real" even though our definition of this word is tenuous at best. Real depends on perception, but also on the preconception that "real"ness a.) exists and b.) should be celebrated. It is not the product's fault, but instead we should seek to change the culture and attitude.
(Choose one).
You are writing a review for Lost in the Cosmos. You read the book in one sitting and are enthusiastic about sharing it with others. However, your internet goes out just as you sit down to the computer to type your review. In fact, the television says that the Internet is down for the foreseeable future all over the world. Your goal was to write a review that mimicked the form of Lost in the Cosmos and you knew that the only people that would appreciate it were the people that had already read it; that is, the people in the know about the format and style you are mimicking. None of your friends in real life have ever read the book. In fact, most of your friends don't read recreationally. Perhaps with the Internet down people will begin to read more but you can't be sure. Therefore without the Internet your review becomes unsharable.
Despite all this you write the review. Which of the following describes your feelings upon its completion?
1.) Disappointment. You can't share the review with anyone and the impetus of a review is that it shares criticism, thoughts, ideas about the book with another. Sharing is at least half of the nature of a review and without sharing it, it is not a review.
2.) Boredom. Overwhelmingly you miss the Internet. The review gave you something to do, but the Internet has engendered a What's Next syndrome in you in which you are always looking for the next thing to do. You are not really worried about the review itself so much as just being able to do something.
3.) Accomplishment. Despite the fact that no one is reading it besides yourself, you know that it is quite objectively a very good review, and you'd like to think that a good piece of work is good work and that whether or not people read it doesn't change the fact that what it is: a review, meaning the existence of an essence of sharing, the other essence present is that, at bare minimum, it is very good. You don't have anyone else to tell you it is good, you just know in a vague metaphysical way that it is.
(Choose one)
January 18, 2014
I have read and reread this book half a dozen times. No doubt that number will reach a dozen or more during the course of my lifetime. It is, first of all, absolutely hilarious: a subtler, non-narrative, written precursor to "I Heart Huckabees." Who are we? Why are we here? What is the problem of the Self and how do we resolve it?
These questions are presented as both ridiculous and fundamental, a cause for laughter, sadness, and reflection. I remember wanting to cry and scream for joy when I first read Percy's discussion of signs, the way we perceive our world, and our struggle to accurately situate ourselves in that world. Who has not felt lost in the cosmos? Who has not felt like they sit on a sliding scale that takes them from being the hero of an epic universal drama to the most insignificant asshole all of existence has ever seen? We do not have signs that sufficiently represent ourselves, so how can our human minds ever really understand who we are? What are the repercussions of all this for how we live our lives?
There aren't any answers, but I love how this book lovingly jabs at those who ask the questions AS it answers the question "why do we ask questions?" It's all a little ludicrous and cerebral and frustrating, which is part of the point. Yet we're not supposed to ever stop asking.
For me, this book has served as a framework for my worldview. Sometimes it makes my brain buzz with the desire to wrap itself around something I can never quite grasp, and sometimes it shoots me right back into myself with the awareness that, sign or no sign, I'm just what I am.
These questions are presented as both ridiculous and fundamental, a cause for laughter, sadness, and reflection. I remember wanting to cry and scream for joy when I first read Percy's discussion of signs, the way we perceive our world, and our struggle to accurately situate ourselves in that world. Who has not felt lost in the cosmos? Who has not felt like they sit on a sliding scale that takes them from being the hero of an epic universal drama to the most insignificant asshole all of existence has ever seen? We do not have signs that sufficiently represent ourselves, so how can our human minds ever really understand who we are? What are the repercussions of all this for how we live our lives?
There aren't any answers, but I love how this book lovingly jabs at those who ask the questions AS it answers the question "why do we ask questions?" It's all a little ludicrous and cerebral and frustrating, which is part of the point. Yet we're not supposed to ever stop asking.
For me, this book has served as a framework for my worldview. Sometimes it makes my brain buzz with the desire to wrap itself around something I can never quite grasp, and sometimes it shoots me right back into myself with the awareness that, sign or no sign, I'm just what I am.
July 31, 2016
The irony of the self-help genre is that its main function is to provide non-self-originating help those who can't help themselves. Or in rather kinder terms, to "help people who can't help themselves". It is ironic both in the name, "self-help", which is a typically attractive advertising inaccuracy, and in its goal, which is to help the self gain control over some area of its life, rather than help the self know itself in any meaningful way. Percy has written a book to help the self know that it doesn't know itself.
How will Lost In The Cosmos teach you about yourself? By showing you how to ask the right questions, and teaching you how to see the "self" for what it is. What is the self? Read the book and arrive at your own conclusion.
Percy shows us how to think rightly about oneself. This is why the book is so valuable and so superlative compared to the rest of the self-help genre. After reading Lost in the Cosmos, one does not have a desire to read any more self-help; one just wants to get on with being a self. This is a book that allows you to move on to deeper topics like philosophy rather than, like dieting books, perpetuating itself through maddening impotency. That us why the book is subtitled "The Last Self-Help Book."
I give 5 stars and permanent respect to Percy for this book.
How will Lost In The Cosmos teach you about yourself? By showing you how to ask the right questions, and teaching you how to see the "self" for what it is. What is the self? Read the book and arrive at your own conclusion.
Percy shows us how to think rightly about oneself. This is why the book is so valuable and so superlative compared to the rest of the self-help genre. After reading Lost in the Cosmos, one does not have a desire to read any more self-help; one just wants to get on with being a self. This is a book that allows you to move on to deeper topics like philosophy rather than, like dieting books, perpetuating itself through maddening impotency. That us why the book is subtitled "The Last Self-Help Book."
I give 5 stars and permanent respect to Percy for this book.
April 29, 2008
Capsule Review: Don't Read Walker Percy. Ever.
Longer Review: If somebody recommends this book (or any other of his books) to you, rest assured that that he will one day soon try to convince you that the Eagles really are rock n' roll. Afterwards, he will probably inflict some of his "poetry" on you. You know the kind of stuff I mean: four-line stanzas in ABAB that will inevitably rhyme the words "pain" with "insane," "soul" with "hole," "heart" with "apart," and "feel" with "unreal." Luckily, though, you will see this coming, and as soon as your friend/lover/spouse/relative/coworker/mutual or new acquaintance/etc. recommends this author to you, you can immediately make the decision forever to exclude him (or her) from your literary life. That's right: whenever he mentions some book he read, change the subject. Talk about the weather; fake a seizure, if necessary. For example, say your boss, Mr. When-I'm-in-My-Car-I-Rock-Out-to-The Best of Sting, has previously recommended to you a novel written by one Walker Percy (thus alerting you that all of his taste is in his mouth). Your boss then approaches you one morning and says, "Hey, Suzy, how are you? You know, I was rereading Anne Rice this weekend, and I thought of you, because, you know, you can read, and I thought you might enjoy it." At this point, casually announce that the sun has given you cancer and you no longer have time to read before you die. Watch him shut up.
(And yes, I've posted the exact same review for all the Walker Percy books I've been unfortunate enough to read. Percy's works aren't worth more than one original review. Besides, if you've read one of his books, you've read them all.)
Longer Review: If somebody recommends this book (or any other of his books) to you, rest assured that that he will one day soon try to convince you that the Eagles really are rock n' roll. Afterwards, he will probably inflict some of his "poetry" on you. You know the kind of stuff I mean: four-line stanzas in ABAB that will inevitably rhyme the words "pain" with "insane," "soul" with "hole," "heart" with "apart," and "feel" with "unreal." Luckily, though, you will see this coming, and as soon as your friend/lover/spouse/relative/coworker/mutual or new acquaintance/etc. recommends this author to you, you can immediately make the decision forever to exclude him (or her) from your literary life. That's right: whenever he mentions some book he read, change the subject. Talk about the weather; fake a seizure, if necessary. For example, say your boss, Mr. When-I'm-in-My-Car-I-Rock-Out-to-The Best of Sting, has previously recommended to you a novel written by one Walker Percy (thus alerting you that all of his taste is in his mouth). Your boss then approaches you one morning and says, "Hey, Suzy, how are you? You know, I was rereading Anne Rice this weekend, and I thought of you, because, you know, you can read, and I thought you might enjoy it." At this point, casually announce that the sun has given you cancer and you no longer have time to read before you die. Watch him shut up.
(And yes, I've posted the exact same review for all the Walker Percy books I've been unfortunate enough to read. Percy's works aren't worth more than one original review. Besides, if you've read one of his books, you've read them all.)
April 11, 2015
I really wanted to like this book. The first few pages pulled me in and I thought I had stumbled upon what was sure to become one of my favourite reads.
Alas, this book was mind-boggling and infuriating and I don't have the patience or desire to appreciate this book. I did not answer any of the questions that Percy offers (mostly because as I read through the possible answers my own answer seemed obvious). Percy writes very academically, with a strong grasp of science, psychology, philosophy and semiotics. He litters the book with cultural allusions and references, some of which I recognize well enough (e.g. Johnny Carson, Freud, my beloved G.K. Chesterton), but most of them are unknown to me and serve only to date the book.
"Lost in the Cosmos" is certainly unique, but I did not find it compelling or a good read.
Alas, this book was mind-boggling and infuriating and I don't have the patience or desire to appreciate this book. I did not answer any of the questions that Percy offers (mostly because as I read through the possible answers my own answer seemed obvious). Percy writes very academically, with a strong grasp of science, psychology, philosophy and semiotics. He litters the book with cultural allusions and references, some of which I recognize well enough (e.g. Johnny Carson, Freud, my beloved G.K. Chesterton), but most of them are unknown to me and serve only to date the book.
"Lost in the Cosmos" is certainly unique, but I did not find it compelling or a good read.
September 27, 2013
I understand, I think, the adoration some readers have for Walker Percy's
Lost In The Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
. But while I might garner an aloof admiration for Percy's project, I can't generate much love for it. This is partially because Percy worked hard to keep the book “cool” (in the McLuhan sense of the word), and thus difficult to love (surely a “hot” response). It's also partially because I kept getting the sense that even Percy was having trouble whipping up affection for the work.
The ubiquity of television seems to have rattled some writers the way the internet does writers today. In 1980, three years before Lost In The Cosmos was published, George W.S. Trow released a shrapnel-grenade of ironic observations entitled Within The Context Of No Context .
Trow saw television's accommodation of the immediate and argued that this speed-of-light process of adoption and abandonment created an entirely new context for the viewer: that of no context whatsoever. By essay's end, the only whimper Trow could muster was, “Irony has seeped into the felt of any fedora hat I have ever owned — not out of any wish of mine but out of necessity. A fedora hat worn by me without the necessary protective irony would eat through my head and kill me.” Trow's final refuge was a nostalgia for the era and mores of his parents (which he indulged to squirm-inducing effect in his final publications).
Percy's observations are somewhat similar, occasionally even in tone:
The salvation of art derives in the best of modern times from a celebration of the triumph of the autonomous self — as in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony — and in the worst of times from naming the unspeakable: the strange and feckless movements of the self trying to escape itself.
If Kafka's Metamorphosisis presently a more accurate account of the self than Beethoven's Ninth, it is the more exhilarating for being so . . .
Further down the same page:
Unlike the scientist, the artist has reentry problems that are frequent and catastrophic.
And, if the reader needs any help visualizing the problem, Percy
offers this cheeky illustration:
Percy sees television, and particularly Phil Donahue (the ur-Oprah), as the final embodiment of both expressions — the Celebration of the Unspeakable, you might say (“Man-Turned-Cockroach Marries Childhood Sweetheart: Exclusive Footage — Next!”). Throw in Percy's steely adherence to an all-but-extinct pre-Nietzschean classicism, the absurdity of which he wearily acknowledges, and what's not to love about this blunderbuss of eccentricity?
Well, there is the insistence on thought experiments as a genre, some of which fall with an undeniable thud. Witness this bit from “The Last Donahue Show”:
DONAHUE: C'mon, Allen. What are ya handing me? What d'ya mean you're happily married? You mean you're happy.
ALLEN: No, no. Vera's happy, too.
AUDIENCE (mostly women, groaning): Noooooooo.
DONAHUE: Okay-okay, ladies, hold it a second. What do you mean, Vera's happy? I mean, how do you manage — help me out, I'm about to get in trouble — hold the letters, folks —
Etc, etc. Scenes of this nature tend to generate unintended thought experiments of my own. To wit: Reader rolls eyes, sighs loudly and says, “Yes, yes, Doctor Percy: we get it.”
Part of this frustration is generated by a frustration I sense (help me out, I'm about to get in trouble) from the author himself. Here's a passage preceding the one I just quoted, from ALLEN'S Point-Of-View:
I'm a good person, I think. I work hard, am happily married, love my wife and family, also support United Way, served in the army. I drink very little, don't do drugs, have never been to a porn movie. My idea of R & R — maybe I got it in the army — is to meet an attractive woman. What a delight it is, to see a handsome mature woman, maybe in the secretarial pool, maybe in a bar, restaurant, anywhere, exchange eye contact, speak to her in a nice way, respect her as a person, invite her to join me for lunch . . . what a joy to go with her up in the elevator of the downtown Holiday Inn, both of you silent, relaxed, smiling, anticipating . . . .
Here we have a voice that Percy's readers know intimately: that of a self-satisfied roué who has mastered the ability to overlook the considerable impediments of his own character. It is also jarringly out-of-character with the piece that contains it, the bulk of which reads like an awkward parody of a show that could — within the context of no context — already be seen as self-parody.
This bit leaves me wondering if Percy didn't originally attempt to place his larger concerns within the context of a novelist — said novelist having already exploited the many suspensions of disbelief a movie-goer permits himself. Reading on, I have to wonder if Percy didn't also attempt the essayist's context, before giving up on that, as well. Lost In The Cosmos is a strange enough book that it might finally have revealed its relatively unique format to Percy by happy(ish) accident. Whatever the case, there are enough uneven (I'd go so far as to say, “indulgent”) passages to prevent the most trenchant of the book's insights from hitting with the force of authority Percy struggled to muster.
But then here am I, struggling to muster a little authority of my own. Whatever you do, don't give me the final word — sharper people than I (Tom Bartlett and Alan Jacobs, for starters) think this book is a terrific read. Get a copy and decide for yourself. I'll be returning to The Moviegoer and Lancelot for what I consider to be the deeper and more disturbing insights Percy has to offer.
The ubiquity of television seems to have rattled some writers the way the internet does writers today. In 1980, three years before Lost In The Cosmos was published, George W.S. Trow released a shrapnel-grenade of ironic observations entitled Within The Context Of No Context .
Trow saw television's accommodation of the immediate and argued that this speed-of-light process of adoption and abandonment created an entirely new context for the viewer: that of no context whatsoever. By essay's end, the only whimper Trow could muster was, “Irony has seeped into the felt of any fedora hat I have ever owned — not out of any wish of mine but out of necessity. A fedora hat worn by me without the necessary protective irony would eat through my head and kill me.” Trow's final refuge was a nostalgia for the era and mores of his parents (which he indulged to squirm-inducing effect in his final publications).
Percy's observations are somewhat similar, occasionally even in tone:
The salvation of art derives in the best of modern times from a celebration of the triumph of the autonomous self — as in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony — and in the worst of times from naming the unspeakable: the strange and feckless movements of the self trying to escape itself.
If Kafka's Metamorphosisis presently a more accurate account of the self than Beethoven's Ninth, it is the more exhilarating for being so . . .
Further down the same page:
Unlike the scientist, the artist has reentry problems that are frequent and catastrophic.
And, if the reader needs any help visualizing the problem, Percy
offers this cheeky illustration:
Percy sees television, and particularly Phil Donahue (the ur-Oprah), as the final embodiment of both expressions — the Celebration of the Unspeakable, you might say (“Man-Turned-Cockroach Marries Childhood Sweetheart: Exclusive Footage — Next!”). Throw in Percy's steely adherence to an all-but-extinct pre-Nietzschean classicism, the absurdity of which he wearily acknowledges, and what's not to love about this blunderbuss of eccentricity?
Well, there is the insistence on thought experiments as a genre, some of which fall with an undeniable thud. Witness this bit from “The Last Donahue Show”:
DONAHUE: C'mon, Allen. What are ya handing me? What d'ya mean you're happily married? You mean you're happy.
ALLEN: No, no. Vera's happy, too.
AUDIENCE (mostly women, groaning): Noooooooo.
DONAHUE: Okay-okay, ladies, hold it a second. What do you mean, Vera's happy? I mean, how do you manage — help me out, I'm about to get in trouble — hold the letters, folks —
Etc, etc. Scenes of this nature tend to generate unintended thought experiments of my own. To wit: Reader rolls eyes, sighs loudly and says, “Yes, yes, Doctor Percy: we get it.”
Part of this frustration is generated by a frustration I sense (help me out, I'm about to get in trouble) from the author himself. Here's a passage preceding the one I just quoted, from ALLEN'S Point-Of-View:
I'm a good person, I think. I work hard, am happily married, love my wife and family, also support United Way, served in the army. I drink very little, don't do drugs, have never been to a porn movie. My idea of R & R — maybe I got it in the army — is to meet an attractive woman. What a delight it is, to see a handsome mature woman, maybe in the secretarial pool, maybe in a bar, restaurant, anywhere, exchange eye contact, speak to her in a nice way, respect her as a person, invite her to join me for lunch . . . what a joy to go with her up in the elevator of the downtown Holiday Inn, both of you silent, relaxed, smiling, anticipating . . . .
Here we have a voice that Percy's readers know intimately: that of a self-satisfied roué who has mastered the ability to overlook the considerable impediments of his own character. It is also jarringly out-of-character with the piece that contains it, the bulk of which reads like an awkward parody of a show that could — within the context of no context — already be seen as self-parody.
This bit leaves me wondering if Percy didn't originally attempt to place his larger concerns within the context of a novelist — said novelist having already exploited the many suspensions of disbelief a movie-goer permits himself. Reading on, I have to wonder if Percy didn't also attempt the essayist's context, before giving up on that, as well. Lost In The Cosmos is a strange enough book that it might finally have revealed its relatively unique format to Percy by happy(ish) accident. Whatever the case, there are enough uneven (I'd go so far as to say, “indulgent”) passages to prevent the most trenchant of the book's insights from hitting with the force of authority Percy struggled to muster.
But then here am I, struggling to muster a little authority of my own. Whatever you do, don't give me the final word — sharper people than I (Tom Bartlett and Alan Jacobs, for starters) think this book is a terrific read. Get a copy and decide for yourself. I'll be returning to The Moviegoer and Lancelot for what I consider to be the deeper and more disturbing insights Percy has to offer.
January 16, 2021
Part philosophy, part parody of self-help books, part science fiction stories, part exploration of consciousness, meaning-of-life, relation of self to others, .... Sometimes blackly comic and almost nihilistic, but Percy is a committed Christian, so it never goes full nihil. The last chapters take on Carl Sagan for skipping directly from Greece to Galileo in "Cosmos", ignoring centuries of science from Christian and Jewish thinkers, and deals with questions brought up by Sagan's SETI project. The final chapter is a SF story involving characters from A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Overall interesting. Reminds me of Vonnegut, but I'd rather read Vonnegut. I wish I'd taken Percy's advice to skip 40 or so pages in the middle.
Overall interesting. Reminds me of Vonnegut, but I'd rather read Vonnegut. I wish I'd taken Percy's advice to skip 40 or so pages in the middle.
May 4, 2021
Thought experiment: Imagine you are walking down Madison Avenue behind Pacino, whom you have seen frequently in the movies but never in the flesh. He is shorter than you thought. His raincoat is thrown over his shoulder. Hands in pockets, he stops to look in the window of Abercrombie & Fitch. His face takes on a characteristic expression, jaws clenched, eyes dark and luminous, like young Corleone in The Godfather. The sight of Pacino in the flesh acting like Pacino on the screen gives you a peculiar pleasure. Then you become aware that though Pacino is looking at the articles in the window display, he is also checking his own reflection in the glass. This, too, gives you pleasure though of a different sort. Explain the difference.
(Hint: The esthetic pleasure of seeing an instance of a symbol, Pacino in the flesh at Abercrombie's, measure up and confirm to the symbol itself, Pacino on the screen, and the different pleasure of seeing the instance, Pacino, rescued from the symbol and restored to human creatureliness, the self in all its vagary, individuality, and folly. The first case: Ah, there is Pacino acting just like Corleone! The second case: Ah, there is Pacino acting just like me!)
(Hint: The esthetic pleasure of seeing an instance of a symbol, Pacino in the flesh at Abercrombie's, measure up and confirm to the symbol itself, Pacino on the screen, and the different pleasure of seeing the instance, Pacino, rescued from the symbol and restored to human creatureliness, the self in all its vagary, individuality, and folly. The first case: Ah, there is Pacino acting just like Corleone! The second case: Ah, there is Pacino acting just like me!)
April 8, 2021
Nicht wah
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.” Byron [Percy] Shelley
If, as analysand character prop. "..that the very unformulability of your self is the only clue you have to the uniqueness of yourself, that otherwise one will become yet another Ralph among a thousand Ralphs, or worse still, become an imitation of the psychotherapist."
Seventy-five or so pages later: "The self has no sign of itself. No signifier applies. All signifiers apply equally. You are Ralph to me and I am Walker to you, but you are not Ralph to you and I am not Walker to me. (Have you ever wondered why the Ralphs you know look as if they ought to be called Ralph and not Robert?)" What's with these "Ralph" bits I wonder? Why did not a Ralph enter his fiction so far as I can recall. Oh well on with the show....
"Lost in the Cosmos" THE LAST SELF-HELP BOOK reads like an admixture of galactic "Hitchhikers Guide" and one of these new-fangled psychological matrix examination/test/profile questionnaire where both Q&A get lathered up for a rinsing of higher order thinking/consciousness/emergent epiphany. Published in early 80's with Johnny Carson/Phil Donahue inserts this book yet is currently topical and ways prophetic. Though ironically hokey "Cosmos" also calls to mind a Wittgenstein approach, ladder Q&A of meaning, dialectic obfuscating "satori" of existence. There's a forty-page disquisition on semiotics and explication of triadic communication diagrams in the rise of civilizations ... oh but you'll just have to read it yourself.
Speaking of triangulations of signifiers ... Percy in all his writing/books explores this anomie associated with man brought forth in Modernist literature and as he describes through his Binx Bolling character in his first book "The Moviegoer" and so too in all subsequent books. This existential "boredom" plagues these characters while undergirding their pathologies. As nutty as this may sound I see a connection to insanity playing out front/center in US today. Percy's sick modern man drenched in this "anomie".."malaise" .. "disapointment".. not knowing how to evolve beyond it and acting out seemingly incoherent to check - I'm talking the mass murderer in Vegas without ANY as yet plausible motive, and I'm talking a President who tweets early morning tell all's along with idiotic/paranoid denouncements and/or proclamations of destructions etc., yet nobody seems to know what he's really "thinking" OR what he might actually DO.
From NY Times obit: "Thomas Nagel, a professor of philosophy at New York University, wrote in The New York Review of Books that ''The Moviegoer'' offered a pure and precise ''description of that malady of extreme detachment from perception and action which allows the victim to make contact with reality only when he is first dislodged, with greater or less violence, from his accustomed perch.''
From "LitC" "The fact is that, by virtue of its peculiar relationship to the world, to others, and to its own organism, the autonomous self in a modern technological society is possessed. It is possessed by the spirit of the erotic and the secret love of violence."
This book is anything BUT a simple "self-help" triviality, it is, rather, a canary call of the first order to WAKE-UP the guard(s) and call to mind our humanity before [it] under the guise of some bored gambler or president gets us all killed and, it's as timely today as when written - technology changes "things" but we remain fixed in our dilemma of self/consciousness remained.
Tack-on: re~Rorty
https://thepointmag.com/2017/politics...
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.” Byron [Percy] Shelley
If, as analysand character prop. "..that the very unformulability of your self is the only clue you have to the uniqueness of yourself, that otherwise one will become yet another Ralph among a thousand Ralphs, or worse still, become an imitation of the psychotherapist."
Seventy-five or so pages later: "The self has no sign of itself. No signifier applies. All signifiers apply equally. You are Ralph to me and I am Walker to you, but you are not Ralph to you and I am not Walker to me. (Have you ever wondered why the Ralphs you know look as if they ought to be called Ralph and not Robert?)" What's with these "Ralph" bits I wonder? Why did not a Ralph enter his fiction so far as I can recall. Oh well on with the show....
"Lost in the Cosmos" THE LAST SELF-HELP BOOK reads like an admixture of galactic "Hitchhikers Guide" and one of these new-fangled psychological matrix examination/test/profile questionnaire where both Q&A get lathered up for a rinsing of higher order thinking/consciousness/emergent epiphany. Published in early 80's with Johnny Carson/Phil Donahue inserts this book yet is currently topical and ways prophetic. Though ironically hokey "Cosmos" also calls to mind a Wittgenstein approach, ladder Q&A of meaning, dialectic obfuscating "satori" of existence. There's a forty-page disquisition on semiotics and explication of triadic communication diagrams in the rise of civilizations ... oh but you'll just have to read it yourself.
Speaking of triangulations of signifiers ... Percy in all his writing/books explores this anomie associated with man brought forth in Modernist literature and as he describes through his Binx Bolling character in his first book "The Moviegoer" and so too in all subsequent books. This existential "boredom" plagues these characters while undergirding their pathologies. As nutty as this may sound I see a connection to insanity playing out front/center in US today. Percy's sick modern man drenched in this "anomie".."malaise" .. "disapointment".. not knowing how to evolve beyond it and acting out seemingly incoherent to check - I'm talking the mass murderer in Vegas without ANY as yet plausible motive, and I'm talking a President who tweets early morning tell all's along with idiotic/paranoid denouncements and/or proclamations of destructions etc., yet nobody seems to know what he's really "thinking" OR what he might actually DO.
From NY Times obit: "Thomas Nagel, a professor of philosophy at New York University, wrote in The New York Review of Books that ''The Moviegoer'' offered a pure and precise ''description of that malady of extreme detachment from perception and action which allows the victim to make contact with reality only when he is first dislodged, with greater or less violence, from his accustomed perch.''
From "LitC" "The fact is that, by virtue of its peculiar relationship to the world, to others, and to its own organism, the autonomous self in a modern technological society is possessed. It is possessed by the spirit of the erotic and the secret love of violence."
This book is anything BUT a simple "self-help" triviality, it is, rather, a canary call of the first order to WAKE-UP the guard(s) and call to mind our humanity before [it] under the guise of some bored gambler or president gets us all killed and, it's as timely today as when written - technology changes "things" but we remain fixed in our dilemma of self/consciousness remained.
Tack-on: re~Rorty
https://thepointmag.com/2017/politics...
December 30, 2017
I disagree enough with Percy on some issues that I would, in other circumstances, give this book 4 stars. However, Percy is relentless and devastating in his assault on the problems with our postmodern culture. The fact that he offers this critique in a series of "multiple choice" Socratic thought questions makes the reader work that much harder to get the message. The fact that he cloaks his profundity in the guise of a self-help book, that genre from which we expect the least profundity, is hilarious. Another interesting observation is that that the core of this odd book is a 40 page essay on philosophy and semiotics.
This book is fantastic and should definitely be read for cultural engagement. If you can walk away from reading this unscathed, then you're probably not human.
This book is fantastic and should definitely be read for cultural engagement. If you can walk away from reading this unscathed, then you're probably not human.
January 17, 2013
I wanted to love this book. Maybe that was the problem, because I decidedly didn't. It was written in a style I didn't care for at all -- too flip? I felt the style obscured what was good and worthwhile in the book. And there were a few gems.
I loved The Moviegoer, the only other book of his I have read.
But this, I conked out before the end, which is rare. I put it on my bookshelf, hoping that maybe someday I will come back to it with different, more appreciative eyes.
I loved The Moviegoer, the only other book of his I have read.
But this, I conked out before the end, which is rare. I put it on my bookshelf, hoping that maybe someday I will come back to it with different, more appreciative eyes.
October 18, 2017
I am just DNFing this one. Really not funny or saying anything worthwhile.
May 25, 2020
Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos. The Last Self-Help Book is a birthday gift from my best friend who always forces me to exit my comfort zone and try something different than my usual readings.
And as usual, it was an interesting experience, this book with its eclectic structure that ironically tries many genres: psychology (the classification of various types of self – almost 20), the philosophical quiz (a modern way of the Socratic method), semiotics (this part I liked best), the short story (the last part, named in pastiche, A Space Odyssey).
Here is a quote from the semiotic part, where a short study is done regarding the difficulty experienced by the artist and the art-receiver to re-enter the ordinary world after the act of creation, respectively after the reception of the work of art:
And as usual, it was an interesting experience, this book with its eclectic structure that ironically tries many genres: psychology (the classification of various types of self – almost 20), the philosophical quiz (a modern way of the Socratic method), semiotics (this part I liked best), the short story (the last part, named in pastiche, A Space Odyssey).
Here is a quote from the semiotic part, where a short study is done regarding the difficulty experienced by the artist and the art-receiver to re-enter the ordinary world after the act of creation, respectively after the reception of the work of art:
It is one thing to write The Sound and the Fury, to achieve the artistic transcendence of discerning meaning in the madness of the twentieth century, then to finish it, then to find oneself at Reed’s drugstore the next morning. A major problem of re-entry, not solved, but anaesthetized by alcohol.
It is something else to listen to a superb performance of Mozart’s Twenty-first Piano Concerto, to walk out into Columbus Circle afterwards. At best, a moderately sustained exaltation; at worst, a mild letdown.
Read
November 5, 2024This book may be the epitome of the phrase “he calls a spade a spade.” Indeed, Percy sees the wretched yet gloriously macabre spade that is humanity and calls it precisely such. A reader, upon mistaking this book for one of those flimsy, vacuous self-help books that dominate the culture, would be utterly offended by this work… which is exactly why it is hilarious. But think not that this was written solely to be comedic! Underlying the humor, the book takes the human condition and presents it to the reader in the way it is displayed in modern society. Percy has a tight grasp on reality, despite it twisting and shape-shifting into the many wordly temptations of this era. He has a keen eye to see it in its simplicity. The book is, really, an exposee. Percy reveals the shallowness of the modern day; he forces the reader to zoom out to show them what a tiny speck they really are, and then zooms all the way back in in the next paragraph, leaving you asking what the point of it all is. It’s highly plausible that, were I not already a Christian, this book would either leave me extremely depressed or cause me to convert.
March 29, 2022
I am honestly surprised that I wasn't recommended this earlier. If you are not familiar, this is a self-help book whose conclusion more or less says that there's no way to help yourself, save perhaps a better understanding of the transcendent or help from a distant alien consciousness. When we can't even answer the question "who am I", surely we are ghosts in the cosmos and it makes sense why we would self-medicate.
In "Lost in the Cosmos", Percy holds a Master Class on tactful cultural critique, veiling his criticism only slightly by his mock humor style. His takedowns range from the hilarity of sexual liberation, the scientific fascination with primate communication, the inability for artist or even the lay philosopher to reenter society without self-destruction, and the preposterous of Utopian space colonization. The problem with humans is not that we can't understand our world, it's that we can't understand ourselves.
If you would like to be winsomely provoked in the best way possible, and even casually drawn to the absurd plausibility of Christian metaphysics... Here's the book for you.
In "Lost in the Cosmos", Percy holds a Master Class on tactful cultural critique, veiling his criticism only slightly by his mock humor style. His takedowns range from the hilarity of sexual liberation, the scientific fascination with primate communication, the inability for artist or even the lay philosopher to reenter society without self-destruction, and the preposterous of Utopian space colonization. The problem with humans is not that we can't understand our world, it's that we can't understand ourselves.
If you would like to be winsomely provoked in the best way possible, and even casually drawn to the absurd plausibility of Christian metaphysics... Here's the book for you.
March 20, 2022
Not sure how to review this book. It’s strange, and some parts I enjoyed reading, while other parts I did not. Percy has a darkly fun way of describing the state of our species, and I feel like I learned a bit, yet ironically have more questions than before. Some parts were a little too much for me, and I couldn’t exactly understand what Percy was attempting to communicate, although this is probably lack of understanding from my end, but it still reduced my enjoyment of this book. It is also definitely a book from a different time, and some descriptions of race and sexuality were not comfortable to read, and the book would have been better to read without it.
It’s in the middle for me, but I imagine I will be thinking about the contents of the book for some time.
It’s in the middle for me, but I imagine I will be thinking about the contents of the book for some time.
June 25, 2022
What a thought provoking read, it paired very nicely with seven brief lessons on magic, I love how the author pokes and prods at our lack of a metaphysic, and at the liberated sense that modernists have for not having a metaphysic, and then the crippling anxiety and despair that results.
January 11, 2025
Reading this was reminiscent of watching Seinfeld, in that if it weren't for the dated pop culture references, you could be convinced that it was written yesterday. So relatable, so entertaining, so thought-provoking. Can't wait to read more of Walker Percy.
July 4, 2024
The structure of a satirical self-help book was super fresh and entertaining, as was Percy's humor, which tended to be darker and more cynical than usual in this book. The pseudophilosophical musings that dominated most of the book, however, can be kind of maddening for anyone who has seriously studied philosophy. But I ended up having a lot of affection for the book by the time I put it down, in large part thanks to the space-travel and alien-encounter thought experiments in the final sections.
November 25, 2012
this book actually had a pretty huge effect on my worldview when i was young. going back, i was sort of surprised to see how great it really was--percy develops a sophisticated semiotic theory of the self, sexuality, and pretty much everything in modern culture, and does it in one of the best essay styles i've ever read, with lots of humor and frequent forays into metafiction. there are things i read in this book when i was like 15 that i still think about now, especially percy's model of the self as a black hole, and a long time ago this was where i was initially introduced to semiotics, which has been a big thing for me ever since.
this book is smart, funny, and at times percy sort of feels like a much more intellectual vonnegut. i definitely want to read some of his novels in the near future as well
this book is smart, funny, and at times percy sort of feels like a much more intellectual vonnegut. i definitely want to read some of his novels in the near future as well
August 1, 2015
? ? ?
Such a strange book. I liked it at first, so odd did it flow. I waited for Percy to answer the riddle of our existence. No answers did he put forth.
Semiotics. Somehow or other, semiotics and strong drink are important. I am now more lost in the Cosmos than before I read the book.
Such a strange book. I liked it at first, so odd did it flow. I waited for Percy to answer the riddle of our existence. No answers did he put forth.
Semiotics. Somehow or other, semiotics and strong drink are important. I am now more lost in the Cosmos than before I read the book.
June 4, 2020
Wow. What a weird and fascinating book.
January 17, 2026
It's easier than Message in a Bottle
It adapts his 1977 book into a 1983 quirk, twenty questions elaborating his theories of semiotics, language, and philosophy, into the pop culture detritus surrounding the success of Carl Sagan's Cosmos PBS series, pop-psychology such as Phil Donohue peddled, and the decline of mores already accelerated in the postwar decades into the counterculture, and the malaise indulged in by the bored middle classes despite their privilege. Percy does weigh down his presentation with the strident tone that in his less successful Dr Tom More pair of novels, Love in the Ruins and The Thanatos Syndrome, in my opinion however unpopular, and Lancelot, hasn't dated well...
But Percy managed to keep enough of his diagnosis of late 20th c American and Western post-Christian society lively enough to keep the tone lighter and less ponderous than Message. Like his fiction, it sustains an engagement with ideas about human foibles, our need to escape our mental limitations, and our spiritual amnesia within a cosmic indifference that defies the platitudes of true believers.
Percy may lack the folksy appeal which certain semi-sentimental interpreters of his fellow Southern Catholic critical thinker, Flannery O'Connor, currently finds her posthumous self enduring. Percy as her contemporary outlived her by a generation, and like another, now little-remembered writer J.F. Powers, might have wished he hadn't witnessed the full impacts of Vatican II in the Church. But Percy deserves careful attention, allowing for certain uncomfortable views on race and the opposite sex perhaps, to remain a vital influence on serious searchers today, while sly enough to rank with Powers and O'Connor in satire.
It adapts his 1977 book into a 1983 quirk, twenty questions elaborating his theories of semiotics, language, and philosophy, into the pop culture detritus surrounding the success of Carl Sagan's Cosmos PBS series, pop-psychology such as Phil Donohue peddled, and the decline of mores already accelerated in the postwar decades into the counterculture, and the malaise indulged in by the bored middle classes despite their privilege. Percy does weigh down his presentation with the strident tone that in his less successful Dr Tom More pair of novels, Love in the Ruins and The Thanatos Syndrome, in my opinion however unpopular, and Lancelot, hasn't dated well...
But Percy managed to keep enough of his diagnosis of late 20th c American and Western post-Christian society lively enough to keep the tone lighter and less ponderous than Message. Like his fiction, it sustains an engagement with ideas about human foibles, our need to escape our mental limitations, and our spiritual amnesia within a cosmic indifference that defies the platitudes of true believers.
Percy may lack the folksy appeal which certain semi-sentimental interpreters of his fellow Southern Catholic critical thinker, Flannery O'Connor, currently finds her posthumous self enduring. Percy as her contemporary outlived her by a generation, and like another, now little-remembered writer J.F. Powers, might have wished he hadn't witnessed the full impacts of Vatican II in the Church. But Percy deserves careful attention, allowing for certain uncomfortable views on race and the opposite sex perhaps, to remain a vital influence on serious searchers today, while sly enough to rank with Powers and O'Connor in satire.
February 6, 2026
I have never read a book like this one. Uniquely provocative and hilarious!! The first half was incredible and I couldn’t put it down. I was ready to give a 5 star rating! But, I was too distracted or bored during the second half and it just didn’t keep my attention. Knocked down to a 4 star.
April 2, 2025
Such a wild ride, but also so hilarious and really insightful. He has made me love the Gospel more than ever, although 90% of it is uncomfortable and vaguely depressing.
August 15, 2022
V fun. At times, devastating. Always hilarious.
January 9, 2026
I think this hit me at the wrong time in my life. I found it to be very smart and compelling, but terribly tedious. I would have enjoyed it a lot more 10 years ago
January 8, 2019
This is not a funny book
It is an insightful, challenging, cunning, creative, humourous, cutting and confrontational book. But it is definitely not a funny book. After years of having this book on my birthday/Christmas wishlist my wife finally bought it for me for Christmas and I brought it on our tropical winter vacation to the Canary Islands thinking it would make light beach-reading material. This is not the case.
The book is much heavier than I anticipated, (perhaps I anticipated something like Asimov's The Sensuous Dirty Old Man) in that it deals with core human concerns and values in a profound manner. It is arranged as a series of twenty questions, each with multiple choice answers. The answers to the questions are all clever, reflective of a particular perspective, philosophical, psychological, flawed and incomplete. They reveal the absurdity of the human experience, reflect the depths of the abyss, the shallowness of the self, the anxiety of being found out, the pride of the ego and the general displacement of the human in the cosmos.
Without spoiling too much, the chapters (each chapter contains a question and the various answers form the body of the chapter) are as follows:
1) The Amnesic Self: Why the Self Wants to Get Ride of Itself
2) The Self as Nought: How the Self Tries to Inform Itself by Possessing Things which do not Look like the Things they're used as
3) The Nowhere Self: How the Self, which Usually Experiences Itself as Living Nowhere, is Surprised to find that it Loves Somewhere
4) The Fearful Self: Why the Self is so Afraid of Being Found Out
5) The Fearful Self (II): Why the Self is so Afraid of being Stuck with Another Self
6) The Fearful Self (III): How the Self Tries to Escape its Predicament
7) The Misplaced Self: How Two Selves Confronting Eachother can Miscalculate, Each Attributing a Putative and Spurious Reality to the Other and Trying to Match it, with the Consequences that both Selves become Non-Selves
8) The Promiscuous Self: Why is it that One's Self often not only does not Prefer Sex with One's Chosen Mate, Chosen for his or Her Attractiveness and Suitability, even when the Mate is a Person well known to one, knowing of one, loved by one, with a Life, Time, Family in common, but rather prefers Sex with a New Person, even a Total Stranger, or even Vicariously Through Pornography
9) The Envious Self (in the root sense of envy: invidere, to look at with malice): Why is it that the Self- Though it Professes to be Loving, Caring, to Prefer Peace to War, Concord to Discord, Life to Death; to With Other Selves Well, not Ill- in Fact Secretly Relishes Wars and Rumours of Wars, News of Plane Crashes, Assassinations, Mass Murders, Obituaries, to say nothing about Local News about Acquaintances Dropping Dead in the Street, Gossip about Neighbors Getting in Fights or being Detected in Sexual Scandals, Embezzlements, and Other Disgraces
10) The Bored Self: Why the Self is the Only Object in the Cosmos Which Gets Bored
...
The Last two Chapter are Space Odessy Themed (one roughly based on one of the best books of all times, A Canticle for Leibowitz)
By some random chance, I had read Mortimer Adler's The Difference of Man and the Difference it Makes previous to reading this book and the two dovetail incredibly. Essentially, the postulation of both books is that man differs radically from other animals and even the rest of the cosmos. For Adler, Man differs as the only conceptual animal, which has many parallels to Percy's notion that man differs are the only Semiotic Animal. Percy's optional (but highly valualbe) primer on Semiotics stached in the middle of the book is a heavy aside, deep read but well worth the effort.
I have a feeling I will be reading this one again. I don't know if I would have appreciated it as much when I was younger but I wish I would have read it sooner.
It is an insightful, challenging, cunning, creative, humourous, cutting and confrontational book. But it is definitely not a funny book. After years of having this book on my birthday/Christmas wishlist my wife finally bought it for me for Christmas and I brought it on our tropical winter vacation to the Canary Islands thinking it would make light beach-reading material. This is not the case.
The book is much heavier than I anticipated, (perhaps I anticipated something like Asimov's The Sensuous Dirty Old Man) in that it deals with core human concerns and values in a profound manner. It is arranged as a series of twenty questions, each with multiple choice answers. The answers to the questions are all clever, reflective of a particular perspective, philosophical, psychological, flawed and incomplete. They reveal the absurdity of the human experience, reflect the depths of the abyss, the shallowness of the self, the anxiety of being found out, the pride of the ego and the general displacement of the human in the cosmos.
Without spoiling too much, the chapters (each chapter contains a question and the various answers form the body of the chapter) are as follows:
1) The Amnesic Self: Why the Self Wants to Get Ride of Itself
2) The Self as Nought: How the Self Tries to Inform Itself by Possessing Things which do not Look like the Things they're used as
3) The Nowhere Self: How the Self, which Usually Experiences Itself as Living Nowhere, is Surprised to find that it Loves Somewhere
4) The Fearful Self: Why the Self is so Afraid of Being Found Out
5) The Fearful Self (II): Why the Self is so Afraid of being Stuck with Another Self
6) The Fearful Self (III): How the Self Tries to Escape its Predicament
7) The Misplaced Self: How Two Selves Confronting Eachother can Miscalculate, Each Attributing a Putative and Spurious Reality to the Other and Trying to Match it, with the Consequences that both Selves become Non-Selves
8) The Promiscuous Self: Why is it that One's Self often not only does not Prefer Sex with One's Chosen Mate, Chosen for his or Her Attractiveness and Suitability, even when the Mate is a Person well known to one, knowing of one, loved by one, with a Life, Time, Family in common, but rather prefers Sex with a New Person, even a Total Stranger, or even Vicariously Through Pornography
9) The Envious Self (in the root sense of envy: invidere, to look at with malice): Why is it that the Self- Though it Professes to be Loving, Caring, to Prefer Peace to War, Concord to Discord, Life to Death; to With Other Selves Well, not Ill- in Fact Secretly Relishes Wars and Rumours of Wars, News of Plane Crashes, Assassinations, Mass Murders, Obituaries, to say nothing about Local News about Acquaintances Dropping Dead in the Street, Gossip about Neighbors Getting in Fights or being Detected in Sexual Scandals, Embezzlements, and Other Disgraces
10) The Bored Self: Why the Self is the Only Object in the Cosmos Which Gets Bored
...
The Last two Chapter are Space Odessy Themed (one roughly based on one of the best books of all times, A Canticle for Leibowitz)
By some random chance, I had read Mortimer Adler's The Difference of Man and the Difference it Makes previous to reading this book and the two dovetail incredibly. Essentially, the postulation of both books is that man differs radically from other animals and even the rest of the cosmos. For Adler, Man differs as the only conceptual animal, which has many parallels to Percy's notion that man differs are the only Semiotic Animal. Percy's optional (but highly valualbe) primer on Semiotics stached in the middle of the book is a heavy aside, deep read but well worth the effort.
I have a feeling I will be reading this one again. I don't know if I would have appreciated it as much when I was younger but I wish I would have read it sooner.
August 19, 2025
I don't think I get it and I don't know why I finished it
April 3, 2011
I read this several years ago and was really drawn in, and loved the tone and organization of the book. On reading it again, I got bogged down in the middle, shelved it for a while, then came back to it and quite enjoyed pushing through to the end. It's hard to explain exactly what this book IS. It's definitely not a self-help book in the sense of offering a theory on how to fix one's life. It's far more provocative and funny than that. Instead, Percy sets up scenarios, throws out a bunch of ideas, follows that with questions, and moves on. There is a section on langauge theory in the middle, and Percy's own comments about it kind of sum up much of the book: for those who aren't really into the more technical (scientific, semantic, etc.) aspects, it will seem far too technical, and for those who are into the technical aspects, it will seem far too simplified. Percy discusses various philosophical issues related to modern life, and our sense of self in a world that essentially encourages alienation from self. There is much about the tension between people clinging to old religious ideas, and people embracing science as a "quasi-religion," and Percy points out that in a lot of instances, people are essentially just naming the same concept in a different way; i.e. the big bang versus God calling everything into creation. Percy makes up hypothetical situations, plops in various characters, and encourages the reader to consider the various possible perspectives using a humourous multiple-choice strategy. Perhaps the end result can be simplified by saying that there is no definitive right and wrong, only different choices and different ways to view those choices. And Percy points out that most of us spend a lot more time engaging in activities that ensure we will continue to avoid knowing ourselves, rather than in trying to understand ourselves. There are things in the book that are outdated (it was written in 1983). For instance, much of Percy's discussion of sexual behavior revolves around the idea of people being bored and so exploring things that had previously been taboo, following from the sexual revolution and its aftermath, which fits in with his overall thesis, but not with more modern understandings of gender and orientation. There's also some racist language, which was delivered with a completely different intent then, but which just sounds ugly now--especially being delivered in the context of future scenarios. Overall, though, the book is worth checking out, definitely thought-provoking and often very funny.
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