( 7 reviews )
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Posted: May 15 2009
Even though his last novel was published over twenty years ago, Walker Percy remains one of the most insightful authorial voices about the perilous state Western humanity finds itself in in our contemporary age. LANCELOT remains his greatest fictional accomplishment, with his most refined sense of character and purpose. However, readers may misunderstand the novel if they fail to take into account the book's epigraph: "He sank so low that all means / for his salvation were gone, / except showing him the lost people." Here's a hint: the epigraph does not refer to the central figure and narrator, Lancelot.
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( 2 of 2 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jun 22 2008
Walker Percy is an establishment in modern southern literature. His novels, while roving in plot, are firmly set explorations of time and place, of people's actions and reactions. "Lancelot" is a quick-paced, at-times absurd read through the mind of one man in an insane asylu: it is Percy at his wittiest and most unguarded. The reader is drawn in immediately, beckoned by Lancelot's call to 'come into my cell', a statement made to a psychiatrist-priest, but reads as if directed at the reader. Lancelot begins by regaling his old friend with stories of their shared youths, before moving into the gaps where they lost touch with each other - his marriages and children, his famous house Belle Isle, and the most important, the reason why he is in the "nuthouse". Lancelot's narrataive shifts rapidly between times, one minute focused on his most recent wife Margot before shifting almost with no transition to his first wife. The core of the story lies with Lancelot's discovery that his youngest daughter is not his and that his wife is still cheating on him. With her gang of movie friends filming at Bell Isle, Lancelot tries to find the evidence he needs to prove that Margot is unfaithful to him, and takes the solution to that problem in his own hands. Readers of Walker Percy may be most familiar with "The Moviegoer" or other more popular titles. They may be surprised by the frankness of "Lancelot", the blunt observations and fantasies of its main character, and how graphic some of those observations and thoughts are. Yet this seeming departure is in keeping with the story at hand and with Lancelot's character. "Lancelot" is a thoroughly enjoyable novel, with several laugh-out-loud moments, with a somewhat ambiguous ending that will leave readers wanting to know more.
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Posted: Dec 8 2006
Percy's Lancelot draws on a thought from Kierkegaard that begins his book the Moviegoer (paraphasing), "The worst thing about being in despair is not knowing one is in despair." From his despair, Lancelot's anger and rage drive him on a quest for the Holy Grail of Evil that leads to ultimately great crimes. But, in his quest he discovers the truth about evil, that it is in fact a "nothing" because it exists only in relation to the good. However, the discovery of the "nothingness" of evil has grave consequences which Lancelot describes through much of the novel. The dialgoue of Lancelot and Percival does a great job of showing that one's "character" is the sum total of his/her moral choices. Lancelot makes a choice for evil and reaps the consequences that spin him into moral chaos, while Percival (his friend the priest-psychiatrist) has chosen to follow the path of goodness. The book is a great comparison and contrast of the battle of good and evil that occurs in every one of us.
