Rating: 
Summary: A message we have continued to miss
Review: Lancelot is an engrossing book. Moral issues are batted around and the nature of an individual's frame of reality completely shifts. I recommend this book to everyone. Everyone should read it. With the hurry and bustle of today's world I fear few will read it beyond a couple chapters...this book is not "hard." ...I recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: A sympathetic portrayal of a man who goes mad...or does he?
Review: Percy's flawless style plunges the reader, from the get go, into the hospital cell with the protagonist. His repetition serves to enhance the suspense of the novel's plot without frustrating the reader in the process. A powerful, accurate look at modern America, it should be recommended for any anyone feeling the least bit malcontent.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Percy's Best, But...
Review: Quite frankly, I found this the most difficult and least enjoyable of Percy's books. Percy is at his usual cranky self, poking at the delusions of modern life and ridiculing our self-assurance in spite of the fact that we're all rather lost. Good questions are asked. What is love and is it real? Is secular liberalism or Christianity true? What does sex mean? How can we escape boredom? Is life just some cosmic joke? What is missing in Lancelot, in my opinion, is the sly humour found in The Second Coming or Love in the Ruins. Lancelot is a departure from Percy's typical protagonist, not because he is some crazy, libidinal loner who concocts an apocalyptic scheme to prove some cosmic point (because all of Percy's protagonists fit that bill), but because he isn't particularly funny. Lancelot lacks the sense that the world is bigger than himself, and is so serious that he rarely cracks a joke. His soliloquies, therefore, end up as overly explicit narratives concerning other humourless characters. This is especially true of the play within the play --- the movie making subplot which gets a little self-referential (after all, isn't this the most cinematic of Percy's novels?). Still, enjoy Percy's craftsmanship, for there are far too few of his novels to be too fussy. What else is a crazy, libidinal, apocalyptic loner to do?
Rating:
Summary: Savage and beautiful
Review: This belongs in the highest tier of American fiction. Only Walker Percy could have distilled this masterpiece from the rotting Southern gentry and the moral rot of the life-is-just-a-movie generation. This suspenseful, funny, mesmerizing, brutalizing novel is the Love Song of Violent American Death that no Tarantino, no Stone, has ever come close to matching -- or ever will, because filmmakers who push the buttons of love and death are among the problems, the diseases, that Percy's Lancelot challenges to the joust. Read this and you will understand -- and shiver to understand -- the world's crusades. And possibly join one.
Rating:
Summary: Arthurian Romance meets Existentialism and Christianity
Review: This book changed my life, as cliche as that sounds. I would reccomend this book to anyone interested in intense philosophical and religious issues. Also any fans of southern writers like Faulkner will probably enjoy this book. It is also, however dense and confusing, like Faulkner, until you get into the swing of Percy's intriguing writing style, and religious philosophy. This is one book worth consulting critical essays on even if you are not a student. A familiarity with either existentialist thought, or a working knowledge of the Arthurian tales will aid you tremendously. Where other modern novels are like taking a stroll through the park this book is like running three marathons. Worth it all the same, very worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Arthurian Romance meets Existentialism and Christianity
Review: This book changed my life, as cliche as that sounds. I would reccomend this book to anyone interested in intense philosophical and religious issues. Also any fans of southern writers like Faulkner will probably enjoy this book. It is also, however dense and confusing, like Faulkner, until you get into the swing of Percy's intriguing writing style, and religious philosophy. This is one book worth consulting critical essays on even if you are not a student. A familiarity with either existentialist thought, or a working knowledge of the Arthurian tales will aid you tremendously. Where other modern novels are like taking a stroll through the park this book is like running three marathons. Worth it all the same, very worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Vintage Percy
Review: This book is a conversation between Lancelot Lamar and Percival. Lancelot, once a member of New Orleans' landed gentry, is now confined to a mental institution. Percival is a priest who went to medical school, and has devoted his life to altruistic endeavors. Lancelot was a "liberal" southern lawyer who validated his existence by working in civil rights litigation before a discovery that changed his life. This discovery causes a great awakening. This theme of awakening is prominent in Percy's works. A character arrives at an existential moment in which he realizes that his life to this point has been as a dream: "Do you know what happened to me during the past twenty years? A gradual, ever so gradual, slipping away of my life into a kind of dream state in which finally I could not be sure that anything was happening at all. Perhaps nothing happened." As Lancelot retraces the events in this monologue, we watch the progress of his mental state, and his weighing of possible world views. His selection of a world view will determine his actions. Another of Walker Percy's major literary themes is captured in an encounter between Lancelot and Elgin, a black MIT student. Lancelot mused, "Unlike him I had been unable to escape into the simple complexities of science. All he had to do was solve the mystery of the universe, which may be difficult but is not as difficult as living an ordinary life." On another level, Lancelot is a southern white who has roiling feelings about women. His struggle to allow women to be sexual creatures is mirrored in his expressed feelings about his mother, then about his wife, Margot. The reader senses a that Lancelot's feelings toward women are a river of ambivalence. Curiously, this is similar to Pat Conroy's characters, whose southern white characters either lust after or endure their mother, depending on the moment. If you like Walker Percy, you'll love this book. I do, and I recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Vintage Percy
Review: This book is a conversation between Lancelot Lamar and Percival. Lancelot, once a member of New Orleans' landed gentry, is now confined to a mental institution. Percival is a priest who went to medical school, and has devoted his life to altruistic endeavors. Lancelot was a "liberal" southern lawyer who validated his existence by working in civil rights litigation before a discovery that changed his life. This discovery causes a great awakening. This theme of awakening is prominent in Percy's works. A character arrives at an existential moment in which he realizes that his life to this point has been as a dream: "Do you know what happened to me during the past twenty years? A gradual, ever so gradual, slipping away of my life into a kind of dream state in which finally I could not be sure that anything was happening at all. Perhaps nothing happened." As Lancelot retraces the events in this monologue, we watch the progress of his mental state, and his weighing of possible world views. His selection of a world view will determine his actions. Another of Walker Percy's major literary themes is captured in an encounter between Lancelot and Elgin, a black MIT student. Lancelot mused, "Unlike him I had been unable to escape into the simple complexities of science. All he had to do was solve the mystery of the universe, which may be difficult but is not as difficult as living an ordinary life." On another level, Lancelot is a southern white who has roiling feelings about women. His struggle to allow women to be sexual creatures is mirrored in his expressed feelings about his mother, then about his wife, Margot. The reader senses a that Lancelot's feelings toward women are a river of ambivalence. Curiously, this is similar to Pat Conroy's characters, whose southern white characters either lust after or endure their mother, depending on the moment. If you like Walker Percy, you'll love this book. I do, and I recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Modern Literature at its Best
Review: This novel is wonderfully written. Walker Percy has quite a unique way of expressing thought in the English language. Unfortunately, unique does not always mean well done. In the case of Walker Percy, however, this novel is a masterpiece of prose. The first couple of pages take the reader into the mind of a man (Lancelot) at an insane asylum who is recollecting his crimes against his now dead wife. Percy uses Lancelot as a foil to pose many questions regarding our humanity and morality. For example, what is the sexual act? Why should it mean anything other than a biological act between two humans? What is it that causes man to be so grievously injured by adultery if the act is nothing but biology? Lancelot ponders these questions throughout the novel as he talks to his childhood friend who has become a priest. Percy gives no answers except to demonstrate through Lancelot that Lancelot's answers are lacking. Lancelot's answers form no moral basis. The story moves quickly as Lancelot recalls the events leading up to his crime. To that end, the clipped pace of the narrative suits the urgency of the action. The reader will understand just what he/she is getting in this novel within the first 20 pages. I recommend it highly, but do issue a caution that there is some quite honest dialogue in the novel that includes a fair amount of profanity. Though probably necessary to develope the character, some may be offended. Purchase the book and enjoy modern literature at its best.
Rating:
Summary: Modern Literature at its Best
Review: This novel is wonderfully written. Walker Percy has quite a unique way of expressing thought in the English language. Unfortunately, unique does not always mean well done. In the case of Walker Percy, however, this novel is a masterpiece of prose. The first couple of pages take the reader into the mind of a man (Lancelot) at an insane asylum who is recollecting his crimes against his now dead wife. Percy uses Lancelot as a foil to pose many questions regarding our humanity and morality. For example, what is the sexual act? Why should it mean anything other than a biological act between two humans? What is it that causes man to be so grievously injured by adultery if the act is nothing but biology? Lancelot ponders these questions throughout the novel as he talks to his childhood friend who has become a priest. Percy gives no answers except to demonstrate through Lancelot that Lancelot's answers are lacking. Lancelot's answers form no moral basis. The story moves quickly as Lancelot recalls the events leading up to his crime. To that end, the clipped pace of the narrative suits the urgency of the action. The reader will understand just what he/she is getting in this novel within the first 20 pages. I recommend it highly, but do issue a caution that there is some quite honest dialogue in the novel that includes a fair amount of profanity. Though probably necessary to develope the character, some may be offended. Purchase the book and enjoy modern literature at its best.
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