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Summary: Hopeful angst: Walker Percy explains it all...?
Review: A perfect companion to Carl Sagan's Contact, Lost in the Cosmos takes the reader on a parodic self-help journey from the depths of the human soul to the furthest reaches of outer space. The result is a caustic, witty, existential, and profoundly moving revelation about why we'd rather see our neighbor's house burn down than live through another Wednesday afternoon, among other things. The first part of the book is "the last self help book," satirizing our culture of self exploration. Percy then suggests the reader skip the middle part, a treatise on semiotics where Percy explores the work of Peirce to develop his own semiotic theory, teasing out the irony where humans have, through language, an infinity of ways to express an infinite number of thoughts, but still can't express their deepest needs and fears. Finally, Percy engages the reader in an extended "thought experiment" in the form of a space trip to the nearest star and an encounter with sentient life forms. The results are shockingly radical, challenging every expectation for both the science fiction genre and the self help novel. Percy succeeds in nothing less than the creation of a new language, uniting storytelling with the writing of philosophy seamlessly. It's too mundane to say that Percy's book can change your life, because that's the very attitude he seeks to uncover. If we are but wayfarers, in Percy's words, then Percy himself is both leader, guide, and fellow traveller
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Summary: excellent
Review: A very jarring book that gives one some very original perspectives on the world
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Summary: PHI-101 droning
Review: A wittily written but repetitive analysis of the strange workings of the human mind, in the tongue-in-cheek guise of a comically long-winded multiple-choice personality quiz. Though the insights are dead-on with regard to the oddities of human behavior, particularly our schadenfreudenous nature, it's nothing one doesn't already know -- though I suppose the point is to demonstrate it's not just an anomaly with the individual but a universal series of character failings. However comforting (or discomforting) that may be, it soon takes an onanistic PHI-101 quality. It's a book that loves to hear itself talk.
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Summary: BACK IN PRINT! WOO HOO!
Review: Allow me to shout it to the clouds: "I AM A PRODUCT OF WALKER PERCY!"With Phil Donahue back on the air, Walker Percy's 1983 self-help book seems less dated now then it did in 1995 when I first read it. Now as then, it packs a wallop. Those reviews calling it a satire are being a little misleading. This book actually IS a self-help book. In fact, it is probably the only self-help book out there. While traditional self-help books are full of answers and leave little to question, this one is full of questions and almost entirely empty of answers. The idea is, that life is a journey that does not have a "little instruction book". And maybe, just maybe, there are things in our lives that distract us from even asking those important questions. Are we lost? Not if we're enjoying the journey. I don't want to go into any more detail. This book is something I have a difficult time talking about to other people. I feel like I have an intimate relationship with it that is difficult to describe to the casual outsider. The relationship was a little frustrating at times, but is now the kind of satisfying thing that has become a part of my life that has enriched me. Fans of the work of Tom Robbins will know what I'm talking about when I say that this book is deadly serious and frivolously playful all at the same time. Let's just say that with the sole exception of "What Color Is Your Parachute", this is the only self-help book out there that helped me. After reading this, "Dianetics" made me laugh until tears ran down my face.
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Summary: This can't be the same Walker Percy ...
Review: An immitigable disappointment. A half-ream of self-indulgent verbiage, an impenetrably dense syntactical fog. Never imagined Mr Percy as the unfunny comedian who gives us hours of pathological tittering at his own jokes. Labored, strained, watching-paint-dry bore-ring. Seventeen innings of scoreless baseball. Good thing I only paid a dollar plus tax for it at a mostly-socialist bookstore in the South End. It raises not the midnight-visiting ghost of a chuckle, not the thinnest waiflike spectre of a laugh. Literally, head-pain at his unenticingly cutesy quizzes and diaffectingly labyrinthine puzzles and duller-than-dull parodies whose efficacy is blunted -- nay! rendered nuller than null and voider than void -- by being as unremittingly unendurable as that which it purports to lampoon. On the other hand, there's his rambunctious, bawdy, cheerful, grim, earthy, holy, prophetic, gimlet-eyed LOVE IN THE RUINS -- the undisputed & indisputable best of the Percy-novels I've read.
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Summary: This can't be the same Walker Percy ...
Review: An immitigable disappointment. A half-ream of self-indulgent verbiage, an impenetrably dense syntactical fog. Never imagined Mr Percy as the unfunny comedian who gives us hours of pathological tittering at his own jokes. Labored, strained, watching-paint-dry bore-ring. Seventeen innings of scoreless baseball. Good thing I only paid a dollar plus tax for it at a mostly-socialist bookstore in the South End. It raises not the midnight-visiting ghost of a chuckle, not the thinnest waiflike spectre of a laugh. Literally, head-pain at his unenticingly cutesy quizzes and diaffectingly labyrinthine puzzles and duller-than-dull parodies whose efficacy is blunted -- nay! rendered nuller than null and voider than void -- by being as unremittingly unendurable as that which it purports to lampoon. On the other hand, there's his rambunctious, bawdy, cheerful, grim, earthy, holy, prophetic, gimlet-eyed LOVE IN THE RUINS -- the undisputed & indisputable best of the Percy-novels I've read.
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Summary: important questions with important answers
Review: At once humorous and deeply philosophical, Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos is a refreshing change from the hectic pace of the modern world. He presents amusing (because they are so plausible) scenarios which make the reader think about the questions that we, busy with work, family, friends and other activities almost never take the time to consider. Who am I? Why am I here? What is the nature of my relationship to other people and to the universe? Finding out the answers to these questions for oneself may be the most important thing anyone ever does - but don't expect the answers to be in the book!Do read the book, though, and try to figure out what you think the answers are. It might be important.
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Summary: Aptly Titled
Review: Contrary to what other reviews stated, this IS a self-help book. In fact, it is ultimately superior to all other self-help books because Percy strikes to the core of the reason why we buy so many of these books. Percy's view of Man at his current stage is that we are all existentialist but we don't know it. At least, we can't bring ourselves to face our existentialism. We have lost any of the authentic views of the self (i.e. the God-self relationship, the philosopher, etc.) that we once had and find ourselves unable to explain, or even contemplate, the existence of a 'triadic' entity in a 'diadic' universe. We are, thus, 'Lost in the Cosmos.' You must read this book multiple times, however, because by the end of the book you will have expanded your intellect so widely that you must re-examine the beginning. In the end, we may discover why we are so screwed up, therefore requiring those '10 million self-help books.' The only flaw may be one of ommission. Percy neglects to discuss an ancient, possibly authentic, view of the self: the citizen-self.
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Summary: Brilliant and unique
Review: Don't be fooled: this is not a self-help book that gives you all the answers. Maybe it gives you no answers. Or, to be more precise, it gives you multiple answers. In its "multiple-choice test" format, this book imparts truth in a wickedly funny, subversive way. This is a "self-help" book that is truly about the self, in interaction with other selves, that basically asks the compound question "Who are we and why are we the way we are?" Percy's insight into the human condition is uncommonly perceptive.
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Summary: The errant, prodigal Southerner facing the millenium
Review: I especially sympathised with Percy when I first read this book. I had just finished all of his novels (of which there are too few) and was at a fairly confusing time of my life. A college sophomore frustrated and confused by the surrounding societal constructs, I was fascinated at Percy's insights into the human psyche. By identifying how alone we all feel in a world full of people, he makes us feel less alone. He explains our morbid fascination with all things tragic and makes us feel okay about them. He explains prejudice without justifying it. He endorses Dixie beer. With his novels, Percy has taken the pathos of the likes of Faulkner and adapted it to contemporary times, and this book tears away at its inner workings. I have reread this book every six months for the last four years and it never loses its poignancy.
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