I perhaps should have liked this more than I did

books:


	• Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book Walker Percy Picador, 2000 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 36 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A worthwile read . . .

As some of the other reviews suggest, this is not a book full of side-splitting humor. However, it is humorous and contains a number of worthwhile observations about everyday life.

One review describes it as "nihilistic," but I cannot agree. I found this book to be the exact opposite.

If you have already made up your mind that God/religion/spirituality have no part to play in modern life, then you will probably not care for this book. For everybody else, it is definitely a worthwhile read.

BULLSEYE

Walker Percy is very much a modern-day Pascal, in that he is wrapped up in the project of waking up modern man from his numb, jaded, over-entertained stupor into realizing what a predicament he is in. It's an existentialist concern, in the Christian-existentialist sense of Kierkegaard, especially insofar as both Percy and the Melancholy Dane are obsessed with the problem of subjectivity, and our awareness of it, and the paltry ways we try, unsuccessfully, to transcend it.

So, this is NOT really a humor/satire book, per se, although the dust jacket's description tries to bill it as such (perhaps to expand the market appeal? Feh!). Early on, though, there is a send-up of the Phil Donahue show that is just *hilarious*. Most of the book is a series of (fairly involved) rhetorical questions, about such things as who in a hypothetical situation you would identify with the most, and why. The way the questions are counterposed, one could accuse Percy of making his points backhandedly via strawman-demolition, but that would be beside the point. Percy's overall aim is to get at the background of all our operating assumptions, and the ways in which we judge and evaluate others in relation to self, and what that says about what kind of thing man is.

In the middle of the book is a digression on semiotics, the theory of signs. One of Percy's central ideas here is that man's cardinal innovation over other animals is his use of signs and not just signals. The "sign" usage is essentially triangular, involving subject, object, and the intersubjective sign, whereas an animal "signal" is two-dimensional, such as "danger, run away." All of our thought and communication is predicated on that sign-based three-dimensional framework. The self constantly has to situate oneself with respect to other selves and in the intersubjective framework that marks our communicative network.

The main human predicament is that that intersubjective framework is essentially unstable due to our confusion about ourselves, and our desire to cover up our insecurities. No solution to this problem is forced upon the reader, although some suggestion of one is implied. The humanist and religious outlooks are both presented, fairly, I think, and the reader is left to evaluate the human condition as portrayed.

The book ends with a couple of arresting sci-fi scenarios, that for thought-provocation, I haven't seen since the likes of Arthur C. Clarke's _Childhood's End._ This is a no-holds-barred look at ourselves that is rewarding as it is unflinchingly realistic, and I highly recommend it.

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No Chicken Soup Here

Walker Percy is at his best in this fiendishly clever parody of a self-help book. Through a series of provocative questions, he forces the reader to recognize how complicated as well as downright peculiar the human being is, a creature whose nature and deepest desires can not be satisfied by the cheaply proffered "self-esteem" or other banalities of the self-help movement. Not only are we odd, according to Percy, but equally so is the very planet on which we find ourselves. Percy's ultimate aim, then, is a metaphysical one, to reawaken the reader to a concrete sense of mystery within and without. He seeks to upset the apple cart of complacency induced by many self-help gurus fully at home in the world. He challenges their readers to engage instead in a deeper search for meaning and truth.

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I perhaps should have liked this more than I did

One of the worst things a reader can do with a book I did with this one. I seeing the title thought the work would be a long meditation on Man's place in the Cosmos, relation to other possible Life and Intelligence- a deep probing into the question of our 'cosmic meaning'. In a sense it does touch on the matters I mentioned but it operates in an unexpected way, in which it makes use of all kinds of questions, and tests to take a wide- ranging look at human nature. In fact Percy's initial claim is that Man is the only Alien creature in the Cosmos the one who knows more about Jupiter and Saturn than he does about his own nature. In a sense the work is an effort at exploring human nature and self- hood in an amusing and original fashion in which all kinds of cultural elements, high and low are brought into the mix. Sounds like it should be tremendously entertaining, and a number of reviewers have commented on how hilarious the section is in which Percy includes material from and takes off on the Donahue television show.
But this said the book did not really work for me on the line- by - line basis. i.e. Many interesting topics were being considered but I did not particularly feel I was getting Pascalian, or Kierkegaardian wisdom in consideration of them.
But again I may have missed this one.
I will say that anyone interested in exploring the Self and the Meaning of Human Nature will certainly find in the great variety of subjects considered here something of value, some insight they have not had before.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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.

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