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"Original and imaginative, it conveys a serious, occasionally somber message in a vein of high comedy. I love this book. It is not to be read once through, but to be reread, savored, and pondered."--Edmund Fuller, The Wall Street Journal
"This is a stunningly innovative collection, for readers who like both to chuckle and to think hard."--People
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Laugh yourself sane. (More or less),
This review is from: Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (Paperback)
This book is deeply funny, in the best way. It is not frivolous, except in the sense of parodying frivolity, nor is it flippant, nor even does it tell "jokes." Rather, it reveals (from the inside out) the bizarre, humorous truth about our own odd selves. "How can a ghost feel otherwise toward a machine than bored?" "If (the primitologist) could converse with his chimpanzee, he would have the best of both worlds: (a) beat other scientists, and (b) have someone to talk to." "I am rascal, hero, craven, brave, treacherous, loyal, at once the secret hero and a-- of the universe." This is the first book I've read from this author. I hope it won't be the last, though it will be if the cosmic gate crasher at the Donohue show turns up soon. My first intuition was, "This man has read Pascal;" then I thought "Chesterton too." That gave me a hint as to where he was coming from, but he never did lay many cards on the table. In fact, the whole book mostly consists of throwing cards up in the air and asking us to grab the right ones before they touch the ground. In a review of one of Chesterton's books (if you like this, see Orthodoxy and Everlasting Man in particular), I said Chesterton makes us laugh ourselves sane. Percy pushes us in the same direction, with the cattle prod of humor. He's more of a pessimist than Chesterton. Sometimes he's wrong. And once in a while he slips into mere crankiness: "For every Mother Theresa, there seem to be 1,800 nutty American nuns, female Clint Eastwoods who have it in for men and are out to get the Pope." He also seems to have it in for "fundamentalists" (whom he classifies with "chuckleheads," unfairly in my perhaps minority experience) and Calvinists. (The last line he gives John Calvin in his Donahue sketch sounds very Chestertonian.) But more like Pascal, Percy speaks the language of science as well as contemporary literature. (And he pegs Carl Sagan just right.) Think you've got life figured out? Read this book, laugh at yourself and the crazy, ingenious human race, and go wonderingly back to square one. author, Jesus and the Religions of Man (d.marshall@sun.ac.jp)
5.0 out of 5 stars
all the prodding questions you never wanted to face,
By "littletea" (central IL) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (Paperback)
Walker Percy has written a book that never really answers any of your questions but somehow leaves you feeling as if you have a broader understanding of what it means to be human. He is witty, sarcastic, entertaining and painfully honest. This is a wonderful book that should be read by anyone wishing to understand the human condition. I'm not even sure how to describe it. Just get it and you'll know what I mean. I had to read it for a culture and values class about 10 years ago and have gone thru 5 coppies from lending them out and never getting them back. :)
5.0 out of 5 stars
Percy asks the best questions!,
By
This review is from: Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (Paperback)
Walker Percy unleashes a breathtakingly challenging set of questions upon the reader. He wonders why we can feel terrible and abstracted one moment, but wonderful and alive after surviving a bullet wound. He asks whether we actually feel happy to hear that our next door neighbor has had a great good fortune or whether we merely feign happiness. Why wouldn't we be genuinely happy for our neighbor? Is it possible something might be wrong with us?After proving a variety of points through asking his difficult questions, Percy goes on make a serious attempt to remedy the fact that we know far more about the orbit of the planets than we do about ourselves. Some of the concepts he originates in "Lost in the Cosmos" should be studied by mental health professionals everywhere. What he is attempting in this book is nothing less than to uncover the mystery of ourselves and why it can be so hard to get through an ordinary Wednesday afternoon.
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