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LOST IN THE COSMOS

Name: LOST IN THE COSMOS
Author: Walker Percy
ISBN: 0312253990

THE LAST SELF-HELP BOOK

by Walker Percy ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1983

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A semi-successful jeu d'esprit. This rambling philosophical entertainment combines snappy little lectures, multiple choice questions, diagrams, "thought experiments," and bits of science fiction in a kind of rueful Percyflage about the fate of the self in a crazy, centrifugal world. With "Western society. . . a wasteland, its values decayed, its community fragmented, its morals corrupted, its cities in ruins," with traditional religion so untenable and secular therapies so trivial, the self is inevitably driven inward, only to find a peculiar void. For, as Percy notes in a long "intermezzo" on semiotics, "the self of the sign-user can never be grasped." This variation on a familiar phenomenological theme (the self's irreducible subjectivity, you can't simultaneously know and perceive yourself knowing, etc.) leaves us with something like nihilism. The self seems to be hopelessly alienated from the cosmos—whence the quest for E.T.s. attempts to communicate with chimps, manic plunges into sex, drugs, booze, and so forth. But while the spectacle of doomed efforts at "reentry" into the cosmos offers plenty of targets for Percy's gallows humor, he obviously has a lingering sympathy for honest, old-fashioned modes of transcendence (e.g., Christianity and high art), and he rejects out of hand positivism, village-atheism, and various counsels of despair. So the result is an uneasy stand-off. The weakest part of Percy's routine is undoubtedly the limp, predictable fantasy that it concludes with (two "space odysseys," involving such items as a handful of survivors from a nuclear holocaust taking refuge in Lost Cove, Tenn., and some heavy sexual doings on an 18-year starship flight). Elsewhere, Percy's take-it-or-leave-it, whistling-in-the-dark-night-of-the-soul wit has its moments. He can't quite fuse together the strains of social satire and intellectual confession, but he's marvelously knowledgeable and never dull. A curious (in all senses) performance—with echoes of the Message in the Bottle as well as Percy's novels.

Pub Date: June 1, 1983

ISBN: 0312253990

Page Count: 276

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: April 5, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1983

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
SIGNPOSTS IN A STRANGE LAND
by Walker Percy

- BOOK REVIEW
THE THANATOS SYNDROME
by Walker Percy

- BOOK REVIEW
THE SECOND COMING
by Walker Percy

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.