Rating: 
Summary: A Postmodern Pilgrimage
Review: Percy explores the need in each of us for authenticity- that highly allusive quality in a fragmented, uprooted time. He gives us Will Barrett- a modern day Prince Myshkin- who reveals the difficulty for anyone seeking a truly meaningful existence, made even more onerous by the times in which we live.Percy, however, was no tragedian. The novelist points the way toward hope; in fact, Will's rambling thoughts- by the sheer nature of his grappling- provide a key he will escape, or perhaps even better, transcend inauthenticity. Barret cannot verbalize this, but the novel's end makes you feel that Will is on his way. A tidier novel, one longed for by the Cambridge reader, demands less of Will than can be expected for him- or us, Percy is saying- to reach this plateau. This explains why in his critical essays Percy bemoaned the effect t.v. sitcoms and soap operas had in trivializing the essential strugggle that makes life real.
Rating: 
Summary: Dozer of Verbena
Review: Thanks to Walker Percy a manuscript about a rotund medievalist with a pronounced aversion to gainful employment was saved from the dustbin. Unfortunately, Percy's own works, variations on Russian humbuggery doused in southern discomfort, often slip into an existential coma. The Last Gentleman barely has a pulse. After an engaging opening with a baby who emerges from a hurricane, the novel gets downright tiresome. When examining the limits and conundrums of human freedom, Percy lacks the subtlety of the far superior storyteller Robert Penn Warren. In this instance, Percy's women are insufferably tedious, his men only slightly more amusing. Mr. Vaught induces a grin in seersucker, but the protagonist, a nearly transparent figure known as the engineer, has the charm and presence of an expired june bug. He talks nonsense with a jumbled up girl and, in a fugue state, wanders around for days not knowing his name. After a while, the weary reader prays he'll wander across a busy freeway.
Rating:
Summary: Southerner in a Strange Land
Review: This book had a good begining, and at first reminded me a little of Ellison's Invisible Man in reverse (an amnesiac Southern White trying to come to terms with the South). Soon, however, the book becomes entangled in the happenings of a strange southern family, and all coherence stops. Characters say one things, then turn around and say the opposite; they continualy talk about having adventures, but nothing ever comes of it. The pace of the novel begins to feel a lot like a traffic jam: false start, sudden stop, false start, sudden stop. It was much too much like real life in that respect for my liking. I must confess I didn't finish the book. At page 291, lacking the desire to continue and realizing that reading the thing had become a chore, I skipped to the end, which didn't restore my faith any. I know that Walker Percy can write a good story, but in the case of The Last Gentleman it seems that he didn't.
Rating: 
Summary: Oddly disappointing
Review: This is a disappointing novel. And I'm not sure why. For years I've admired Percy's essays. I knew him to be a solidly Catholic writer from the South -- always a definite attraction! I enjoyed one of his biographies. This novel is the first piece of Percy fiction I have read -- yet I did not enjoy it. The main character, Will, is a 25-year old Southerner and Princeton drop-out working as a janitor ("humidification engineer") in New York City. He doesn't have a family to return to (both his parents are dead) and he feels estranged from most others. He suffers from bouts of amnesia. One day he takes his $1,900 telescope to Central Park and spies a beautiful young woman, Kitty Vaught, eating a sandwich on a bench. He falls in love -- and wastes no time in telling her. He meets her eccentric family from Alabama. Eventually, through a series of (frankly unbelievable) mishaps and misunderstandings, he embarks with them on a road trip back South to their homeland. I won't reveal any more of the story. I found the fact that Kitty doesn't reject Will's earnest advances pretty absurd. I think most women -- when faced with a (let's be honest here) mentally unbalanced young man who spies on them through a telescope, declares undying love and starts talking about marriage -- would run away. Or perhaps this behaviour really works with women. (Maybe I should try it?) And I could not get the Marchmains from Evelyn Waugh's novel Bridehead Revisited out of my mind. There are definite similarites between them and the Vaughts: the odd daughters, one a sexpot and the other a religious nut; the weird older brother; the tragic younger son; the distant father. Has anyone else noticed this? At any rate, Brideshead Revisited is a far superior book. Although near the end Percy introduces a Catholic theme into the story, it does not really feature too strongly. That in itself was disappointing. I would like to hear from anyone who can explain to me why this book should be taken seriously.
Rating:
Summary: Oddly disappointing
Review: This is a disappointing novel. And I'm not sure why. For years I've admired Percy's essays. I knew him to be a solidly Catholic writer from the South -- always a definite attraction! I enjoyed one of his biographies. This novel is the first piece of Percy fiction I have read -- yet I did not enjoy it. The main character, Will, is a 25-year old Southerner and Princeton drop-out working as a janitor ("humidification engineer") in New York City. He doesn't have a family to return to (both his parents are dead) and he feels estranged from most others. He suffers from bouts of amnesia. One day he takes his $1,900 telescope to Central Park and spies a beautiful young woman, Kitty Vaught, eating a sandwich on a bench. He falls in love -- and wastes no time in telling her. He meets her eccentric family from Alabama. Eventually, through a series of (frankly unbelievable) mishaps and misunderstandings, he embarks with them on a road trip back South to their homeland. I won't reveal any more of the story. I found the fact that Kitty doesn't reject Will's earnest advances pretty absurd. I think most women -- when faced with a (let's be honest here) mentally unbalanced young man who spies on them through a telescope, declares undying love and starts talking about marriage -- would run away. Or perhaps this behaviour really works with women. (Maybe I should try it?) And I could not get the Marchmains from Evelyn Waugh's novel Bridehead Revisited out of my mind. There are definite similarites between them and the Vaughts: the odd daughters, one a sexpot and the other a religious nut; the weird older brother; the tragic younger son; the distant father. Has anyone else noticed this? At any rate, Brideshead Revisited is a far superior book. Although near the end Percy introduces a Catholic theme into the story, it does not really feature too strongly. That in itself was disappointing. I would like to hear from anyone who can explain to me why this book should be taken seriously.
Rating: 
Summary: Walker Percy retells Dostoevsky
Review: Walker Percy said that "The Last Gentleman" is a retelling of Dostoevsky's "The Idiot". Having just read both books I can say that is prime façie obvious. In both novels the main character falls happenstance into the lives of complete strangers and becomes almost a part of their family. In "The Idiot" Prince Myshkin claims relations to this family via a distance relative. In "The Last Gentleman" the Vaughn family knows Williston Bibb Barrett through Bibb's father who was an important attorney in the South and who knew many people. The character of both novels is beset by a nervous disorder. For Mr. Barrett--called "the engineer" because he worked in the boiler room of Macy's department store-it is a something called "déjà vu". That means he suffered from lapses in memory, a feeling of déjà vu, depression, and maybe a form of panick attack. Percy writes "Things seemed to turn white and dense and time became freighted with an unspeakable emotion". (I think that Walker Percy might also be borrowing from Thomas Mann. Dostoevsky's Price Myskin returns from a sanatorium at the onset of the novel. In Mann's "The Magic Mountain" the setting is a sanatorium and the character Hans Castorp is an engineer as is Mr. Barrett if only in name.) Both Dostoevsky's Prince Myskin and the Percy's engineer cannot resist blurting out their afflication to whomever they meet. The engineer "cannot tell a lie". Both approach their audience with wide-eyed naïveté. I would have thought that some listeners would have been annoyed, but most lend a sympatheti ear. You find yourself squirming in your seat wishing this pathetic character would not reveal so much of himself. The last glaring similarity between the characters and the plots: the engineer and Price Myskin are able to support themselves with wads of cash handed to them by circumstance. The engineer keeps coming into money just as he is about to run out. I found that a little annoying and too convenient to carry the plot forward. But I brushed aside my annoyance and continued to read. The engineer is from an aristocratic family in Mississippi. He is sent up to Princeton but then drops out later during an attack of déjà vu. He wants to escape to New York City and live a low-stress life. "He envied the janitors" says the narrator. But the Vaughn's find him living in the YMCA and working in a menial job and so take him under their wing. Walker Percy has been called a Southern writer by many critics. They don't mean he is a writer who lived and worked in the South. He did that. Rather they mean his language is whimsical, full of magnolia-and-moonlight imagery, and peppered with references to the Civil War. (That old war is still important because it still affects the Southern thinking.) This novel, set in New York City, Mississippi, and New Mexico, winds through the Old South in a sort of a literary travelogue of Southern heritage and language.
Rating:
Summary: Walker Percy retells Dostoevsky
Review: Walker Percy said that "The Last Gentleman" is a retelling of Dostoevsky's "The Idiot". Having just read both books I can say that is prime façie obvious. In both novels the main character falls happenstance into the lives of complete strangers and becomes almost a part of their family. In "The Idiot" Prince Myshkin claims relations to this family via a distance relative. In "The Last Gentleman" the Vaughn family knows Williston Bibb Barrett through Bibb's father who was an important attorney in the South and who knew many people. The character of both novels is beset by a nervous disorder. For Mr. Barrett--called "the engineer" because he worked in the boiler room of Macy's department store-it is a something called "déjà vu". That means he suffered from lapses in memory, a feeling of déjà vu, depression, and maybe a form of panick attack. Percy writes "Things seemed to turn white and dense and time became freighted with an unspeakable emotion". (I think that Walker Percy might also be borrowing from Thomas Mann. Dostoevsky's Price Myskin returns from a sanatorium at the onset of the novel. In Mann's "The Magic Mountain" the setting is a sanatorium and the character Hans Castorp is an engineer as is Mr. Barrett if only in name.) Both Dostoevsky's Prince Myskin and the Percy's engineer cannot resist blurting out their afflication to whomever they meet. The engineer "cannot tell a lie". Both approach their audience with wide-eyed naïveté. I would have thought that some listeners would have been annoyed, but most lend a sympatheti ear. You find yourself squirming in your seat wishing this pathetic character would not reveal so much of himself. The last glaring similarity between the characters and the plots: the engineer and Price Myskin are able to support themselves with wads of cash handed to them by circumstance. The engineer keeps coming into money just as he is about to run out. I found that a little annoying and too convenient to carry the plot forward. But I brushed aside my annoyance and continued to read. The engineer is from an aristocratic family in Mississippi. He is sent up to Princeton but then drops out later during an attack of déjà vu. He wants to escape to New York City and live a low-stress life. "He envied the janitors" says the narrator. But the Vaughn's find him living in the YMCA and working in a menial job and so take him under their wing. Walker Percy has been called a Southern writer by many critics. They don't mean he is a writer who lived and worked in the South. He did that. Rather they mean his language is whimsical, full of magnolia-and-moonlight imagery, and peppered with references to the Civil War. (That old war is still important because it still affects the Southern thinking.) This novel, set in New York City, Mississippi, and New Mexico, winds through the Old South in a sort of a literary travelogue of Southern heritage and language.
Rating:
Summary: a lot of good stuff, but a lot of fluff
Review: Well, I read the Last Gentleman and I can most certainly say I see Percy's point. But it sure seems as if Percy threw in a lot of extra junk in the book, almost as if to lengthen the book. I liked the exploration of Will's character too, but the way that Percy did it could have been more subtle, instead of just jumping into will's thoughts. the book is not fluid, and a lot of times you might wonder what a certain page has to do with anything. Three stars- I liked it, but I didn't love it, though I realize there is stuff to love in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Snoozin' on the Veranda
Review: When they stay away from all those heavy Russians and super mopers like Kierkegaard, Southerners, as most everyone knows, have a special penchant for spinning a yarn. Now Mr. Percy is one intelligent man, a philosopher physician with an ear for the poetic line. Why he even championed a comic masterpiece, a one-off novel about a painfully obese medievalist with a rather pronounced disdain for gainful employment. We should all be eternally grateful for his decision to sit down with the manuscript of that gut buster. Unfortunately, the author's own works often slip into an existential coma. After an engaging opening, complete with a baby who emerges from a hurricane, The Last Gentleman gets downright tiresome and lumpy. When examining the conundrums of human freedom and will, Percy lacks the subtlety of the far superior storyteller Robert Penn Warren. In this instance, Percy's women are insufferably tedious, his men only slightly better. Mr. Vaught amuses in seersucker, but the protagonist, a nearly transparent figure known as the engineer, has the charm and presence of an expired june bug. He talks nonsense with a jumbled up girl or, in a fugue state, wanders around for days not knowing his name. After a while, you hope he'll wander across a busy freeway.
Rating:
Summary: A pilgrimage of observation
Review: Will Barrett, often bemused, confused, and having the uncanny ability to take on the characteristics of others to fit in as needed, seeks the meaning of life through his telescope (his powers of observation as well as a literal telescope), and a journey prompted by a girl he spys on in Central Park. While Will feels lost to himself, struggling with modern morality, the "new" South, and his family history, those he meets on his often humorous journey from New York back to the South, and finally, the new frontier of the West, often mistake him as the salvation to ease their own paths. Walker Percy is the master of fusing philosopy, religion, and an examination of the pitfalls in modern life with humor and storytelling.
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