Customer Reviews

Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son (Library of Southern Civilization)

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This is one of those books that is almost impossible to objectively review. The writing is elegant and evocative of an era in the South that died almost in tandem with Mr. Percy and yet I find some parts of it so arrogant and condescending that I feel myself grinding my teeth. You see, I am descended from those Mississippi hill people Percy so despised and, even after all this time, I can almost see the languid gaze and soft, drawling voice. My people came to the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta after the Flood of '27 and we build and earned what we got without the benefit of the massive slave labor that built Mr. Percy's fortune.

But this is a book review and I'll put aside old feelings to say that this is a literary gem that brings to life a way of life on which so many stereotypes of the South are built. And Will Percy is amazingly honest in his descriptions of his society. However, a society this simple and yet this complex takes more than just one book to grasp.

Thus, I also recommend "Rising Tide" by John Barry and "The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity" by James Cobb to balance your view of this time and place in history.

Bottom line: This is a wonderful, beautifully written story that is refreshingly candid with none of the defensiveness and politically correct breast beating of many of the works of southern writers of recent years.

Elegantly written with a cadence all its own, William Alexander Percy's memoir provides an unreconstructed view of another time. Percy's sense of the dying southern aristocracy and the corresponding decline of his place in the South represents a vivid picture of life on the Delta for the large planter class. Percy's South required his life to be governed by a sense of noblesse oblige, but through his eyes one can watch this notion slowly wither away. For the unprepared, beware, Percy does not lack for ego, but this might be expected from one who felt the position he held required him to heed to a higher code. If you enjoy true southern literature then you will find this memoir highly satisfying.

Percy's approach to life can be summed up by a quote from the book: "It is a very nice world-that is, if you remember that while morals are all-important between the Lord and His creatures, what counts between one creature and another is good manners." Percy's book is a rare member of that most elusive category of books - the autobiography of true literary quality. Percy's touch is honest without being journalistic; poetic without appearing over-embroidered; and in his own eccentric person he provides the subject matter which is required to make such a work interesting. He steps out of the late 19th/early 20th century Mississippi delta as a character that could not have existed anywhere else. Affected, genteel, kind, elitist, romantic and with a view of race more in keeping with British Imperial "white man's burden" line of thought than anything American in origin - Percy the character remains fascinating even as the modern reader disagrees with his positions. A clearly and well told tale of an extinct breed (the gentrified southern aristocrat), a lost land (the Mississippi delta of the turn of the 20th century), and a buried epoch (the pre desegregation era). An excellent book - well worth reading not only to better understand a particular aspect of American history but for the pleasure of reading a well written book, regardless of the subject matter.

I needed an unabridged dictionary, and a dictionary of cultural literacy to get through this book. Well worth the trouble. Percy's command of the English language is unparalleled. After reading this book, you too will be envious of his education. If you like the book Rising Tide, about the Mississippi flood of 1927, then get this book. I have given this book to more friends than any other book.

It is true that this book attempts to explain the South, in both its physical and social aspects, from the point of view of the "landed gentry." However, a more accurate description of "Lanterns on the Levee" is that of an autobiography of William A. Percy, in which he reflects upon his life and the interesting times in which he lived. I found this book very inciteful into the mind of a southerner, and believe that Mr. Percy did a fine job of bringing his broad experiences with different cultures and social climates into this book, and using these to produce a cogent analysis of his homeland. Though not completely objective (and often bigoted by today's standards), I think that Mr. Percy did his best to "tell it as he saw it," and often admits his biases as a precursor to his analysis. The book is very poetic and philosophical in places, and includes both the subjective and emotional sentiments that one must understand in order to come to terms with "a southerner's love for the south." Additionally, I feel that Mr. Percy (especially in his last few chapters) provides the reader with thought-provoking and highly articulate observations about life, time, and human-nature. I think this book is excellent, and believe it to be a "must read" for anybody with an open-minded interest in the Missisippi Delta region, or the South in general.

To read this book is to truly appreciate the best the Southern aristocracy had to offer us. Mr. Percy writes of a world very different from ours, and in many ways better. As his own world slipped away from him, he wrote, as no one has, of what was in it worth preserving.

This is about Southern life, but I think it goes beyond that. I think Percy tries to go beyond the sterotypes of the South that are so commonly held by those who do not live in the South so that the South can be better understood. In doing that, I think he speaks of those sterotypes in a way that makes me, at least, realize that much of our thinking (not just about the South), but especially about modern life, is clouded by sterotypes, too. It is as if we so easily accept stereotypes in so many aspects of our lives (and I think Percy felt the same way) that few of us really understand ourselves, how we think or how we live. Finally, he is an excellent writer and a great story teller. Taken altogether, I think it is a true gem of American literature. It is one of those books I truly love to discover. Bravo, William Alexander Percy!

There have been several excellent reviews of this book. I agree with most of them. This book is worth reading even if only as an exercise in literary appreciation. There was once a time, Camelot I suppose, when people actually did think and speak with poise, elegance and most impressively, wit. I value the works of D. K. Chesterton for the same reasons. Percy certainly fits that mold.

I, like Nolan Bond (see his review), am also descended from those red-neck hill people that Percy puts firmly on the bottom of the social ladder. I am old enough to know that they possessed many of the same values and qualities he did though without the aristocratic poise. My Dad, Grand-father and Great Grand father would have been tolerated by his family but never quite accepted as equals. However, what Percy does is so solidly evoke the admirable qualities of a life which is intent upon transcending the vulgar, that even his elitism is charming. His remembrances of his father are so vivid and so superior to the statement of his own life, that I can admire his dad even where I just chuckle at Percy himself.

But you have to let that go. It is the wit that makes the book worth buying. The capacity to use the language as it ought to be used, understated when most deadly, evocative when most descriptive, charming throughout, which makes one yearn to have one more real conversation before death and boredom actually prevail.

Percy is without illusion about himself. He is fearless in his appreciation of those qualities transmitted to himself as well as in his own failure to rise to the nobility they require. He never matches his dad, in his own eyes or otherwise. But along the way, he reminds us that poverty is not impediment to quality, and that true freedom begins with an internal conviction. Percy does not hesitate to consider that some men are superior to others - in that he was free of certain bonds which enslave us. He was thereby able to transcend all cultures and be at home, and appreciative, in them all.

It is a life worth living, even if it wasn't always comfortable.

Noble, refined, and distinctly tragic in sentiment, this book captures the proud soul of William Percy in eloquent prose. A man, in love with a vision of what is best in the world, in love with what is best in his fellow men, in love with what is best in his home emerges from these pages. He stands defiant in defense of the vision, despite all its imperfections, confident that its beauty outshines its faults. The book stands not only as a proud memorial to a noble vision that has passed into history, but a testimony to the beauty of the human spirit that continues to animate men to strive for nobility of life and the security virtues.

Percy's autobiogrpahy offers excellent insights into the heart and mind of those of his class (as close to an agricultural elite as this country has ever produced. But the best of this book is offered unconsciously, by accident or indirection.
If you're only going to read one book about the South, or about this elite, read John Barry's Rising Tide, a truly brilliant and magnificently-- almost breathtakingly-- written book. There you gte all of Percy's story plus more perspective and deeper understanding-- indeed, RT may even give you a deeper understanding of Percy than his autobuiography does.
If you're going to read 2 books on the South, then read RT and Mind of the South by Cash. Cash focuses more on the mindset of the rednecks, while Percy is very much an aristocrat. To a certain extent the Percy and Cash books complement each other. In fact, to Percy the word "anglo-saxon" was an insult. He considered himself descended from the Norman conquerors of the Anglo-saxons, and saw them as serfs. That little insight comes from Rising Tide.