Dr. Tom More has created a stethoscope of the human spirit. With it, he embarks on an unforgettable odyssey to cure mankind's spiritual flu. This novel confronts both the value of life and its susceptibility to chance and ruin.
Love in the Ruins
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Review
"A great adventure...So outrageous and so real, one is left speechless."--Chicago Sun Times
"Immensely readable, vividly entertaining."--Los Angeles Times
"Brilliant and hilarious . . . some of the most fascinating characters you'll ever encounter."--Dallas Morning News
"One of the major novels of our time."--Milwaukee Journal
"Immensely readable, vividly entertaining."--Los Angeles Times
"Brilliant and hilarious . . . some of the most fascinating characters you'll ever encounter."--Dallas Morning News
"One of the major novels of our time."--Milwaukee Journal
From the Publisher
"A great adventure...So outrageous and so real, one is left speechless." --Chicago Sun-Times
"A comedy of love against a field of anarchy...Percy is easily one of the finest writers we have." --New York Times Book Review
"Immensely readable, vividly entertaining." --Los Angeles Times
"Brilliant and hilarious...some of the most fascinating characters you'll ever encounter." --Dallas Morning News
"One of the major novels of our time." --Milwaukee Journal
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More About the Author
Walker Percy (1916-1990) was one of the most prominent American writers of the twentieth century. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, he was the oldest of three brothers in an established Southern family that contained both a Civil War hero and a U.S. senator. Acclaimed for his poetic style and moving depictions of the alienation of modern American culture, Percy was the bestselling author of six fiction titles--including the classic novel The Moviegoer (1961), winner of the National Book Award--and fifteen works of nonfiction. In 2005, Time magazine named The Moviegoer one of the best English-language books published since 1923.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
78 of 79 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Originally written in the aftermath of the social upheavals of the 1960s, this book may seem dated to some. But if the specific social context has changed, the fragmentation of American society continues unabated, as does the crisis of the human spirit that this book describes and addresses. So, for me, the book remains supremely relevant, supremely perceptive, brilliantly written, and hilariously funny.
Set in the Deep South of an America in a virtual state of civil war and anarchy, "Love In The Ruins" follows the exploits of its flawed hero, Dr. Tom More, a boozing psychiatrist and lapsed Catholic. More has invented the lapsometer - a "stethoscope of the soul" - that enables people to both diagnose and treat their inner demons. But in the wrong hands, the lapsometer can wreak havoc, and much of the book traces More's efforts to keep the lapsomoter out of the hands of a government determined to use the lapsometer for its own nefarious purposes.
Percy brilliantly describes and satirizes the competing elements in this American Apocalypse - the country club conservatives, the "groovy" priests, the religious Right and Left, the technocrats, the sexologists, the racists, the Black revolutionaries, the drop-outs, and the sinister but bungling government bureaucrats who have their own vision of a "Brave New World."
From its masterful opening pages (which, contrary to another reviewer, I think are just about the best writing I've seen in modern American literature) this book will outrage partisans of the Left and Right while giving hope to those who try to occupy the "radical center" where the human spirit is defended against the predations of all the "isms" of the modern world.
Set in the Deep South of an America in a virtual state of civil war and anarchy, "Love In The Ruins" follows the exploits of its flawed hero, Dr. Tom More, a boozing psychiatrist and lapsed Catholic. More has invented the lapsometer - a "stethoscope of the soul" - that enables people to both diagnose and treat their inner demons. But in the wrong hands, the lapsometer can wreak havoc, and much of the book traces More's efforts to keep the lapsomoter out of the hands of a government determined to use the lapsometer for its own nefarious purposes.
Percy brilliantly describes and satirizes the competing elements in this American Apocalypse - the country club conservatives, the "groovy" priests, the religious Right and Left, the technocrats, the sexologists, the racists, the Black revolutionaries, the drop-outs, and the sinister but bungling government bureaucrats who have their own vision of a "Brave New World."
From its masterful opening pages (which, contrary to another reviewer, I think are just about the best writing I've seen in modern American literature) this book will outrage partisans of the Left and Right while giving hope to those who try to occupy the "radical center" where the human spirit is defended against the predations of all the "isms" of the modern world.
40 of 43 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Walker Percy died over a decade ago, leaving a small but dedicated readership. A dilettante whose interests ran from medicine and psychiatry (Percy was an M. D.) to semiotics, philosophy, and religion, we remember Percy for his slightly cantankerous (but never malicious) outlook on modernity and the human condition.
"Love in the Ruins," written in '71, imagines a U.S.A. in which prevalent (and sometimes contradictory) trends run to their illogical extremes -- political association becomes fragmented to the point of neo-tribalism, mainline churches become secularized to the point of banality or fixated to the point of intolerance, and psychological treatment grows increasing manipulative. Into this world he drops Dr. Tom More, "bad Catholic" and the inventor of the Ontological Lapsometer. The Lapsometer measures the degree to which a soul has fallen, the degree of estrangement and alienation it has attained. One particular sickness it detects is angelism/bestialism -- the tendency to go from spirit-like abstraction to animal appetite with little moderation. Like all technologies, the Lapsometer becomes a means of social and spiritual manipulation, and Dr. More and his device set in play a story that leads the world to the brink of apocalypse.
By turns desperate and hilarious, this readable novel holds up well today. I also recommend "Lost in the Cosmos," which contains many of the same ideas, but in more of a tragi-comic essay form.
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
If you like the Catholic Flannery O'Connor's depth analysis of human nature, and can endure its frequent morbidity; if you like Evelyn Waugh's sense of humor and thought The Loved One was amusing; try Walker Percy. Walker Percy is Evelyn Waugh on crack. And the place to start is with Percy's Love in the Ruins. It's not his first novel, or even the first to win him recognition (that would be his Moviegoer). But it's a tour-de-force analysis of the human condition in a Louisiana setting by a womanizing, semi-alcoholic, lapsed Catholic protagonist who, despite (or by means of?) the hyterical laughter of the reader, sheds new light at every turn on the human condition. One imagines the brilliant Percy, with twinkling eye, smiling down upon the event. (The next book to read must be Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, a book unlike any other in the cosmos -- not a novel, but another absolute must-read!
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Is it a sci-fi tale about the end of the world, black comedy, novel of inner pilgrimage, or a southern small-town novel like To Kill a Mockingbird? All of these, and none, quite. You can catch snippetts of the plot and setting from other reviewers. But trying to squeeze this weird, topsy-turvy, yet familiar world into a few words is like trying to put the bubble bath back in the bottle. Ideas and images float up in flurries.
Or maybe we should define Love in the Ruins by its characters? Each is as brilliantly drawn as a blade of grass in the first bright rays of morning. Not all are mad, in the conventional sense, though Thomas More, the drunken, philandering, brilliant, pious hero, who somewhat resembles the author, sometimes is. "Dear God, let me out of here, back to the nuthouse where I can stay sane. Things are too naked out here. People look and talk and smile and are nice and the abyss yawns. The niceness is terrifying." Percy also offers three lovely leading ladies, a tribe of black revolutionaries, "love" scientists, "Knotheads," a "scoffing Irish behaviorist, in whom irony is so piled up on irony, jokes so encrusted on jokes, winks and nudges and in-jokes so convoluted" that he has turned orthodox, and a pretty spooky Satan in flannel.
Maybe the best way to introduce this book, aside from saying that it often made me laugh outloud, and often made me think, is to quote a few more lines. If you like the taste, want to sup more on the strangeness of life (the quality by which reality so often surpasses mere novels), you'll probably want to read the book.
(1) "Max the unbeliever, a lapsed Jew, believes in the orderliness of creation, acts on it with energy and charity.... Read more ›
Or maybe we should define Love in the Ruins by its characters? Each is as brilliantly drawn as a blade of grass in the first bright rays of morning. Not all are mad, in the conventional sense, though Thomas More, the drunken, philandering, brilliant, pious hero, who somewhat resembles the author, sometimes is. "Dear God, let me out of here, back to the nuthouse where I can stay sane. Things are too naked out here. People look and talk and smile and are nice and the abyss yawns. The niceness is terrifying." Percy also offers three lovely leading ladies, a tribe of black revolutionaries, "love" scientists, "Knotheads," a "scoffing Irish behaviorist, in whom irony is so piled up on irony, jokes so encrusted on jokes, winks and nudges and in-jokes so convoluted" that he has turned orthodox, and a pretty spooky Satan in flannel.
Maybe the best way to introduce this book, aside from saying that it often made me laugh outloud, and often made me think, is to quote a few more lines. If you like the taste, want to sup more on the strangeness of life (the quality by which reality so often surpasses mere novels), you'll probably want to read the book.
(1) "Max the unbeliever, a lapsed Jew, believes in the orderliness of creation, acts on it with energy and charity.... Read more ›
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
really good!
I would give it five stars, but it's a little depressing for me. I enjoyed the challenge of the seriously unreliable narrator, though. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Holli
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very good kinda syfy.
Haven't quite finished yet, but the writing is excellent and the insights into human nature profound. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Sam Condon
5.0 out of 5 stars
my favorite book!!
This novel is my very favorite of all time and I am delighted to have this copy of it! It is in beautiful condition and was received very promptly.
Published 11 months ago by Pam Cira
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Insightful Comic Masterpiece
I've long thought that Lancelot: A Novel is Walker Percy's masterpiece but somehow I had overlooked his Love in the Ruins, which is a brilliantly comic pungent reflection on man,... Read more
Published 14 months ago by James G. Bruen Jr.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worth the effort
Yes, it may take a little effort to work through the weird new world created in this book, but it's well worth the effort. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Rawaustin
4.0 out of 5 stars
a BAD CATHOLIC near the end of the world
Walker PERCY is a great New Orleans whiter. He is the one who finally got JOHN KENNEDY TOOLE's A confederacy of dunces published after being rejected many times.
Published on March 29, 2010 by John F. Harty
5.0 out of 5 stars
An all-time favorite
Like a good doctor, Percy distracts you with charm or by saying something funny and then sticks you with a shot of the truth while you're off-guard. Read more
Published on May 12, 2007 by Thomas More
1.0 out of 5 stars
Great reading? Are you kidding me?
Who could possibly claim the following sentence (which DOES occur in this novel) is in any way good, or that it was written by an author with even a shred of skill? Read more
Published on May 4, 2007 by raskolnikov
5.0 out of 5 stars
The End Is Near
What do you do when the world is coming to an end right before your very eyes, but no one seems to believe you? That is the concept facing Dr. Read more
Published on April 23, 2007 by R. Chaffey
4.0 out of 5 stars
Saying a little bit in a glorious way
Walker Percy was a little too much of a child of post-WWII America, taking himself, his Catholicism, the South, and Manifest Destiny entirely too seriously. Read more
Published on January 9, 2007 by Arthem
