In Message in the Bottle, Walker Percy offers insights on such varied yet interconnected subjects as symbolic reasoning, the origins of mankind, Helen Keller, Semioticism, and the incredible Delta Factor. Confronting difficult philosophical questions with a novelist's eye, Percy rewards us again and again with his keen insights into the way that language possesses all of us.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"The Message in the Bottle is a delight . . . a pleasure to read."--Larry McMurtry, The Washington Post Book World
"Walker Percy has an intellectual range and rigor few American novelists can match."--Thomas Leclair, The New York Times Book Review
"This book is worth examining for the confusions it reveals about the study of language and about what can be expected from it."--Thomas Nagel, The New York Review of Books
"Walker Percy has an intellectual range and rigor few American novelists can match."--Thomas Leclair, The New York Times Book Review
"This book is worth examining for the confusions it reveals about the study of language and about what can be expected from it."--Thomas Nagel, The New York Review of Books
From the Publisher
"These essays have a way of quickening the spirit and cleansing the sight." -The New Republic
"Walker Percy is that admirable thing-a man who has fallen in love with an idea, an analytical, academic, philosophical man, in fact. Yet the novelist in him cannot help but come out."-JOHN CIARDI, The Saturday Review "Walker Percy has an intellectual range and rigor few American novelists can match."-THOMAS LECLAIR, The New York Times Book Review
"Walker Percy is that admirable thing-a man who has fallen in love with an idea, an analytical, academic, philosophical man, in fact. Yet the novelist in him cannot help but come out."-JOHN CIARDI, The Saturday Review "Walker Percy has an intellectual range and rigor few American novelists can match."-THOMAS LECLAIR, The New York Times Book Review
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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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A brilliant and relatively unknown work,
By
This review is from: The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other (Paperback)
This dense, well-written and extraordinary book is an excellent introduction to the works of a great 20th century thinker. In this collection of essays, Percy manages to confront some difficult philosophical questions in an exciting and readable context. Percy was first a novelist, and his writing is seldom inaccesible. He deals in everything from religion to science, from literary theory to travel. His best writing relates to theories of language and the human being. Yet like some of the greatest X-Files episodes, Percy leaves many things unresolved, liminal, only suggested. Message in a Bottle is designed to stimulate the reader rather than fill them with useless information. I finished reading this book with the desire to read it again, and whenever I see it on the bookshelf I am comforted by the thought that there are people in the world who think for themselves, and who have the courage to print what they think.
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential Percy,
By vines99@ibm.net (Decatur, Georgia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other (Paperback)
A few of the essays in this collection make for somewhat dry reading (Percy even says so himself), but if wonder and enlightenment are your goals, then this is an extremely rewarding book. His insights on symbolic reasoning, the origins of mankind, Hellen Keller, Semioticism, and the incredible Delta Factor are invariably fresh and thought-provoking. Percy is really onto something here; he may have only scratched the surface, but what he has revealed has powerful implications for all of us.
26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Always the Novelist,
By
This review is from: The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other (Paperback)
The precursor to the, in comparision, pithy 'Lost in the Cosmos,' Message in a Bottle is less accessible than his later, more famous, book. However, Message... provides all of the necessary academic rigor that 'Lost in the Cosmos' lacks (not that LC is not a great book, it is). Percy claims that he is, in fact, not philosopher or scientist. Rather, he wishes to be thought of as mere novelist writing as he perceives scientists and philosophers. In fact, this is a sort of claim of superiority in the sense that Percy thinks he knows more about philosophers and scientists than they know about themselves (which may be true). Even so, Percy's methods are quite scientific and philosophic. Message in a Bottle deals with the most important question of all: What is Man? Percy contends, as any good Heideggerian would, that we are essentially castaways on an island. We aren't quite sure how we got here and we don't quite know what we're supposed to do now that we are here. But Percy is a Thomist, not an existentialist (although the two are connected). While Percy finds the greatest evidence for our essential 'lostness' in the altogether baffling phenomenon of language, Percy is nevertheless concerned with what we are to do about out anxiety about existence. Percy is interested in pursuing the Thomistic project; 'completing' reason with revelation.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
In the beginning was Alpha and the end is Omega, but somewhere between occurred Delta, which was nothing less than the arrival of man himself and his breakthrough into the daylight of language and consciousness and knowing, of happiness and sadness, of being with and being alone, of being right and being wrong, of being himself and being not himself, and of being at home and being a stranger. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
knowledge sub specie aeternitatis, autonomous object interest, triadic behavior, triadic event, news from across the seas, old modern age, dyadic events, naming sentence, natural existents, pivot class, imputed relation, specie aetemitatis, splitting ice, triadic theory, naming stage, symbolic logician, semiotic triangle, zone crossing, symbolic behavior, semantical relation, naming act, next cove, baby chair, sign behavior, symbolic assertion Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Helen Keller, Grand Canyon, New York, Miss Sullivan, Charles Gray, Charles Peirce, Tom Rath, Susanne Langer, Absolute Paradox, Bright Angel Lodge, Hudson River, Ernst Cassirer, Bora Bora, Saint Thomas, Short Hills, Skinner's Verbal Behavior, Trobriand Islanders, Even Robinson Crusoe, Falkland Islander, Flannery O'Connor, Helen Water, Huck Finn, Los Alamos, New Jersey, Sinclair Lewis New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
In the beginning was Alpha and the end is Omega, but somewhere between occurred Delta, which was nothing less than the arrival of man himself and his breakthrough into the daylight of language and consciousness and knowing, of happiness and sadness, of being with and being alone, of being right and being wrong, of being himself and being not himself, and of being at home and being a stranger. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
knowledge sub specie aeternitatis, autonomous object interest, triadic behavior, triadic event, news from across the seas, old modern age, dyadic events, naming sentence, natural existents, pivot class, imputed relation, specie aetemitatis, splitting ice, triadic theory, naming stage, symbolic logician, semiotic triangle, zone crossing, symbolic behavior, semantical relation, naming act, next cove, baby chair, sign behavior, symbolic assertion Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Helen Keller, Grand Canyon, New York, Miss Sullivan, Charles Gray, Charles Peirce, Tom Rath, Susanne Langer, Absolute Paradox, Bright Angel Lodge, Hudson River, Ernst Cassirer, Bora Bora, Saint Thomas, Short Hills, Skinner's Verbal Behavior, Trobriand Islanders, Even Robinson Crusoe, Falkland Islander, Flannery O'Connor, Helen Water, Huck Finn, Los Alamos, New Jersey, Sinclair Lewis New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 33
books:
See all 33 books this book cites
100
books
cite this book:
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- The Philosophy of Rhetoric (Galaxy Books Series Gb P) by I. A. Richards on page 76, and Back Matter
- Feeling and Form by Susanne K. Langer on page 288, and Back Matter
- Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art by Susanne K. Langer on page 288, and Back Matter
- Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics by Alfred Korzybski on page 193, and Back Matter
- Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry: the A. W. Mellon Lecture in the Fine Art by Jacques Maritain in Back Matter
See all 33 books this book cites
- Conversations with Walker Percy (Literary Conversations) by Lewis A. Lawson on 12 pages
- The Last Physician: Walker Percy and the Moral Life of Medicine by Carl Elliott on 11 pages
- Divine Sparks: Collected Wisdom of the Heart by Karen Speerstra on 10 pages
- Writing the Apocalypse: Historical Vision in Contemporary U.S. and Latin American Fiction by Lois Parkinson Zamora on 7 pages
- Walker Percy's Voices by Michael Kobre on 6 pages
See all 100 books citing this book
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