Lancelot: A Novel (Paperback)

by Walker Percy (Author) "Come into my cell..." (more)
Key Phrases: runny babbits, plantation desk, dark parlor, Belle Isle, New Orleans, River Road (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"A funny and scarifying jeremiad . . . Easy to read and hard to forget."--Time

"Eloquent, reckless, hilarious . . . plunges forward through tawdry bedroom mysteries toward a final grand puzzle."--Washington Post Book World
-- Review

Review

"A funny and scarifying jeremiad . . . Easy to read and hard to forget."--Time

"Eloquent, reckless, hilarious . . . plunges forward through tawdry bedroom mysteries toward a final grand puzzle."--Washington Post Book World

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Picador; 1 edition (September 4, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312243073
• ISBN-13: 978-0312243074
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #231,382 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Modern Literature at its Best, December 10, 2002

By	Barry E. DeWalt (Redding, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This novel is wonderfully written. Walker Percy has quite a unique way of expressing thought in the English language. Unfortunately, unique does not always mean well done. In the case of Walker Percy, however, this novel is a masterpiece of prose.

The first couple of pages take the reader into the mind of a man (Lancelot) at an insane asylum who is recollecting his crimes against his now dead wife. Percy uses Lancelot as a foil to pose many questions regarding our humanity and morality.

For example, what is the sexual act? Why should it mean anything other than a biological act between two humans? What is it that causes man to be so grievously injured by adultery if the act is nothing but biology? Lancelot ponders these questions throughout the novel as he talks to his childhood friend who has become a priest. Percy gives no answers except to demonstrate through Lancelot that Lancelot's answers are lacking. Lancelot's answers form no moral basis.

The story moves quickly as Lancelot recalls the events leading up to his crime. To that end, the clipped pace of the narrative suits the urgency of the action.

The reader will understand just what he/she is getting in this novel within the first 20 pages. I recommend it highly, but do issue a caution that there is some quite honest dialogue in the novel that includes a fair amount of profanity. Though probably necessary to develope the character, some may be offended.

Purchase the book and enjoy modern literature at its best.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Confidentially, It's Walker Percy's Best Book . . ., May 29, 2002

By	Hunter Baker "Hunter Baker" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

After I read this book I had no choice but to immediately consume Walker Percy's novels. Reading Lancelot was like having the top of my head blown off and surviving the experience more awake and alive than ever. In an era where no one is really sure what they believe anymore, Percy sets out an interesting test. If you discovered clear evidence of evil, what would that tell you about the existence of good and maybe even God? I strongly suggest you take this journey and pay very close attention to the parallel travels of the main character's confidant, a priest-psychologist who is himself in crisis. If you do so, the ending will make the hairs stand up on the back on your neck.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vintage Percy, January 29, 2001

By	Jonathan C. Owen (Barrow, AK United States) - See all my reviews

This book is a conversation between Lancelot Lamar and Percival. Lancelot, once a member of New Orleans' landed gentry, is now confined to a mental institution. Percival is a priest who went to medical school, and has devoted his life to altruistic endeavors.

Lancelot was a "liberal" southern lawyer who validated his existence by working in civil rights litigation before a discovery that changed his life.

This discovery causes a great awakening. This theme of awakening is prominent in Percy's works. A character arrives at an existential moment in which he realizes that his life to this point has been as a dream: "Do you know what happened to me during the past twenty years? A gradual, ever so gradual, slipping away of my life into a kind of dream state in which finally I could not be sure that anything was happening at all. Perhaps nothing happened." As Lancelot retraces the events in this monologue, we watch the progress of his mental state, and his weighing of possible world views. His selection of a world view will determine his actions.

Another of Walker Percy's major literary themes is captured in an encounter between Lancelot and Elgin, a black MIT student. Lancelot mused, "Unlike him I had been unable to escape into the simple complexities of science. All he had to do was solve the mystery of the universe, which may be difficult but is not as difficult as living an ordinary life."

On another level, Lancelot is a southern white who has roiling feelings about women. His struggle to allow women to be sexual creatures is mirrored in his expressed feelings about his mother, then about his wife, Margot. The reader senses a that Lancelot's feelings toward women are a river of ambivalence. Curiously, this is similar to Pat Conroy's characters, whose southern white characters either lust after or endure their mother, depending on the moment.

If you like Walker Percy, you'll love this book. I do, and I recommend it.