Lost in the Cosmos….
June 1, 2006
A few weeks ago I finished reading Walker Percy’s book LOST
IN THE COSMOS: THE LAST SELF-HELP BOOK.
From the inside flap:
Lost in the Cosmos
The last Self-Help Book
Or
How you can survive in the Cosmos,
about which you know more and more while knowing less and less about yourself,
this despite 10,000 self-help books, 100,000 psychotherapists, and 100 million
fundamentalist Christians
Or
Why is it that of all the billions
and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos—nova, quasars, pulsars, black
holes—you are beyond doubt the strangest?
Or
Why is it possible to learn more in
ten minutes about the Crab Nebula in Taurus, which is 6,00 light-years away,
than you presently know about yourself, even though you’ve been stuck with
yourself all your life?
The book ends with a series of questions, both addressing a
particular situation in the book, and candidly, the reader:
Are you in trouble? How did you get in trouble? If you are in trouble, have you sought
help? If you did, did help come? If I did, did you accept it? Are you
out of trouble? Are you out of
trouble? What is the character of
your consciousness? Are you
conscious? Do you have a
self? Do you know who you
are? Do you know what you are
doing? Do you love? Do you know
how to love? Are you loved? Do you hate?
There is now no genre for what this book is and what it
does. It’s not a self-help book,
though wryly suggests itself as such. It is helpful, however, in the discovery process of
the SELF. The “I” in
statements that begin with “I am (this or that) …”
The brilliance of the book, it seems to me, is the numerous
“thought experiments” that Percy creates.
“Image you are this, or that person in this, or that situation…the
following conditions apply….(listing various conditions about which he has been
writing)…choose a response.”
Percy lets us say it more than he says it himself:
The SELF, is lost.
In sex, in distraction, in worry and anxiety. Lost in all the things that we find ourselves getting
into, wanting so badly to get
out…debt…hurt…distraction…lust…boredom…anger…etc. Lost.
I think it is both interesting and telling that what the
television show LOST is about, is not so much about being lost on an island and
surviving the conditions. There is
so little about survival. So
little food-gathering, and water-drinking—it’s all about the self and the
individual “selves” trying to find a way to not be so Lost and confused about
who to love and trust and hate and manipulate.
June 1, 2006 at 7:44 pm
Not quite Robinson Crusoe, the first English novel–masquerading as a biography since there was no “fiction” section at the local Barnes & Noble.
The book is full of lists–materials necessary for survival. Mr. Crusoe the life accountant. We can know what it takes to survive without much self-knowledge.
Someday I’ll have to watch this “Lost” thing everyone’s talking about, eh?
June 4, 2006 at 6:36 am
Jared, all of Walker Percy’s books are gret. His only other non-fiction books are “Signposts in a Strange Land” and “Message in a Bottle,” both of which are collections of rather free-ranging essays on everything from the nature of language to the nature of community to the nature of communication between God and man.
He’s probably best known as a novelist, though. My favorite is “The Moviegoer,” which won the National Book Award when it was published. But there many other great ones — “The Second Coming,” “Love in the Ruins,” “The Last Gentleman,” and “Lancelot” are marvellous. The only one I wouldn’t fully recommend, only because it’s okay but not great, is “The Thanatos Syndrome.” Let me know if you want to borrow any/all of these.–>