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Walker Percy's Sacramental Landscape: The Search in the Desert,
by Allen Pridgen
"In Walker Percy's last novel , The Thanatos Syndrome, protagonist Dr. Tom More's black servant Chandra tells him that he lives "too much in [his] head." The condition of self-enclosure and the alienation from reality she points to is the central spiritual predicament that Percy examined for more than thirty years in his six novels, numerous essays, and Lost in the Cosmos. Allen Pridgen's excellent book defines the ontological , epistemological, and theological foundation of that condition and shows how Percy dramatized it in the four novels about Will Barett and Tom More-The Last Gentleman, The Second Coming, Love in the Ruins, and The Thanatos Syndrome. Building upon the work of prominent Percy scholars such as Lewis Lawson, Patrick Samway, Gary Ciuba, Bernadette Prochaska, Edward Dupuy, and others, Pridgen argues that Percy's Catholic sacramentalism gave him "a way of seeing the world" that revealed the meaning of his protagonists' dislocation and offered the hope of recovery through intersubjective love. Throughout his study Pridgen skillfully weaves Percy's own philosophical insights, especially as shaped by Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and GabrielMarcel, to show the interrelationship between Percy's intellectual perspectives and their fictional representations.
In separate chapters on the four Barrett/More novels, Pridgen gives a meticulously detailed and insightful reading of both wayfarers' progress toward understanding of their true place within the sacramental landscape.
Pridgen argues persuasively that Percy's overall focus shifted to satire and broader social criticism in the Tom More novels.
Pridgen's study is a closely argued and astute examination of sacramentalism in these four novels.
Within its scope Pridgen's study is a rich and important contribution to Percy studies, as well as an excellent analysis of the "signs of the times" that Percy so brilliantly offered us as fellow wayfarers."
In separate chapters on the four Barrett/More novels, Pridgen gives a meticulously detailed and insightful reading of both wayfarers' progress toward understanding of their true place within the sacramental landscape.
Pridgen argues persuasively that Percy's overall focus shifted to satire and broader social criticism in the Tom More novels.
Pridgen's study is a closely argued and astute examination of sacramentalism in these four novels.
Within its scope Pridgen's study is a rich and important contribution to Percy studies, as well as an excellent analysis of the "signs of the times" that Percy so brilliantly offered us as fellow wayfarers."
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