by Walker Percy
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Product Description
Will Barrett is a 25-year-old wanderer from the South living in New York City, detached from his roots and with no plans for the future, until the purchase of a telescope sets off a romance and changes his life forever.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Bored and Confused, 2007-07-17
This is actually my favorite Percy novel. While I believe the Moviegoer uses an excellent device, watching movies, to depict the alienation of the moder/post-modern man I identified much more closely with the engineer in this novel. Percy believed that boredom and a sense of disconnection were the ultimate products of the modernist agenda. I believe Barret perfectly describes the average denizen of modernity who doesn't know who he is, where he is going, or what he is for.
Autobiographically, I grew up as a transplanted midwesterner in the deep south. What I loved so much about this novel is how much I could identify with the main character's sense of rootlessness.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 The Last Gentleman, 2007-02-21
The year this book was published, I was a college student taking whatever liberal arts piqued my interest. My Abnormal Psychology course was a favorite. In those times, the classification of people was thought important, and I recall memorizing the various symptoms to be seen in each of the eight types of schizophrenia delineated by my textbook. My instructor knew that each person is crazy in his own way, and encouraged us to focus on the bigger picture. One of his final exam questions was "Why do so many psychological problems have to do with sex or religion?" I don't remember what I responded, but I've always remembered the question for its classic illumination of two areas that will always keep psychiatrists and novelists in business. A classmate had read this book, thought it illustrative of weirdness and I made a mental note to see for myself. Had I not delayed my promise for 40 years, I would probably have held the work in higher esteem.
The novel is in third person and overflows with asides and incidentals. Percy provides a constant flow of tangential remarks that keep the action in flux. There is little excavation to expose the root of things, though one feels a flicker of truthiness in some of the dialog. Billy, the main character, goes careening around in fugue at stressful times and the offhanded, existential immediacy of the style enhances his abnormality. At bottom, the book is about sex and religion, though the absolutes that seem to have inspired Percy make for thin spackle. Had I read this in '66 before Gonzo lit, I would have given it 5 stars.
A final remark as to the talented author. I assume wide ranging life experience and spectacular trauma may result in a deep reservoir from which to draw. Read Walker Percy's bio in Wickipedia. Taking up the pen was a great career move.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Going beyond the personal to the universal, 2006-05-14
Will Barrett is a confused young man. A drop-out, not only of Princeton, but basically of life in general, in this picaresque novel Barrett goes on a "spiritual quest" that takes him from NYC to his ancestral home in the Mississippi Delta to the desert around Santa Fe in search of answers on how to live. He falls in love with Kitty, encounters her family, faces ghosts from his own past, and breaks from his self-imposed stupor and acts. Will spends much of the novel observing: he views life through a telescope and spends a lot of time in front of a TV set. Gradually he learns to free himself from this bondage (he says he wanted to view life as a scientist might) and begins living life as a participant and not just as an observer. Will doesn't forget the value of contemplation and at the end of the novel is still a "watcher and listener," but by this stage has a better idea of who he is. Percy is a comic writer and many of the scenes are funny (and symbolic): the ending with Sutter Vaught and his Edsel is hilarious. Well written and searching, Percy's novel insists that people must reach out beyond themselves to find happiness and sanity.
8 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
A Latter day Camus, 2004-07-26
First of all, I do not bother to review a work I do not like. I am a writer myself and no one likes to get a bad review. Why should I upset another writer on Amazon? So, unless I am paid or asked to review a book in my professional capacity, I only comment on really good books. The Last Gentleman is such a book. It reminds me of Camus, Herman Hesse, or Franz Kafka at their best. There are enough previous reviews on Amazon to relate the plot outline; I need not repeat this. Those who only gave this book 2 or 3 stars admitted that they "didn't get it" or could not understand what the book is about. Existentialism is not for everyone. Nor is satire of the Percy genre.
But I loved it. Almost as much as Love in the Ruins
Edward C. Green
Harvard University
0 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Hopefully number 3 will be better, 2004-04-16
I picked up Percy's second work, The Last Gentleman, after reading his initial book, The Movie Go-er a few years ago while in Massachusetts. In the end, I found it hard to get into the story. I could not identify with the characters. They seemed a little unreal. I could not identify with Will Barrett. I could not comprehend his inner dispositions, or how his personal history formed the person he was. The same thing with Sutter, although his ramblings in his notebook were interesting. Val was in another world for me. No doubt this probably says more about me. I don't know if that says something about how I might view southerners. I hope not. Although there were moments I truly enjoyed, I could not get into the plot. It just seemed a tad far-fetched. I didn't mind hearing the names of dated appliances or food stuffs. I derived pleasure from that, the so-called "blast from the past". I like how Percy drops here and there the strange things we humans do. There is too much that is still unresolved. I think it needs a sequel. Maybe it is just me.
I intend to pick up and read Love in the Ruins, as well as all of Walker Percy's works (non-fiction as well). That is definitely me.
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