And why shouldn’t Walker Percy write a Roman Catholic science-fiction comic existential romance novel?
Rarely do I read a book, and proclaim: "Well, no one ever did that before.” Usually when I do, the next thought that comes into my head is: “Let’s hope no one does it again.” Or, as my wife likes to tell our sons: "Just because you can, doesn't mean that you should.”
With Love in the Ruins (1971), Percy can and does and should. Ingredients never previously mixed, rub shoulders under the soft covers of my paperback copy. Yet he pulls off this momentous mash-up with moxie. He leaves me wanting more of the same. Clearly he felt the same way: His final book, The Thanatos Syndrome (1987) was a sequel to Love in the Ruins , and proved that epistemology and zombies are not incompatible.
Percy , best known for his 1961 National Book Award-winning novel The Moviegoer , specialized in angst-ridden protagonists, paralyzed by self-doubt and on the brink of mental illness. His unheroic hero in Love in the Ruins , is another of these soul-haunted men, a psychiatrist appropriately named Thomas More. Our good doctor was named after his ancestor, the same More who wrote Utopia and was beheaded by King Henry VIII. Our modern-day More has much in common with his famous predecessor: he is a troubled Catholic, losing his head (albeit metaphorically rather than literally) in the face of social and political conflict, and seeking for earthly salvation via a radical personal vision of utopian life.
Dr. More is a dreamer. But he also much more than a dreamer…. because he has invented the More Qualitative-Quantitative Ontological Lapsometer. This is a handy piece of equipment that diagnoses existential angst, and supplies a proper jolt to treat it. Think of it as a kind of defibrillator for the soul. And just imagine the therapeutic value of rebalancing the inner self with outer self? More is convinced that a Nobel Prize is in his future.
In the meantime, he needs to worry about the mysterious stranger who is trying to shoot him. And the colleague who wants to humiliate him. And several ladies who also have plans for his future, apparently subscribing to the old adage that ‘More is better’.
He should be dealing with these problems, and assorted other crises in his neighborhood, but instead he frets about the consequences of his discovery. More offers up his own homemade prayer in hopes of averting them: "Lord, grant that my work increase knowledge and help other men. Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man's destruction. Failing that, Lord, grant that my article in Brain be published before the destruction takes place." This, Percy explains, is "the prayer of the scientist if he prayed, which is not likely."
Dr. More is having trouble explaining his breakthrough to others. Even his neighbors in Paradise, Louisiana think he is a bit crazy, and although they still turn to him for medical advice and treatment, more than few of them believe the physician ought to heal himself. More makes matters worse by describing his scientific breakthrough in spiritual terms. As he sees it, his Lapsometer diagnoses two great evils in modern society—namely angelism and bestialism , marked by too great spiritual abstraction, on the one hand, and abandonment to animal-like impulses on the other. Even skeptics gradually come to accept that More can change people's psyches with his strange device, but his rambling talk about the human soul gives them the heebie-jeebies.
This strange sci-fi plot would, in itself, be sufficient to propel a fascinating novel. But Percy wants to do so much more. He gives his troubled doctor three major love interests, and our befuddled protagonist tries to pursue all of them, even as he deals with the emotional fallout from his failed first marriage. On top of this, Percy constructs a wild political satire, involving terrorist cells and plans for revolution in Paradise. A whole host of movements, counter-movements and splinter cells interact during the course of these pages, and perspicacious readers may want to jot down marginalia so that they can keep track of the competing agendas of the Knotheads, Bantus, Leftpapas, Christian proctologists, Teutonic sexologists, love people, the American Catholic Church of Cicero, Illinois, Qualitarians, and other factions whose disputes and dogmas repeatedly move the story in unexpected directions.
Indeed, Percy may be best known as a religious writer, given the themes of his books, but nothing is sacred in his stories. All the most controversial issues—race, religion, sex, party politics, Yankee imperialism, class warfare, guns and ammo—play a prominent role in Love in the Ruins . No matter what your belief system and background, you will find something offensive somewhere in these pages.
A typical conversation from its pages
"Chief, the news is worse…."
"What has happened now?"
"There are riots in New Orleans, and riots over here. The students are fighting the National Guard, the Lefts are fighting the Knotheads, the blacks are fighting the whites. The Jews are being persecuted."
"What are the Christians doing?"
"Nothing."
"Turn on the TV."
"It’s on. The station went off the air."
But you have to admire Walker Percy's daring. Plenty of writers were concocting apocalyptic sci-fi novels during this period, and more than a few extracted political insights from these action-oriented stories. But Percy's attempt to construct a science fiction of the soul is even more ambitious. Love in the Ruins is one of the few futuristic tales suitable for scrutiny and assessment by theologians and moral philosophers. In the annals of science fiction, only a handful of novels (such as James Blish's A Case of Conscience , Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness , or— now don't freak out!—Frank Herbert's Dune ) have dug so deeply into the inner workings of our ethical constructs.
Percy has many interesting things to say in the course of this book, and almost every page contains something quotable or notable. But readers who prefer tight narratives and neat, clean plots will rebel against the rambling and ruminative delivery. The end result is less like a novel, and more like a lovable but opinionated great uncle at the dinner table spinning an endless yarn, filled with sidetracks, digressions and rude observations. Even if you disagree, you will be entertained, and find yourself recalling snatches of the monologue days or weeks later.
Percy was that kind of writer and—God bless him!—one of the best of them. If I tried to sum up his work in a pithy phrase, I would turn to an old song very popular in the same Louisiana in which Love in the Ruins is set. Its title, "Oh, Didn’t He Ramble" fits Percy perfectly. I’m told the original version of this song was so outrageous as to be unpublishable, but once cleaned up it became suitable for both parties and funerals. Percy's book captures a bit of all these traits —it's outrageous, jubilant and elegiac all at the same time. Maybe that's a contradiction, but then again, maybe tha's just the right recipe for existential Roman Catholic sci-fi comic romance fiction.
Ted Gioia writes on music, literature and popular culture. His next book, a history of love songs, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.