Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

[Hghwy6 AT aol.com]

Glad to see this list is vibrant again.  By way of introduction, I am a 24 
year old student who was introduced to Percy in a secondary teachers' 
workshop.  That session dealt mainly with semiotics, but it gave me the bug 
to pick up a book I had been given a couple of years before in a Southern 
Lit. class.
    The first novel I read was also The Moviegoer, followed by Lancelot.  
Though I appreciated the dark humor and intrigue in Lancelot; I would 
recommend Last Gentleman to your friend, especially considering the age.  
Both books deal seriously with questions of death, but I think the latter 
balances the love and hope stuff in a way that might be more palatable to a 
younger reader.  Not that I mistrust the judgment of your friend or any other 
reader, just an opinion in hindsight.  I consider myself fairly jaded, but 
after a spell of reading all the novels back to back, the dark content, 
particularly the fixation with suicide, began to get to me a little more than 
I would have anticipated.

John Biundo