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Re: [percy-l] The Last Gentleman Discussion / Chapter 3.4 - Chapter 4.5
- From: Doug Brown <wply1223 AT gmail.com>
- To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
- Subject: Re: [percy-l] The Last Gentleman Discussion / Chapter 3.4 - Chapter 4.5
- Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2025 17:10:45 -0400
Hi Tom,
Thanks for a thought-provoking intro to this section. I think you are onto some important points.
1. Binx and Will – I’ll just add one other comparison that aligns with your thoughts. Binx says that at until recently he only read “fundamental” books – books that were considered classics or that covered some abstract topic definitively. But at the time of The Moviegoer he is reading Arabia Deserta, a book that is entirely specific and not the least abstract. In The Last Gentleman, those two instincts have been divided across Jamie and Will. Jamie reads The Theory of Sets while Will reads English mystery novels. This seems to mean something. I think we sort of see Will as a lesser Binx, but maybe he’s Binx pushed a little father out into his loopiness. Binx reading something specific feels a bit healthier for being less abstract, but Will reading something specific feels like he’s straining to be rooted but failing.
2. Sutter – Clearly Will is fascinated with Sutter, even though he barely knows anything about him. In earlier sections, when Kitty was talking about her life, Will kept asking some version of “What did Sutter think of that?” When Rita was describing Sutter’s diagnostic skills, Will kept probing for details and examples that Rita brushed away. Now that Will is getting closer to interacting with Sutter, he seems to be more and more interested in Sutter’s life and thinking. But he is also starting to be just a bit skeptical of Sutter – perhaps building his defenses, preparing for Sutter’s coming onslaught against his own thin boundaries? (Is Will weak-willed?)
Tom – love your comparison of Will’s radar to your experience being in a country where you don’t speak the language.
Thanks, y’all,
Doug Brown
Asheville, NC
On Fri, Jun 27, 2025 at 10:48 AM Thomas Gollier <tgollier AT gmail.com> wrote:This post covers this week's reading of Chapter 3.4 - Chapter 4.5.Thomas!Starting with your interesting crab analogy, I'll try to respond to your thoughtful observations best as I can, having wondered like you how Will is going to end up, and being as confused as he is about reality.Will, one kind hermit crab, like Binx, another kind of hermit crab, seem to both be seeking a shell, a material reality suitable to protect tender abdomens yet comfortable for them and their actions. Hermit crabs can also modify the interiors of the shells they inhabit to some extent, but picking the wrong shell is detrimental for them. Both Will and Binx are seeking a shell, a material reality, or home for the subjective existence. But where Binx's subjective existence had a certain substance about it – he had thought about it and tried to recognize it for what it was – Will's is ephemeral. He's a shape-shifter who can interact with and mimic virtually any intersubjective way of posturing and coversing. He seems doomed to float ghost-like through his own actions and interactions with little or no self-awareness, "rowboating," as Percy puts it with regard to Forney's driving.Glad you brought up again the issue about comparing this book with The Moviegoer. Binx is much more aware than is Will. If he were a hermit crab, I think Binx would have a better of surviving than our sentient engineer. Binx isn't as lost--he's on a Search--Will doesn't really know where he's going, it seems to me. Binx is rather like the narrator of The Last Gentleman, presenting Will as an example of the sort of alienated people that Binx (and later Dr. More) comments on.
1. The different ways of being involved in making a home with the Vaughts – compared to the fairly clear alternatives of Binx, Kate, and Aunt Emily – seem not only more numerous but also much more conflicted. The quest is on, but the plausibility of a grail, holy or not, at the end of it seems remote?1. It does seem remote. The quote from Kierkegaard at the beginning doesn't give me much hope. If it's a true idea, a person who can't forget (or is pulled back into the past) won't amount to much, which doesn't bode well for a guy plagued by deja vu. Maybe Will's goal will be an ability to let go of the past and find a way to amount to something.
2. And then there is Sutter, a supposedly good diagnostician, looming on the horizon, but he apparently does not have a lot of success with his diagnoses, as good as they might be. The one noted here:
"Jamie told him Sutter drove an Edsel to remind him of the debacle of theFord Motor Company and to commemorate the last victory of the Americanpeople over marketing research and opinion polls. …"
is on the mark and the irony resounding, but where is the value for us in it.
"The engineer wasn't sure he liked this. It had the sound of a quixotic typewho admires his own gestures."2. It's too early for me to figure out Sutter, if I ever will. That Edsel comment stood out for me, too. I took it as one of Percy's satirical comments about political ideas, which form much of the craziness in Love in the Ruins. (By the way, I read once that Ford, searching for a name for their new car in the mid-'50s, enlisted help from renowned poet Marianne Moore, who insisted on calling it "Utopian Turtletop." For some reason, they decided to name it after a family member!)
3. And, then there is this notion of using one's "radar" rather than seeing. Being in France at the moment, and not knowing French, I think I have some idea of what Percy meant by this. It seems to involve sensing things non- or pre-linguistically from a distance whether actually interacting with what is seen or not. But it also seems to involve sensing different kinds of things, kinds of things that can only be expressed indirectly if at all, about others and their interactions.3. Yes! And the device of overhearing conversations, sometimes broken, and listening from a separated area (like an Englishman, as Will does), is possibly another form of indirect communication. Binx observes his family from that alcove in his aunt's house.
I've always been put off by this novel and never got very far in reading it. The utterly incompetent detective, funny as he may be, can rarely keep me interested until the end when he will miraculously solve the crime. But, now that I'm actually forced to keep on reading and trying to unravel it as best I can, it's getting more interesting, and I'm wondering just how Percy is going to pull all this together at the end.I agree, Thomas!!! Thank you.--Leonard
Thanks,
Tom Gollier----------------------------------
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Re: [percy-l] The Last Gentleman Discussion / Chapter 3.4 - Chapter 4.5,
Leonard, 07/01/2025
- Re: [percy-l] The Last Gentleman Discussion / Chapter 3.4 - Chapter 4.5, Doug Brown, 07/01/2025
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