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[percy-l] Slow read of The Last Gentleman - Part II Charles Lowry. My two cents
- From: honeyjbc1 <honeyjbc AT gmail.com>
- To: percy lists <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: [percy-l] Slow read of The Last Gentleman - Part II Charles Lowry. My two cents
- Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2025 17:54:48 -0400
Charles Lowry,
The first thing is to dispel this nonsense about you not being a scholar. What did you do in your comments that is different from what a scholar does? You quoted other experts, you compared this to other works, and you analyzed this section with intellect.
As you say, Mr. Vaught needs someone to entertain and watch Jamie. For him, Will is now Billy. Too funny.
It is pragmatism when he asks Will to take this job. When he learns how much the telescope cost Will and sees how easily Will offers it to Jamie, I would think he would never want to trust Will. But it is too perfect to trust him. In a Percy novel all sorts of coincidences and chance meetings shift gears and move the story along. Anyway Vaught's giving his children big checks despite his disappointment in them shows he is impulsive.
As for Will, he goes with the flow. He has no ego, it seems, strong enough to give him motivation for anything he does. He may say he likes Kitty, but is it lust or more than that? It is hard to find any depth in Will thus far. I loved the lines "Do I love her? I something her." In my book on page 104. Later they have something interruptus.
And the reader knows that when Will takes one look at the group for therapy, he will have none of it.
Will reads self help books. I once read a self help book. It had a wonderful sentence in it about when you cannot function and have too much to take care of and don't know where to begin, pick up one piece of paper and accomplish that and the motivation will come in the doing. This reminds me of Will's reading of one liners to get through life.
As for the locations confusing you, Charles, in the book facing the first page of Chapter One Percy explains about locations not being exact.
Ulysses is mentioned in passing as the truck that is meant for the Europe trip. Odysseys of one sort or another are always parts of Percy novels.
We learn how Kitty saved Rita's life from her bad marriage. And that is why Rita wants to help Kitty. Kitty has her own kind of goofiness. Is this fodder for a good relationship between her and Will? It doesn't seem so.
Now we meet the non black man, Forney Aiken. Sorry, the name sounds too much like fornicating.
Then until the end of this week's reading, is another seemingly irrelevant section to the novel. I don't have a lot of patience when I can't see the relevance of a digression. The short Odyssey as Will travels to meet Kitty and Rita.
My two cents for this week's reading.
Janet Cantor
- [percy-l] Slow read of The Last Gentleman - Part II Charles Lowry. My two cents, honeyjbc1, 06/20/2025
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