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Re: [percy-l] Part five of the slow read of The Last Gentleman Chapter 5 to 5.6
- From: honeyjbc1 <honeyjbc AT gmail.com>
- To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
- Subject: Re: [percy-l] Part five of the slow read of The Last Gentleman Chapter 5 to 5.6
- Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2025 23:59:00 -0400
Thank you. I worried that it might be too long.I hope people offer examples for “Will.”I just finished reading the book this afternoon. Can’t wait to see what comes up.JanetOn Jul 11, 2025, at 8:58 PM, Leonard <leonardh6363 AT gmail.com> wrote:Janet!! Good questions… I’ll take a crack at them, near as I can figure out Percy’s indirect messages in Will’s adventure. As I unravel the mysteries, I rely on my attempt to understand existential ideas. Please bear with me.
On Fri, Jul 11, 2025 at 2:15 AM honeyjbc1 <honeyjbc AT gmail.com> wrote:
1. Did anyone else wonder how Our protagonist so easily got himself from place to place? He did not get lost. And there was no GPS to guide him. Somehow he was just where he was supposed to be, this aimless, go with the flow, do-not-make- decisions person. Did this make sense to you?It does make sense to me…I confess I identify with Our protagonist, and I’m often surprised when I’m able to accomplish anything. Accordingly, I don’t think Percy thought of Will as unable to make his way in the world: he's successful in school, lands a career in New York City, wins Kitty's heart (though he has trouble with groups, is struck with bouts of amnesia and anxiety). Meanwhile he has Sutter’s map, his long-term memory and (except for his hearing) his senses are intact.
When I was a student at Maryland, a woman did a very clever paper on Will Barrett’s sense of smell! She followed the descriptions of odors in the novel and contended that Will literally followed his nose, utilizing a sense that is linked with memory. Wish I still had that paper.
2. Percy assumes always that his readers know certain words or expressions. There was no internet in the 60's when this book was published.There may have been encyclopedias and libraries. But I sure was glad I had my phone in hand and could look up words often.Dapple, paltriness, killdeer, WWL in New Orleans, which turned out to be a radio station, cockleburs, satsumas, towhead (not blond), muzhiks, coveys, pari passu, meniscus of snow, fragrant pinon up and down arroyos, chthonic, Catherine wheel, pileated woodpeckers, ich warte. Now you may know some of them, but did you know all of them? I sure didn't.Hahaha…well, WWL is very dear to me…I stream it Sundays in football season for games of my beloved Saints.⚜️ Percy does have an amazing vocabulary. Thanks for listing many of the words I tried to ignore as I read. I do resort to a dictionary (my flip-phone is slow) when the meaning is vital to understanding an idea (Sutter saying Catholics object to “paltriness” rather than sin).
3. Did anyone wonder how this almost brain dead person suddenly knew people's names and identities with ease? Knew where he was?We meet his father in a memory, a lawyer, threatened somehow, perhaps because he helps those who are supposed to be shunned. We learn of his sudden horrible death. Could this be the cause of our hero's amnesia? If so, why is it suddenly cured because he is back where he began and why can he so easily recognize everyone he hasn't seen for a long time?
I have to believe the trauma of his father’s suicide is at the basis of his psychological troubles. As he approaches the scene of the tragedy, I would imagine it helps him to face an event that he has partially buried in the past by escaping from the South.
4. He has many incidents of deja vu. Familiar smells, wrecks of rocking chairs - was he here before? An academy where he visits is a place he knew about. He knew who taught what. Here was more sudden knowledge that does not match the oblivious, amnesiac we have come to know. What did you make of all this?In many cases, he was at these places in early days. The tricky incidents are when he seems to remember events he may not have experienced. The memory of meeting a senator on a train with his father comes to mind (pp. 333-334).
5. He meets Val at the Academy and they have a chat. We get Val's story because Barrett is trying to ask her questions. This is a funny episode because Barrett is trying to say appropriate things and they keep backfiring on him. He doesn't seem to like Val. What did you think?
I rather think he respects Val.
6. I loved "The courteous engineer, the last man on earth to inflict a snub..." as a description of our protagonist.
Yes!
7. Barrett finds Sutter's notes. He is criticizing Val. Sutter we can see is not a stupid man. But what did you think of his assessment of Val and her choices?Here’s where I rely on what Percy has said about existentialism, which I first encountered in “Love in the Ruins,” and later, Percy’s essays and “The Moviegoer.” The flaw in the human condition can’t be fully explained by psychology, because it doesn’t account for alienation—that condition of boredom, worthlessness, ennui, selflessness, homelessness in the world. Alienation causes a rift, a separation from the physical world. The worst alienation results in despair…hopelessness, lack of faith, etc. I missed the slow read of “Ruins,” dang it, but you may recall Dr. More’s description of being in an orbit, unable to re-enter the “lovely ordinary world.” Percy also talks about “recovering” what that condition causes us to lose...the inability to see the Grand Canyon with the awe and appreciation that the first explorer felt when he broke though the shrubbery and saw it for the first time, with no preconceived notion of what he had discovered (“Loss of the Creature” in Percy’s “Message in the Bottle”). Relying on preconceived notions, especially from “experts,” results in inflated expectations and the world becomes lost to us. Kitty’s image of the happy sorority girl causes a loss of her actual self—Percy’s indication that she’s alienated.
That’s a long-winded (sorry!) description of what I think is behind Sutter’s assessment of Val…I think he judges her for breaking with the reality that science describes. Problem is, Sutter isn’t really at home in the world either.
8. He meets more locals and remembers them and asks himself why he ever left.He finds out there was trouble last night and people were hiding from it. It was probably the same trouble that led to his hitting his head.He meets Breeze, the negro who runs a restaurant, and he knows him, and he again runs into Forney Aiken, the pseudo negro, who was the driver who picked him up when he hitched a ride when he was trying to connect with Kitty.Did you have trouble following the story here? Did you think, as I did, that it was awfully coincidental - these meetings anew?
I love the coincidental event…not entirely improbable. Helps to unify the earlier structure of the book with the climactic events, and it advances the racial theme. Meanwhile, the accidental experience of what lies around the bend is what Kierkegaard calls a “rotation,” one of the escapes for a person who is alienated in the present. Or if you don't want to think about Kierkegaard anymore (!), you can relate it to the coincidental meetings that Huck experiences on his way down the river.
9. He meets actors who were in trouble. Forney asks if the engineer could use his influence on the sheriff to intercede and keep these people out of trouble. The sheriff is on his way to arrest them. On a whim he offers them his camper. Did you think that was rational? Even if he wanted to help, what sense did that make? What if they vamoosed with it? Then where would he be?
Doesn’t it fit with so many of the spontaneous events that result in the direction of Will’s life? The whole thing gets going because he was watching a hawk with his telescope and just happened to spot a woman, touching off the entire adventure.
10. I loved that Uncle Fannin never called his servant Merriam twice by the same name - Merum, Mayrom, Meerom, Mayrim. But his respectful negro servant answered the same always, "Yassuh."My new favorite line in the book comes when Will springs from his lethargy and knocks the racist deputy flat for assaulting the black bartender. The shocked deputy’s buddy tells him, “You done hit Beans”!!
11. Sutter's case histories are alternately brilliant and about lewd sex. What do you make of Sutter and his ideas?
Having gone on about existentialism, I would nevertheless say that Sutter raises existential ideas, but he is not out of the woods. His only method of re-entering the real world is having sex, a somewhat limited approach to dealing with alienation.
12. Of course when the law found Barrett's trailer with a group of mixed negroes and whites, they assumed that it was stolen. He was generous to let them have the trailer for their escape and didn't want them prosecuted. But he did want them let go and gone by the time he picked up his trailer. What did you make of that?
I took that as another example of Will’s capriciousness. And possibly his capacity for hope, that things will work out, and that there’s good in everyone…Forney, Sutter, the elder Thigpen…maybe not Beans!
13. Barrett reads more of Sutter's notes which give background to Sutter's marriage and Rita's friendship with Kitty. Sutter is becoming more of a mystery. Or maybe less of one. What do you think?
I was surprised to learn he has respect and lingering feelings for Rita.
14.I loved near the end of section five - "Just between you and I", said Kitty. And without thinking Barrett says, "Just between you and me."
The engineer fixes things 😊
15. Sutter's notes now include some observations about Barrett. These I do not understand. Can someone please give me a synopsis of what Sutter is saying here including an explanation of the word immanence?
I think “immanence” refers to being a part of the physical world (the environment, society, experience). Sutter seems to be saying that Will is trying to be happy by becoming part of those realities, and that is a lost cause. While I think Will has his own form of alienation, here is where Percy criticizes Sutter: he claims to be in a superior world of “transcendence,” but with lewd sex as his only way to rejoin the world, and his temptation for suicide, Sutter is in despair.
16. Percy often talks of how we behave on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon. Here is Sutter ending his comments with "...In fact my problem is how to live from one ordinary minute to the next on a Wednesday afternoon." Is Sutter speaking for Percy all along?
Actually, those words are Will’s (it’s hard to see what graphs are indented), but you're right: they do come closer to Percy (and Dr. More), who advocates an un-alienated existence that involves “re-entering the lovely ordinary world.”
17. in Chapter Five, part six there is "the locus of pure possibility". "What a man can be the next minute bears no relationship to what he is or was the minute before." This very thought came early in the book in the first few pages.
I believe that is another Kierkegaard idea related to his “rotation.” (You who are scholars, please don’t make fun of me!)
18. Sutter picks Barrett up and tells him to visit Jamie in the hospital, that he is very sick.***Now I want to have some fun. With Percy there are no accidents. Notice he didn't call him Bill Barrett. He is called Will.I kept playing with that. Will he or won't he? Does he have free will? Is he willing his actions or absolutely not doing that?I believe it is no accident that he is called Will and if I tried I could probably find more jokes using his name. Can you find some?Let's hear from some of you. I look forward to getting some insights.
Hahaha…Our protagonist has a great many burdens to carry…will he bear it?
Thank you, Janet! Love your questions.
Leonard----------------------------------
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[percy-l] Part five of the slow read of The Last Gentleman Chapter 5 to 5.6,
honeyjbc1, 07/11/2025
- Re: [percy-l] Part five of the slow read of The Last Gentleman Chapter 5 to 5.6, Percy-L Listserv Manager, 07/11/2025
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Re: [percy-l] Part five of the slow read of The Last Gentleman Chapter 5 to 5.6,
Leonard, 07/11/2025
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Re: [percy-l] Part five of the slow read of The Last Gentleman Chapter 5 to 5.6,
honeyjbc1, 07/11/2025
- Re: [percy-l] Part five of the slow read of The Last Gentleman Chapter 5 to 5.6, honeyjbc1, 07/11/2025
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Re: [percy-l] Part five of the slow read of The Last Gentleman Chapter 5 to 5.6,
honeyjbc1, 07/11/2025
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