Walker Percy

[Doug Brown <wply1223 AT gmail.com>]

Great observations, Janet!

I agree that the opening line of this closing section is so funny. And it’s just the sort of thing that a lot of us have been noticing in Love in the Ruins: it’s funny because the phrasing is just perfect.

I think Father Smith is the key to understanding the end of the book. I don’t have anything to add about his message to Tom – except to say that his message becomes even clearer in The Thanatos Syndrome, but I guess we’ll get to that in a few years.

We’ve talked a bit this summer about the importance of names in this book. I like that Father Smith has the most ordinary of names, suited to his message of ordinary life and even the sacraments of the ordinary.

-

Some of you might be familiar with my idea (because I’ve droned on about it before) that Percy’s novels all form one continuous story of a single consciousness. That the six novels trace the mental health decline, breakdown, and recovery of the main characters in a way that forms a connected narrative.

In Lancelot we see a full mental collapse. In The Second Coming we have what Percy would have called a split personality and we would probably think of as dissociative identity disorder.

I think this progress of mental decline gets at the heart of the Art Immelmann thing. Tom’s mind is cracking up – and perhaps splitting apart. In short, Art doesn’t really exist. He only shows up around Tom and Ellen, although there does seem to be some minimal interaction between Art and the rest of the world, but nothing that couldn’t be explained as actually coming from Tom and Ellen. It’s not entirely clean, I’ll admit. But in my “arc of consciousness” theory, what we are seeing in Love in the Ruins is the incipient fragmenting of a mind.

In the end of this arc (essentially the final chapters of The Second Coming and most of The Thanatos Syndrome) we see that healing and wholeness comes in the form of ordinary life and healthy love. We see hints of that hope in the last bit of Love in the Ruins. Tom “casts out” the cracked up fragment and finds healing in the love of Ellen.

Thoughts?

Doug Brown

Asheville, NC

On Fri, Jul 17, 2026 at 1:34 AM honeyjbc1 <honeyjbc AT gmail.com> wrote:

How will Percy get it all together and bring this book to a conclusion? We know he does it in a mere fifty pages. But how?

Simple. Percy knows his destinations. Percy knows where he wants to wind up, so he makes it happen conveniently. 

He simply makes the baddies fewer in number because more people are satisfied and not energized to become part of the aggression. So they could not get the rage going. (Top of page 366 - most people, black and white, like things the way they are.)

Everyone calms down, the madness evaporates. Simple.

The first sentence of page 353 is hilarious. We are off and running.

The bunker fires - that darn Heavy Sodium. All of their plans - the President himself is ready to award the prize money to the winner. And the plans are all dashed.

Tom tries to explain what is going on but no one believes him. Each one has his own interpretation. We have on page 360 another one of those conversations where people are talking at cross purposes. While Tom is trying to warn about his lapsometer and Art Immelmann, others are talking about the state of things, each responding according to his personal obsession

Tom passes out. Another allergic reaction to those gin fizzes. Art Immelmann appears. Is this a dream or real? On page 363 there is an important idea. Art tells Tom, "We never 'do' anything to anybody. We only help people do what they want to do." 

Art suggests that Tom go back to the motel to enjoy his three ladies and then he and Tom can change the world for the better. "Didn't 

G-d put us here to be happy?" Tom prefers a nap for the moment.

Ellen appears. Lola has run to her home with her cello and her pistol. We find out later that she marries and is playing in an orchestra. Moira is off with Buddy Brown. Ellen orders Tom to go back to work. He doesn't want to. Charley Parker and his two women appear, one of whom wants our Tom, assures Tom that there is no ism, no anti-ism, no left, no right. Charley thinks Tom set the bunker fires.The scientists, the killers of subjectivity are finished, he tells Tom. Even the Christian flag wavers and hypocrites are finished. Charley has plans for Tom. Hester wants Tom to live with them in her chickee. 

So is hippiedom, flower children with no responsibility to be Tom's conclusion? He knows he doesn't want that. This all refers to page 48 where we are introduced to Charley.

On the top of page 366, there is a reference to how we are to conduct ourselves on an ordinary Thursday afternoon. I was reminded of Charles Lowry's excellent presentation of his paper at  that New Orleans celebration at Loyola of the 50th anniversary of the presentation of the National Book Award to Percy.

There is that prothonotary warbler again on page 368. A reference to Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. I wonder again why that is in here. Any thoughts anyone?

 More arguing from others in our story. Name calling. But in the end they seem happy.

Suddenly, Uru shows up and declares he wants that machine - the lapsometer.Their exchange recapitulates every would be idealist's or destroyer's easy answers for getting the world to be what they want it to be.

Tom's daughter, Samantha, shows up. She urges her father not to forget about G-d's grace.This reminds me of Lonnie at the end of The Moviegoer.

Ellen and Art show up. There is a dispute between them about where Tom is going at that moment. Good and evil fight for Tom's soul. Art offers Ellen a job, but Tom intervenes. Art goes to get Ellen, and Tom prays to try to make Art disappear. Tom is praying - a good sign.

Page 377. Oh! How I wish this one could be made into a movie. But how many would understand it?

In the epilogue we find Tom now with two children and one on the way. His life has a routine. 

I love the sentence on page 383 - "The young, who already know everything, hate science, bomb laboratories, kill professors, burn libraries."

In his routine existence, Tom looks at Ellen with love.

Blacks are now members of the golf club.They did not have to kill anyone. They simply exercised their property rights. They owned houses in the swamp. In the swamp they struck oil. And they bought houses in Paradise. Uru moved to Ann Arbor and rejoined the black studies department of the university. Knotheads in disgust moved out to safe havens like Fairfax Virginia. Percy sums up our story putting each niche in ironic new niches that do not fit their earlier ones.Very funny all of it. And the biggest joke is that the love community turns out to be the most violent.

More conversations at cross purposes. Colley Wilkes drives up to Tom. He exclaims that "he has come back." Tom thinks of G-d. No, Colley means a bird he once saw.  These pages are hilarious. The bits about that tape of  "the good parts of music", are especially. funny. Coilley tells Tom someday he's going to put it all together. Colley means the lapsometer. and its effects. Tom is thinking about his life altogether. Tom asks what Colley thinks happened five years ago. Colley says - the usual, people just getting mad and violent instead of resorting to the democratic process to resolve their differences. Tom means the actual events surrounding the lapsometer.

The vines are not taking over now because they are being cut back and kept in check. 

There are many digressions to tie up many details of the book. But the biggest one is Tom goes to confession. Tom is irritated that Father Smith seems tired and preoccupied. But in his simple distracted way, Father Smith gets the message out to Tom.

In essence it is my usual conclusion of a Percy novel.

Get over yourself, love someone, and prepare yourself to be ready to accept G-d's grace.

And damn if that isn't just what happens as Ellen and Tom make love in the new double bed he has bought for her.

***

A marvelous book. A marvelous ride to its excellent conclusions. 

Questions? The usual for me. Why those birds all through? Why those reflections from inanimate objects or foreheads or grits? What do you get out of this book? Are your conclusions the same as mine? Do you have other ideas?

This is your last chance this summer. Let's hear from a lot of people now. What do you have to say about Love in the Ruins?

Janet Cantor

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