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

["Wade Riddick" <wriddick AT usa.net>]

I'm surprised no on brings up _Lost in the Cosmos_.  Parts of it already
include a TV talk show format.  I believe there's a particular Phil
Donahue-esque scene.  You could break up the material and release segments on
Tik-Tok like clickbait.  "The astronomer peering through his telescope
discovers ancient miracles in the stars millions of light years away but has
no clue why his wife back home down the street is about to leave him.  Click
here to find out why!  Reverse ennui now!  Only $1.99 to reverse the
alienating effect of reading this social media!  All profits help orphan the
consciences of media moguls!"

The internet is always hawking self-help material and filling up with cults
attempting to fill in for AWOL religion.  If there's a generation chasing its
tail in the horizontal search always short of transcendence, it's the
antisocial media phone pod people in their narcissistic interest group bubbles
where community goes to die in that great mall-ification of the soul.  ("There
is no such thing as society," Margaret Thatcher was fond of saying - another
'70s figure haunting over us.)  Is there any real reason to digitally update
Daniel Bell or Neil Postman?  The old classics of semiotic criticism in the
analog electronic era have weathered the digital transition well.

_Love in the Ruins_ would be timely, since the Knotheads again run amok and we
are relitigating the 1960s - not to mention Vladimir Putin et al. have
reattached the alligator lips of Nazi ideology to the battery of unforgiving
nostalgia in an attempt to jump start Hitler's volk agenda.  It's another
chaotic era of pandemics, falling birthrates and general economic malaise
(which I tried to point out in March.)

An adaptation, though, might work better with a therapeutic foil like, say, a
fallen priest or psychologist against whom Tom bounces his ideas at a bar -
say, a humorous stage gimmick amply lubricated with bourbon to coax the inner
philosophical dialogue out into dramatic, tense conversation.

So... Lost in the Love of the Ruined Cosmos...?

Wade Riddick