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  • From: Percy-L Listserv Manager <percy.listserv.manager AT gmail.com>
  • To: Percy-L Submission <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [percy-l] The Last Gentleman Discussion / Chapter 1 - Chapter 2, Section 5
  • Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2025 16:35:23 -0400

Thanks, Leonard, for your terrific post! I am forwarding it through the listserv again to note that your responses to Rhonda's questions are in bold in case that is not clear. 

Group members may wish to place a paragraph return or two after a question they respond to in order to set off their replies. Alternatively, you can use colored text. None of us wishes to miss out on anyone's valuable insightsOf course, it is perfectly acceptable to respond to responses using these same conventions. Most of all, have fun!

Happy reading,
Henry M.
Percy-L Listserv Manager


On Mon, Jun 16, 2025 at 3:49 PM Leonard <leonardh6363 AT gmail.com> wrote:
[percy-l] The Last Gentleman Discussion / Chapter 1 - Chapter 2, Section 5

This post covers this week's reading of Chapter 1 - Chapter 2, Section 5.

Chapter One, The Last Gentleman
Hello to the list, and welcome to our summer slow-read discussion. I have some thoughts and questions below. As you read LG, please chime in with your thoughts, questions, and answers to the questions of others. Think of it as a virtual book club, where we come together as readers and respond as such. For my part, I'm wiping all academic considerations from my mind, and I'm reading this very fine novel for pleasure alone. For your part, you are welcome to approach the novel in any way you'd like, and to share that with the rest of us.
I wanted to come to LG fresh, and so I tried to wipe my memory of what I already know is to come in the novel and of what comes later for Will in The Second Coming. One thing that is helping me do that is I’m reading it on Kindle. This is facilitated by the fact that, once again, all my physical books are packed away in anticipation of a move later this summer. Not having all my previous notes and underlined passages helps me to read it like it’s the first time, although I’m a bit put off by everyone else’s underlined passages. I’ll have to see if I can turn that off. Anyway, here are some initial points/questions that I’m hoping might prompt some discussion. Please throw your own into the hopper as well!
Before reading:
  1. I’m wondering if anyone else had the same goal – to come at the novel fresh – or if it’s the pleasure of returning to the book again that is working for you this time?  I'm coming to it "fresh." I've read it several times through the years, but my brain works like Will Barrett's...I can't remember what I did yesterday.

Chapter 1
  1. I’m struck in this first chapter by the presence of the narrative voice. It’s so assertively 1950-60s era and male to me, though the narrator is not in any way identified. But still, that narrator is a character, don’t you think? And I’m wondering, do I take the narrator as the voice-over in a film? As a psychiatrist making patient notes? As a sort of newscaster reporting on Will’s activities? Does the narrative voice assert itself that way for you? Or is it just the simple means of getting to the story? I never thought of the narrator as a character, since there's no interaction with the people introduced in the book. The voice has the advantage of understanding beyond Will's and others', but I don't believe it's the stuff of psychiatry. I see him (I think of the voice as male) as an existentialist, who describes Will's thoughts and experiences in terms that Binx Bolling would recognize and understand better than Will himself. (The narrator is apparently a fan of Kierkegaard--or at least, of Percy's nonfiction.) The psychiatrist in the book--Dr. Gamow-- is lampooned, unable to deal with Will's alienation by analyzing imaginary Freudian slips. 
  2. Will feels surprisingly current to me – this was my biggest shock upon returning to this novel. I used to feel that in some ways it was the most dated of Percy’s fiction. But perhaps because history has begun to rhyme a bit, LG pulls back into the moment for me. Will seems like so many of today’s young people, floating along and performing under his potential. He doesn’t have a strong identity or reliable social skills, and he is beset by fugues and anxieties. He could be the case study or subject of so many articles I read today about young people who have a failure to launch, so to speak. But before I wander into musing about today’s culture and today’s young people and what might be occurring within my own time, let me come back to the novel itself. In this re-read (or first read even), where does this novel seem to fall on the dated vs timeless scale? While the social satire hasn’t yet begun, it’s coming, and it draws upon Percy’s time period, as Dante did in The Inferno. Dante, of course, shook free from being dated and achieved timelessness. Can a novel like this – and Percy in general – do the same? It seems timeless to me. I agree that today's young people seem to have that "failure to launch." Will's troubles, I believe, are universal (in varying degrees, of course). There are instances that may be dated in today's more-sensitive culture. The first time Will is alone with Kitty, he kisses her on the mouth--a liberty allowed to every hero in '60s TV, but seems a bit awkward now, especially since Kitty registers no negative reaction. Still, I relate to Will's ills today as much as I did when I first read about them, and I still laugh out loud, thanks to Percy's fantastic sense of humor ("Try as he might, he could not bring himself to speak to the cat."!!!!)
  3. My favorite interaction in this first chapter is between Will and Dr. Gamow. There’s so much about it that strikes me as funny, such as the narrator’s description of Gamow’s eventual disenchantment with Will because Will is so good at being a patient without actually addressing his problems or, as they say regarding therapy and groups, doing the work. I can’t help but speculate on how much of Percy’s own life in New York and visits to Janet Rioch, his therapist, is woven into this dynamic. An interviewer once described Percy as an adept “dancer,” which I remembered when reading the description of Will as one in Gamow’s estimation. I’d look up the interview, but, as I said, my books are all packed. Maybe someone else knows? Percy once considered being a psychiatrist, but here he seems to be saying something about therapy, psychologists, and maybe especially patients. What do you think? I think Percy throughout his career consistently presented psychology as inadequate to deal with existential realities. He's much kinder to the psychiatrist hero in his next novel, as Dr. More is able to get beyond psychology better than poor old Dr. Gamow, with help from his lapsometer. 
Chapter 2 (through section 5)
  1. I couldn’t help but think of how 2025 students would react to Will’s pivot from birdwatching to people watching through his telescope. Is he a voyeur, a peeping Tom, or does he have some other reason for his actions? That telescope breaks him out of his difficulty to get beyond the cloud of everydayness. (I think there are similarities to Dr. More's instrument in "Love in the Ruins"--sorry to keep jumping ahead!)
  2. His integration into the Vaught clan—does that work for you? Poppy Vaught has some memory of Will’s father and uncle, and Will is a great social mimic (not to mention, he is returning to himself through this mimicry). But how suspicious is it that he shows up every day to visit? If I were the Vaughts, I’d wonder what he was up to. It's an old-style Southern hospitality to some degree. Right?
  3. As a follow-up, there’s a reaction to his father that he is picking up on but doesn’t understand. I remember enough to know what is being foreshadowed, but if I look at it from my clean slate perspective, I wonder if there’s a tension in the Vaught clan regarding Will. Poppy is very team Will, but the older women seem far more reticent—particularly Rita. Rita's no fun.
  4. Is it romantic, the way Will skulks around after Kitty and then confesses over-the-top feelings for her, or is it creepy? Or is it just that Rita is right—he’s very ill? It's a bit strange, even in the '60s. But I had a coincidental experience last night at the end of a midcentury episode of "77 Sunset Strip." Roger Smith engaged help with his case from an attractive, and very all-business psychiatrist. After solving the case he shocked her by planting a snog on the lips, which melted her cool facade. Helped to put Will Barrett's action in a different context.  
 I can't wait to see what everyone else is thinking! All the best to all of you!
...and the best to you, Rhonda. Loved your comments!

--Leonard

Rhonda McDonnell
Member of the Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism
Texas Tech University

"You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." ~Walker Percy~
  





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