Word: novelized
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Even with his humorous and noble style intact, Lancelot is Percy's bitterest novel, written not with the black humor of alienation but with the crotchety distemper of a curmudgeon. It does not add to Lancelot Edwarde Lamar's credibility as an existential visionary that he speaks from a private cell in a mental hospital, reflecting on his incineration of his adulterous wife and her lover on his family estate. There is a sense that Percy feels ambivalent towards a character who might be his spokesman and who might also be crazy...
Catastrophe pervades Percy's psychology. It takes an apocalyptic force to shake Lancelot out of a seven-year stupor in which his only pleasure in life was Raymond Chandler novels, and into a reevaluation of his quality of life (which moves him to such drastic action). Percy's characters often are alienated and then transformed by an experience which gives them a new perspective. He likes to describe this new ability to see the whole from a distance as a Martian perspective. Yet only after such an experience are Percy's characters capable of love, a principle solidified...
...divorce." Lancelot's and Percy's hurricanes are meant to sweep out the artificial hurricane of false elation and superficial radicalism that do not pull out the roots of the problem. Lancelot concludes with a Christian manifesto, but as Percy says in his essay "Notes for a Novel About the End of the World...
...intelligence discovers that it actually is not such a bad idea after all. The movie -which shows how this crazy notion was placed in operation and damn near succeeded-is a good idea too. One almost comes to believe the source of the plot is not a best selling novel but perhaps some costly, discovered secret document...
Douglas shot back a note saying he would stay where he was. He sarcastically used the word commodious five times to describe his satisfaction with his traditional quarters. To keep his perquisites, Douglas assumed the offensive, advancing the novel idea that a retired Justice retains the right to issue opinions in court cases of his choosing. Serious or not, Douglas made his point: he now operates with a secretary, a Library of Congress researcher, a driver-messenger, and a law clerk, who assists in rewriting his latest book...