Word: novelizes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When Percy hops on the Apocalypse Express at the novel's conclusion, it's invigorating writing. But it seems out of place...
WALKER PERCY is arguably the greatest living Southern novelist. His canon is as solid as any contemporary American's, north or south of the Mason-Dixon. The Moviegoer, Percy's first and best novel, received the National Book Award in 1962 and the works that followed--The Last Gentleman, Love in the Ruins, Lancelot, and The Second Coming--established a critical and commercial cult following that was, and is, highly deserved...
...does Percy stand with the release of The Thanatos Syndrome, his newest and least engaging piece of fiction? The writing here is piquant, elegant, well-whittled, and striking. And though the stakes are high--eugenics, AIDS, nuclear waste, and existential terror--one can't help thinking midway through this novel: Percy's all dressed up with no place...
...sheer discursiveness of The Thanatos Syndrome lends itself to all manner of loose, didactic, free-associative diatribe. We're so swept up by the movement of the novel--and this novel does move; it has a wonderful clip--that we find ourselves swallowing pop-philosophical placebos, medicines Percy, a physician, might have prescribed better elsewhere...
...want to read a truly classic crime novel, buy W. R. Burnett's Asphalt Jungle or Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me. This book is worth the effort only if you have a few hours to waste on a quick light book and don't care too much about being surprised or challenged...