There's nothing interesting about hating Walker Percy. There's plenty interesting about a lonely, quasi voyeur who spends every penny he has on a telescope and says shit like "where does love pitch its tent?" It's not his best, but it's very good.

I loved the Moviegoer and wanted to love this, but I couldn’t really even like it. Maybe it is dated or maybe it is me. A few good nuggets in there but too much of a random slog for me.

Just couldn't get into it.

Not my fav Walker Percy, but I did enjoy it more the second time

I feel like I should like Walker Percy, and so when I see one of his novels at a used bookstore, I'm inclined to pick it up and sometimes even take it home. And I do like him - for around 50 pages. At that point, I find myself desperately wishing for more of a plot and soon after I abandon the book.

I find Walker Percy to be a fascinating novelist, but I tend to feel like his work was so immediately relevant that I’m missing half of the point in everything I read from him. The Last Gentleman was published in 1966, after JFK was assassinated but before MLK, in the age of imminent moon landings and pop psychology, in the days of the Civil Rights Movement and Woodstock. Percy attends to many of the philosophical issues surrounding these types of events with comic, post-modern disillusionment, but it loses its flavor with a couple of generations of acclamation to these cultural upheavals.

Bill Barrett is born of true southern gentleman stock. His grandfather ran the KKK out of town and his father fought a fight that Atticus Finch would have been proud of, right up until the day that he ended his life in a way that any Faulkner character would have been proud of. As an adult, Barrett has wandered the country, quickly acclimating to whatever culture he comes across. He is in search of transcendence, but all he has found is a painful habit of blanking out and waking up months later, working in a menial position in a city he doesn’t remember ever seeing before.

When the amnesiac spends his life savings on a cutting edge telescope, he accidentally spies on two women exchanging notes in a secret notch in a park bench and becomes obsessed with discovering the meaning of these exchanges. Thus he tumbles headlong into a complicated drama with a road-trip oriented nouveau riche family who have a slight knowledge of all of his extended family. There is the father obsessed with money, the mother obsessed with hereditary honor, the philosophical black-sheep brother, the sister in the convent, the delightful coed, and the ailing teen genius, among others. As Bill is dragged back and forth in a many-directional tug of war, he is eager to help everyone in whatever ways he can, listless and aimless and forgetful on his own, desperate to find some sort of lodestar upon which to fix meaning in an age when everyone is selling something different.

This comic adventure in the South of the 60’s is full of questions of racial integration, psychology, philosophy, religion, and science. It feels a little disjointed to me at this point, but the comedy and the sense of aimlessness that might have been somewhat new then are similar to the ideas explored by Wes Anderson in his films today.

disjointed and pointless. a real struggle to engage

Did not finish

Could not finish this wishy washy book. For something that seemed to be character driven- it’s character was either too flat to catch my interest or too broken for me to mend.

I don't know what it is about Walker Percy--I always seem to think I'm going to like his books more than I do. This one in particular felt like I needed to devote more time to it and try to finish it faster but it's pretty long to demand that. And I found it rather slow-going. Some parts were funny, sad, and interesting but others seemed really bizarre and unconnected--like the excerpts from Sutter's casebook. I was left not fully understanding the novel but maybe that's to be expected.

Percy's classic work describes Williston Barrett as a young man trapped in a state of despondency who is searching for meaning and fulfillment in a chaotic and modern world. He meets Kitty Vaught and falls in love with her. The novel explores themes of identity, isolation, and the human condition, and is written in a unique and thought-provoking style. Overall, The Last Gentleman is a beautiful novel that will leave readers contemplating their own lives and the world around them.

Riveting ending with subtle details that will have a reader scratching his head after the final page is turned. By far one of Percy’s most straightforward philosophical novel speaking of themes transcendence, religion, and how to get by on a Wednesday afternoon.