My favorite of Walker Percy's novels. Williston Bibb Barrett, the protagonist, although that is a somewhat inappropriate label for him, wanders through the novel reacting to other people in a highly mannered way, initiating very little, but his very self-effacement presents a tabula rasa for those around him to fill in.

Somewhere in this book I remember seeing the description of manners as existing so that "nobody would ever not know what to do." I have looked for the line and not found it lately, but I feel it accurately describes Billy Barrett's survival methods. Billy is subject to "fugue states" which leave him un-moored from a sense of self or even his name, from time to time.

He is not unlike the character of Chance the gardener in Being There by Jerzy Kosinski in his effect on other people, who read their own values into Chance's simplistic gardening commentary. Chance is limited and simple all the time, where Billy can sometimes rise to function as an entire human being, until his fugue state settles in.

The lives of the other characters in Percy's book are greatly influenced by their encounters with Billy Barrett, while Billy drifts on the surface of his life, gently nudged this way and that.

This novel was brilliant, with Percy displaying a wide emotional range and keen insight into the Southern psyche. That urge to please, to behave as expected, to live up to the overwhelming expectations of a whole line of ancestors. But also the longing for something more and different, the desire to understand the world and its workings. All of this mashed into a lovable, somehow simultaneously clueless and deeply perceptive protagonist.

Walker Percy is an excellent writer. His most notable book, The Moviegoer, is very well known, this book is much less so. In this book we meet Will Barrett, a 25 year old man who suffers from mental fugues and memory loss. After learning some of his backstory we watch him meet a Southern family ( purely by happenstance ) in a hospital.

This family is your traditional southern aristocracy from the middle of the last century. Race relations and the burgeoning trouble appear at the edge of this story but it is strictly on the outside. The crux of the story is how Will is embraced by the whole family, from the crazy rich patriarch of a car sales empire, the almost nun older sister, the sex obsessed, suicidal, defrocked physician, the young coed Kitty, and the sun ( as well as son ) they all circle around, Jamie. Jamie is sick, dying in fact, and in a period of time which as a reader seems entirely too quickly both he and his family embrace Will Barrett as both his friend, caregiver, and companion.

At the same time Will finds himself having feelings for the youngest daughter Kitty. She is everything one could want, or this is how he thinks he should feel. The problem is Will has real issues.

As Jamie's health fades Will becomes more conflicted and more confused. This story is not perfect, at times it can get a little in the weeds. The sections which focus on the medical casebook of the Doctor does not offer much. But, Percy writes in such a gentle way, this character Will is one you become invested in, you want to know how it turns out for him.

That is why, when the book ends, with only partial resolution , we as modern readers have an advantage. We know that the author revisited the character in a later book. Not knowing that, this would have been much more frustrating.

Not spellbinding but worth your time, especially as a picture, if a bit exaggerated, of a certain time, place, and demographic of pre civil rights South.

I don’t know why it took me so long to realize that I didn’t really care about any of these people. So …

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Yeah, so, this was not good. The first 120 pages or so were merely kind of bad - rich boy with a plantation in decline (1950s though, what?) goes to Princeton because it's his hereditary birthright and then gets a job monitoring the temperature in a Macy's in NYC, because why not. He goes to therapy, buys a telescope, stalks some girls in Central Park, follows one to a hospital and then instantly recognizes the exact Alabama location of a man's accent.

He and the girl, Kitty, hit it off, but her brother is in a bad way. The "engineer" opines about the South and the North, religion, sex, and some other randomness, gifting us with insights like, "A Southerner looks at a negro twice; once when he is a child and sees his nurse for the first time; second, when he is dying" Mmmkay, sure.

I kind of lose the plot for a while as the "engineer" gets injured at a collegiate riot, doesn't bother to get in contact with the betrothed Kitty for a while, talks to a nun, has some high comedy on a hunt where they casually shoot some one, then takes a camper to the desert to opine some more with Kitty's family members. The whole thing ends with shit and death, and with a wasted 9 hours or so of my time.

I just didn't get it. Maybe it's just me.

“What becomes of a man for whom all things are possible? Nothing of course.”

This was a very strange, well written book. Things get weird as Williston Bibb Barrett wanders around trying to make sense of the world “modern world”— a lot of the concerns are typical post-45 stuff. It suffers from some dated 60s language but it’s of the time. There’s a small twist as the end that was a nice way to tie it up, the mark of a great writer.

I am embarrassed and humiliated to admit this: Although I have often posed as a reader of Southern literature--citing Faulkner, O'Connor, the Agrarians, Caroline Gordon, etc.--I had not read Walker Percy.
I will need time and rehabilitation in order to fully grasp the importance, meanings, style, etc. of this novel. It was enjoyable and readable, but I suspect I may have misunderstood too many punch lines to the humor, too many references to literature and philosophy, and too many conversations that lost me completely.
Pretty clear, isn't it: I will have to reread this book along with other works by Percy.

Kind of a meandering book, which is probably why it took me over a month to read it. But the last hundred or so pages are very focused and the novel becomes quite moving in its exploration of frailty and death and the search for meaning.

I think I’d like to read it again someday and see if it comes together more fully in my mind.

Lots of interesting characters, some of them in the “he’s a real character” sense.

It took me some time to tune to Percy's frequency, but by the last third of the novel I think I got there. He's a bonafide existentialist and won't let you forget it - his protagonist is on the hunt for meaning in life, but being an amnesiac, keeps forgetting where his search has left him. The elaborate plot and eccentric Southern cast reflect this man's near-constant confusion very well, and Percy's prose, though potted with bit of philosophic self-assertion, has an odd sort of elegance to it that eventually grew addictive, though not till I neared the novel's finale. Keen to see what else this bloke has to offer.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the uncomfortableness a reader will feel with the comfortableness the characters have with the Blvk characters.

Percy’s descriptions remains strong, but, wow, the man cannot write women or dialogue. The plot points are clunky and with the exception of Sutter the characters aren’t that good.