Lancelot

By: Walker Percy

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Lancelot Lamar, a disenchanted liberal lawyer, finds himself confined in a mental asylum with memories that don’t seem worth remembering - until a visit from an old friend and classmate gives him the opportunity to recount his journey of dark violence.

It began the day he accidentally discovered he was not the father of his youngest daughter. That discovery touched off his obsession to reverse the degeneration of modern America and begin a new age of chivalry and romance. With ever increasing fury, Lancelot would become a shining knight, not of romance - but of revenge.

©1977 Walker Percy (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“A modern knight-errant on a quest after evil…Convincing and chilling.” ( The New York Times Book Review)

“A funny and scarifying jeremiad on the modern age. Lancelot is easy to read and hard to forget.” ( Time)

“A fine novel…Percy is a seductive writer attentive to sensuous detail and such a skillful architect of fiction that the very discursiveness of his story informs it with energy and tension.” ( Newsweek)

Compelling and brilliant

First person narrative by Lancelot speaking to old friend. He tells the story of how he wound up in the asylum or prison, not clear which, that brings in his childhood, marriages, and importantly his feelings or lack thereof. Narration perfectly captures a relaxed southern cadence. Is Lancelot crazy, calculating, alienated, other? Genuinely interesting story plot unfolds in assorted unchronological pieces. But it's the masterful language of the Lancelot that makes this so compelling a listen.

great performance, strange as usual Walker Percy

the story is like a dichotomy, you will say ..
this is so strange... but then you will know it's so real ... that real people feel these things. Percy is a great writer.... this I think is great literature
.. very well written.. but like them all so so strange .... i wish Percy was still alive .. I would like to talk to him a long time about all his books.

Almost great

If you're a fan of the South and of existentialism, this is a great fit. If you're a pearl-clutcher, you probably want to steer clear.

Ok, but ending left me hanging.

I enjoyed it right up until the end . I felt that it did not have closure or if it did, It went over my head.

A Quest for Evil

"In times like these when everyone is wonderful, what is needed is a quest for evil.
You should be interested! Such a quest serves God's cause! How? Because the Good proves nothing. When everyone is wonderful, nobody bothers with God. If you had ten thousand Albert Schweitzers giving their lives for their fellow men, do you think anyone would have a second thought about God?"
― Walker Percy, Lancelot

I find myself running to Walker Percy to explain to my why the modern world feels so f-ed up. He never provides a perfect salve, but it is nice that he recognizes some things in a similar way. I'm not sure why I am so drawn to "bad Catholic" writers, but they are kinda my thing.

Lancelot is not his best, but almost. It is funky and wormed its way into me in such a way, I've thrown it over on my wife's side of the bed for her to read. It is absurd, dark, funny, a moral hazard I need to have someone to talk to about it.

I love the way Percy writes, but also adore the things he is saying. His big issue, I believe, in this book is how modern institutions (technocrats and modern psychology) not only enable often the worst in society, in the name of the good, but that other institutions (the Church) in this modern age are powerless often to prevent this attack on morality. The Church is distracted, weak, and it is up to us as individuals to combat the moral decay. That sound boring and I don't really do Percy justice, but the plot in this novel is centered around a 'Fluoridation'-type conspiracy, and the hero, Lance, is a discredited psychiatrist now living at a nuthouse. The structure of the novel allows Lance to describe (the story slowly unwinds) his past actions (the central of the novel plot) to his old friend (a screwed-up priest or half-assed physician) named Percival.

Percy's novels are basically one giant rant against the modern age and some of the problems that come with its decadence. While I don't always agree with Percy, his novels seem to resonate hard with me. Like some literary tuning fork, there is a part of me that seems to resonate (emotionally? intellectually? spiritually?) with some Percy's arguments. His novels are often a bit messy, but also seem alive in their mess. There is always something with Percy that I don't quite like, but he tends to leave me with more hooks than most novels. I walk away from his novels dragging many of his visions, his phantasms, his warnings with me.