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Walker Percy
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Lancelot: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Walker Percy (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 175 ratings
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“A modern knight-errant on a quest after evil; grotesque, convincing and chilling.” —The New York Times Book Review

Fed up with the excesses of the 1970s, Lancelot Andrews Lamar, a liberal lawyer and distinguished member of the New Orleans gentry, is determined to stop the modern world’s ethical collapse. His quest begins with his wife—an actress who he suspects has been cheating on him for years. Though he initially plans only to gather proof of her infidelity, Lancelot quickly descends into a fog of obsession. And as he crosses the line from sanity into madness, he will try once and for all to purify the world or destroy it in the attempt.

 

Mesmerizing and unforgettable, Lancelot is a masterful story of one man’s collision with the follies of modern culture, and a thought-provoking look at the nature of good and evil.


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  1. Print length
    276 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Open Road Media
  5. Publication date
    March 29, 2011
  6. File size
    2399 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
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  9. Enhanced typesetting
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A funny and scarifying jeremiad . . . Easy to read and hard to forget.” —Time“Eloquent, reckless, hilarious.” —The Washington Post Book World“[Lancelot] makes Percy the finest fiction writer south of the Mason-Dixon Line.” —Chicago Daily News

From the Publisher

"A modern knight-errant on a quest after evil.... Convincing and chilling." -The New York Times Book Review

"Eloquent, reckless, accurate, hilarious...plunges forward through tawdry bedroom mysteries toward a final grand puzzle." -Washington Post Book World

"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

"A funny and scarifying jeremiad on the modern age. Lancelot is easy to read and hard to forget." -Time

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004TLVNGQ
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Open Road Media (March 29, 2011)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 29, 2011
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2399 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 276 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 175 ratings

About the author

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Walker Percy

Walker Percy

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Walker Percy (1916–1990) was one of the most prominent American writers of the twentieth century. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, he was the oldest of three brothers in an established Southern family that contained both a Civil War hero and a U.S. senator. Acclaimed for his poetic style and moving depictions of the alienation of modern American culture, Percy was the bestselling author of six fiction titles—including the classic novel The Moviegoer (1961), winner of the National Book Award—and fifteen works of nonfiction. In 2005, Time magazine named The Moviegoer one of the best English-language books published since 1923.

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
3.9 out of 5
175 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Tom Smedley
5.0 out of 5 stars What really matters?
Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2022
Verified Purchase
Couched as a rambling, vulgar monologue, addressed to a childhood friend who's become a priest, from a criminal lunatic.

The central metaphor is an elegant country home filled with love, betrayal, and ennui, built over a "Christmas tree" -- a complex set of petrochemical valves. This lurking subterranean hell needs only a madman's touch to erupt. A touch provided by the narrator, a man to driven to perform some significant act, even if it's one of pure evil.

The perceptive reader will hear the note of hope at the end of this tale.
2 people found this helpful
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Jared S. Runck
4.0 out of 5 stars A Modern Amorality Tale
Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2019
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I was first introduced to Walker Percy at much too young an age, as I look back on it now. After hearing Charles Colson recommend "The Thanatos Syndrome" as a great "summer read," I happened to run across the book at my local library, so I decided to give it a go. I was probably not more than 15 at the time. Also, I was a homeschooled, church kid. Those of you who've read "Thanatos" can probably imagine, then, what a shock that book was. I had no idea, at the time, that Percy was a Catholic writer or that the driving theme of his work is the distressed ennui of "modern" humanity.

Without any "context," I found the book immensely perplexing and deeply disturbing. However, I also remember feeling/thinking in some half-formed way that what I was reading was 1) deeply "real" in the sense of true-to-life-in-the-modern-world and 2) was critically important, though I couldn't have articulated how.

Now, I suppose in the name of fairness, I should note that after finishing "Thanatos," I didn't pick up another Percy book. Perhaps the reason is that I read fiction for relaxation and, if you pay close attention to Walker Percy, there's not much "relaxing" about his insight into the amoral morass of modern society.

However, picking up "Lancelot," I felt very much like I was returning to the same world as "Thanatos," a world where the oft-celebrated hyper-sexualization of society has, instead of liberating us, has driven us to the brink of self-destructive insanity. Lancelot Andrewes Lamar's self-styled "confession" betrays the absolute cognitive failure that has accompanied modernity's rejection of moral authority, typified in this fictitious member of that decaying Louisiana gentry class Percy depicts so well…educated, wealthy, and slowly coming unhinged. That the book is narrated in first-person puts the reader in the very uncomfortable position of being Lance's confessor.

All that I can say is that Lance is a beguiling figure who draws you in. He's been under treatment for an entire year, after all, and is, by all accounts, cured and psychically whole. This final recitation of his family trauma clearly is meant to mark his final healing. However, ever-so-slowly, cracks begin to appear in the façade of Lancelot's sanity. By the end of the story, it appears that he is victim of that most dangerous of all delusions, a rationalized one and, furthermore, by our own sympathy with his story, we, the readers, are implicated in the perversity of his thinking.

There are few writers that I've found who can depict the moral bankruptcy of modernity with as much power as Walker Percy. He has this subtle way of turning the reader's eye inward, moving us gently toward self-reflection rather than judgment. There's been a nearly 25-year-long hiatus in my journey with Walker Percy, but I have a sense that, over the years, I've grown into his works and can see now, with frightening clarity, the monsters that lurk in the shadows of our best selves and societies.

Readers of Walker Percy, beware! Here is a man of deep moral insight and conviction who cuts straight to diseased heart of all that is wicked in our world. And he doesn't have to be "preachy"; he just lets us speak for ourselves and our own words betray our hearts…
23 people found this helpful
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Ron Johnson
3.0 out of 5 stars Great writer, Story much less so
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2014
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Percy's use of language is so wonderful, that I find myself indulging in his words. This particular novel, however, is more tell than show; consequently leading to some tediousness. Even so, I found myself intrigued by Lancelot's mental explorations. I was moved to the point where I made some notes on my Kindle; something I rarely do with fiction. I felt that the character was near to clarity and then he botched it, overcome by our modern disease of observing problems and then coming to entirely wrong conclusions about the causes of the problems. Case in point: Infidelity is a problem. Conclusion: Women are either to be used as whores or worshipped as virginal Southern Bells. I wonder if Percy really believed such nonsense or was this just the conclusions of his wayward character. Either way, I found myself rooting for the antagonists in this story.
10 people found this helpful
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michael tancredi
5.0 out of 5 stars Memorable and evolving -
Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2021
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Read it first when I was 25 and just finished it again a week before I turn 65. Better each time I read it.
2 people found this helpful
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steve A
4.0 out of 5 stars A different experience
Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2014
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This book is once again an example of Percy' s beautiful prose that is a pleasure to read on every page. I call this one different from the others I've read because the protagonist finds himself nearly out of control, institutionalized, at the story's opening, while most of Percy' s protagonists carefully plan their every move. This book is also much more overtly sexual than his others in terms of literal description.
It is a story of a man, Lance, with an ambitious wife who moves from one relationship to another to achieve her goals. He allows himself to be used and marginalized into a pathetic routine of a role as the master of an old southern mansion, while his wife carves out a new career as a movie actress using the mansion as the setting for one of her films. He is jolted out of his half-drunken stupor when he discovers by accident that his seven year old daughter is not his, but was fathered by his wife's movie director. At that time of discovery, he does begin his careful planning of a way to resolve his messy predicament that results in the destruction of the mansion and the deaths of a number of his antagonists.
The story is actually told in flashback from Lance' s cell, using a real or imaginary alter ego, Percival (Percy?), who seems to play the role of a conscience. There is some question at the end of the story as to whether Lance's life will resume in a happy new chapter. This reader hopes that it will.
5 people found this helpful
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Tod
5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful entertainment
Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2018
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Loved this book. Gorgeously written, peppered with paragraphs that leave you reeling with experiential recognition, things you've always thought about, yet in ways you've never considered. Weird and surreal at times, crystal clear at others. It's going to stick with me for a long, long time.
3 people found this helpful
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Bloom
1.0 out of 5 stars Strange characters and a plot that seems to go no ...
Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2014
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Strange characters and a plot that seems to go no where. I simply could not figure out "the deeper meaning" of the novel.
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Francis T. Villante
2.0 out of 5 stars Lanced
Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2014
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sorry, this book is boring from the first words. it is written from one person's point of view and just drags on and on. I kept waiting for it to keep me wanting to turn the pages instead of skipping thru them. Definitely wasn't for me!
2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Offe Alison
2.0 out of 5 stars Lancelot
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 8, 2013
Verified Purchase
It's easy to read but the story is not really interesting. You are inside the head of a mad man
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