[percy-l] Love in the Ruins, Book Description

Henry Mills wppdirector at gmail.com
Sun Jun 29 11:02:33 EDT 2014


*/Love in the Ruins/**Description**(from Wikipedia)*

/Love in the Ruins/ is a novel of speculative or science fiction by 
author Walker Percy from 1971. It follows its main character, Dr Thomas 
More, namesake and descendant of Sir Thomas More (author of /Utopia/), a 
psychiatrist in a small town in Louisiana called Paradise. Over time, 
the US has become progressively more fragmented, between left and right, 
black and white, as social trends of the 1960s run to illogical 
extremes. Society begins to come apart at the seams and no one except 
More seems to notice and no one, including him, seems particularly to 
care. More, a lapsed Catholic, an alcoholic, and a womanizer, invents a 
device that he names the Ontological Lapsometer, which can diagnose and 
treat the harmful mental states at the root of society's slow 
disintegration. However, in the wrong hands, the device can also 
exacerbate the problems, and a government representative, intent on 
getting More a Nobel Prize, seeks to put it to his own uses while More 
attempts to prevent a disaster.

*Themes*
The novel investigates and satirizes many facets of American society, 
including religion, sexuality, medical and scientific ethics, and race 
relations. As in many of Percy's other works, among them /The Moviegoer, 
The Second Coming/, and /The Last Gentleman/, the novel's protagonist 
suffers from alienation and existential doubt. But the protagonists' 
detachment from themselves allows for a lighter tone and often a comic 
distance from the world. Dr More's hyper-fragmented community allows for 
comic caricatures while still reflecting on the roots of society's 
problems.
--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_in_the_Ruins


Thanks, Wade, for your comments and personal insights.

Looking forward to community discussion of the book, I hope the above 
brief description of LITR, as the delightful Percy story it is, will be 
helpful as we begin discussion of it with Rhonda. Thanks, Rhonda!

Best,
Henry Mills
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