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"A mock self-help book designed not to help but to provoke; a chapbook to inveigle us into thinking about who we are and how we got into this mess." --Los Angeles Times Book Review Published at the height of the 1980s self-help boom, Lost in the Cosmos is Percy's unforgettable riff on the trend that swept the nation. Filled with quizzes, essays, short stories, and diagrams, Lost in the Cosmos is a laugh-out-loud spin on a familiar genre that also pushes readers to serious contemplation of life's biggest questions. One part parody and two parts philosophy, Lost in the Cosmos is an enlightening guide to the dilemmas of human existence, and an unrivaled spin on self-help manuals by one of modern America's greatest literary masters.… (altro)
Percy's breezy, glossy magazine format disguises an earnest introduction to a philosophy of the self in the late 20th Century U.S. culture, more accurately an eschatology especially concerned with the linguistic turn in late Continental theory and its relevance for middle class consumers. The initial 11 chapters (short, conversational, often presented in the list-centric or mini-survey trappings favoured by grocery checkout diversions and which Percy implicitly mocks) treat of various summaries of psychology and popular understanding of the Self. In fact, the book provides no traditional chapter structure, rather beginning with a cold open and careering to its termination.
Tom Bartlett in the Chronicle of Higher Education asseverates the "source material" for much of Lost in the Cosmos is found in the essays reprinted earlier in Message In A Bottle. While true, Cosmos gives that content different emphases, a slightly different spin. Perhaps he hoped to reach different readers, or make a second effort at reaching the same readers indirectly. Wikipedia pointed me to an online lecture based on the book, and this too is interesting, especially in arguing that Percy extends a tradition followed by C.S. Lewis (That Hideous Strength or The Screwtape Letters) and G.K. Chesterton (Everlasting Man), to "smuggle Christianity back into Christendom" as initially suggested by Kierkegaard. Neither replaces the book itself, unsurprisingly.
Both Kierkegaard and modern semiotics give us leave to speak of the self as being informed -- "possessed," if you like, at certain historical stages of belief and unbelief. It becomes possible, whether one believes in God or not, soul or not, to agree that in an age in which the self is not informed by cosmological myths, by totemism, by belief in God -- whether the God of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam -- it must necessarily and by reason of its own semiotic nature be informed by something else. [178]
That something else is both unsettling and logically untenable. "It is possessed by the spirit of the erotic and the secret love of violence," all the more unsettling in this nuclear age, and logically untenable given that a Self (by definition a knowing subject rather than a known object) cannot know itself by reference to itself, that is to say, know itself as an object. Rather the Self must know itself transcendentally. Necessarily, then, Percy concludes the modern Self is lost. Percy notes the Self feasibly might again become found, but does not pursue that question here. ( )
What a strange, unclassifiable, brilliant book. I can't think of a thing to compare it to. I need some time to sit with it before I declare it the best thing I've ever read, but it blew me away. ( )
An engaging and thoughtful book about several topics relevant to our contemporary culture. Percy uses an unusual style like a Socratic provocateur challenging the reader to think about aspects of our culture, the nature of language, and the meaning of life. The book is one that, like those of Plato, Marcus Aurelius, or Wittgenstein, requires concentration, demands rereading, and ultimately encourages the reader to think seriously about the nature of the "Cosmos" and his own life. ( )
I think I might have had too high of hopes going into this. I think Walker Percy is really incredibly perceptive and amazing but I think his talents are still best applied to his fiction. I would like to give it three and a half stars but this is apparently not an option! harumph. ( )
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We are unknown, we knowers, to ourselves … Of necessity we remain strangers to ourselves, we understand ourselves not, in our selves we are bound to be mistaken, for each of us holds good to all eternity the motto, "Each is the farthest away from himself"—as far as ourselves are concerned we are not knowers.-- Friedrich Nietzche, On The Genealogy of Morals (1887)
Dedica
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For my fellow space travelers, John Walker, Robert, David, Jack
Incipit
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Imagine you are reading a book about the Cosmos. You find it so interesting that you go out and buy a telescope.
Citazioni
Ultime parole
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Repeat. Do you read? Do you read? Are you in trouble? How did you get in trouble? If you are in trouble, have you sought help? If you did, did help come? If it did, did you accept it? Are you out of trouble? What is the character of your consciousness? Are you conscious? Do you have a self? Do you know who you are? Do you know what you are doing? Do you love? Do you know how to love? Do you know how to hate? Do you read me? Come back. Repeat. Come back. Come back. Come back. (CHECK ONE)
"A mock self-help book designed not to help but to provoke; a chapbook to inveigle us into thinking about who we are and how we got into this mess." --Los Angeles Times Book Review Published at the height of the 1980s self-help boom, Lost in the Cosmos is Percy's unforgettable riff on the trend that swept the nation. Filled with quizzes, essays, short stories, and diagrams, Lost in the Cosmos is a laugh-out-loud spin on a familiar genre that also pushes readers to serious contemplation of life's biggest questions. One part parody and two parts philosophy, Lost in the Cosmos is an enlightening guide to the dilemmas of human existence, and an unrivaled spin on self-help manuals by one of modern America's greatest literary masters.
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Biblioteca di un personaggio famoso: Walker Percy
Walker Percy ha una Legacy Library. Legacy libraries sono le biblioteche personali di famosi lettori, aggiunte dai membri di LibraryThing che appartengono al gruppo Legacy Libraries.
Tom Bartlett in the Chronicle of Higher Education asseverates the "source material" for much of Lost in the Cosmos is found in the essays reprinted earlier in Message In A Bottle. While true, Cosmos gives that content different emphases, a slightly different spin. Perhaps he hoped to reach different readers, or make a second effort at reaching the same readers indirectly. Wikipedia pointed me to an online lecture based on the book, and this too is interesting, especially in arguing that Percy extends a tradition followed by C.S. Lewis (That Hideous Strength or The Screwtape Letters) and G.K. Chesterton (Everlasting Man), to "smuggle Christianity back into Christendom" as initially suggested by Kierkegaard. Neither replaces the book itself, unsurprisingly.
That something else is both unsettling and logically untenable. "It is possessed by the spirit of the erotic and the secret love of violence," all the more unsettling in this nuclear age, and logically untenable given that a Self (by definition a knowing subject rather than a known object) cannot know itself by reference to itself, that is to say, know itself as an object. Rather the Self must know itself transcendentally. Necessarily, then, Percy concludes the modern Self is lost. Percy notes the Self feasibly might again become found, but does not pursue that question here. ( )