lost in the cosmos the last self help book

“Dying, if that’s what it comes to, is no big thing since I’m ready for it, and prepared for it by the Catholic faith which I believe. When he was suffering from terminal cancer, he expressed his belief in a letter to his closest friend, novelist Shelby Foote. 1A key factor in Percy’s personal rejection of suicide was his Roman Catholic faith. In his later years Percy himself expressed amazement and some pride in having “outlived” almost all of his male ancestors, though he did suffer from an inherited disposition toward melancholy. His family legacy included a long line of ancestors who had taken their own lives, including Percy’s grandfather John Walker Percy in 1917, and his father Leroy Pratt Percy in 1929. The southern novelist and philosophical essayist Walker Percy (1916–1990) was no stranger to suicide. Nevertheless, in the popular secular view, the choice of suicide is taken to be an act which is uniquely and absolutely “mine.” This attitude, of course, contravenes both the Hippocratic Oath and the centuries-old proscription against suicide in Judeo-Christian societies. Although the American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians, and the American Nurses Association continue officially to oppose physician-assisted suicide, there exists a widespread sentiment in favor of individuals’ absolute right to determine their own end. Percy explains, quite scientifically, why each of us is homeless, and, by so doing, he helps us be at home with our homelessness, and so free to be as at home as we can be with the good things of this world.It has now come to pass in American secular culture that the choice to end one’s own life-suicide-is tacitly accepted as an inalienable right of every person. Why it is possible, he asks, to learn more in ten minutes about the Crab Nebula, which is 6,000 light years away, than you presently know about yourself even though you’ve been stuck with yourself all your life? (Frank) Walker Percy’s “Lost In The Cosmos” is subtitled “The Last Self-Help Book.” And while Percy keeps his tongue held firmly in cheek, his goal is to help in the most universal sense. There is one book that begins to answer these questions and I’m happy to pass it on.

Also check out Peter Lawler’s take on LITC. I don’t share Frank’s nor Lawler’s nor Percy’s optimism but I’m trying very hard. Here is astrophysicist Adam Frank’s insightful look at Walker Percy’s wonderful book.

Lost in the cosmos the last self help book