Prior to stumbling on this book, I'd known Percy mainly as the Southern Literary Lion who discovered John Kennedy Toole, author of A Confederacy of Dunces, which I adore. Percy's lively introduction to Dunces tells the sad story of Toole, who committed suicide and left behind his unpublished masterpiece. Toole's bereaved mother sought out Percy, insisting he read a barely-legible carbon of her son's epic tale. An astonished Percy alerted his publisher and the rest is history. For that alone I admired Percy, although until I picked up The Second Coming in my doctor's office, I'd not read his novels.I was suffering excruciating pain when I opened The Second Coming and read the first few pages. (The pain subsequently went away. I'll spare you the details.) The experience of extreme physical discomfort re-calibrated my brain, I think. Perhaps that's why The Second Coming went so deep, deeper than it might have otherwise. I don't know. In any case, after my doctor's visit, I went straight to my library (with a Vicodin prescription) and checked out the book.Even as my pain subsided, The Second Coming drew me in. I am a sucker for a double narrative, and the wildly divergent voices of The Second Coming's two main characters hooked me: Will Barrett - Percy's affluent, midlife-crisis suffering, widower doppelganger - and the young, nutty, beautiful, institutionalized Allison. Of course a story needs a villain: Allison's mom - a former flame of Will's who still desires him - wants her daughter declared unfit to receive an inheritance, so she sanctions Allison's frequent electroshock treatments, which, while damaging her daughter's memory, provide a fascinating, original, inner voice. Allison's escape from the institution is worth the price of admission.Meanwhile, petit mal seizures wreak havoc on Will's brain. Horrors from his youth rise up with sharp, new freshness. With lots of time on his hands to zigzag between past and present, his Existential Dilemmas gather increasing weight. Time and again, his father's gun beckons him. Then he crosses paths with Allison, the narratives converge, and a May-September romance sparkles in the Southern Gothic gloom. Depending on your perspective, this Nabakovian aspect of the book is sweet, creepy and/or hot. Perhaps all of the above.The detail-rich narrative ranges from dizzying in a good way to dizzying in a bad way. Mostly good, though; despite the extravagant pitch and yaw of the tale, Percy maintains the forward thrust of the story. I always knew where and when I was. (He's not a literary lion by accident.) Overall, he elucidates universal yearnings for connection - both physical and otherwise - with poetic grace. Even middle aged rich white dudes get the blues, especially if their childhood memories are haunted by the smell of gunpowder mixed with blood.The book led me to Google Percy. I found a man with an almost unfathomably tragic history: Percy and his brother were raised by a second cousin after both their parents - first father, then, two years later, mother - committed suicide. This damaged author-philosopher and practicing Catholic exerted much energy into seeking meaning, hope, solace, and succor in a chaotic world rife with dark impulses. In The Second Coming, Percy seems to be using the written word to work out his abandonment issues, to find use and value for shadow. He delves deep into the heart of darkness and the darkness of the heart, acknowledging both the good and bad results of destructive behaviors. His doppelganger willfully upsets a staid personal life and, in a batshit crazy, Job-like gesture, calls God out to show Himself. (Does He? Maybe.) But ultimately, all this destruction is for the good. Still, the possibility of much more severe calamity always lurks on the horizon. What will keep Will from going over the edge? Humor? Love? Hope? A naked, crackpot girl in a greenhouse?The Second Coming did occasionally get on my nerves. Will's navel gazing while his bank account is bursting, for instance, is irritating. One gets the feeling that if Will joined the Peace Corps or opened a soup kitchen he might not be so depressed. Also, there's that pervy thing with his old flame's daughter. Speaking of that, there's an interesting, prescient wrinkle about redneck porn. The book came out in 1980. Always remarkable when someone gets something right, prediction-style. A few of the curve-balls in the plot are highly unlikely, a couple even laughable. But I forgive Percy these flaws and, for the most part, I enjoyed the significant time spent in the world of The Second ComingAnd no, I did not read it while under the influence of Vicodin. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Walker Percy is a celebrated Southern author which I have always been ashamed to have not read. This was my first of his novels and it made me wonder if I had waded in at the wrong end of the pool. This is a novel about mental illness, love, suicidal tendencies, and ultimately God (though it gets there by a circuitous route). The main character, a wealthy widower, has a medical condition (un-diagnosed) which causes him to fall down on the golf course. When he does, he starts remembering details from his past. This includes his father's suicide and his failed attempt to take Will with him.This puts him in psychological turmoil, and his mind slips. He enters into a wager with God, where he goes down into a cave, expecting to die there unless God proves himself, somehow. A toothache causes him to wander deeper into the cave and he falls into Allie's Greenhouse. Allie is a recent escapee from a mental hospital and the daughter of one of his friends. Like Allie, Will spends much of the novel with the people in his life trying to maneuver him. Eventually Will wakes from the slumber of life to forge a new life together with Allie. The title 'the second coming' refers both to Will's rebirth toward the end of the novel and to the return of Christ. When Will is at his most delusional, he wonders if 'the Jews' are a sign (and these are convoluted ramblings). However the second coming is not just symptomatic of madness, it also bears hope.Most of the religious characters in this novel are sophisticated, affluent Episcopalians. Percy does not paint them in the most favorable light.
What do You think about The Second Coming (1999)?
There is something almost ineffable that hits me when I read Walker Percy. I think it is the grace of Percy's confrontation and struggle with spiritual belief. His characters are amazing, his prose is lovely. He writes these quirky scenes, in a sometimes peculiar prose without them seeming fussy or overwrought (an amazing balancing act right there). Perhaps, I am just drawn to my big Trinity of Catholic Novelists(Greene, O'Connor, Percy). They don't play in an easy playground of consecration. They don't write about faith, belief, or redemption as if these topics were easy loads to lift. Percy, to me, meets the Modern man where he is; trapped between light and darkness, between falling and hoisting, between Heaven and Hell. Percy greets the reader and lifts him, slaps him on the ass, and pushes him on his way.
—Darwin8u
Not sure what to make of the book. I wondered if the need to believe was at the center of the work. One must be mentally ill to believe therefore one chooses mental illness over sanity. Will Barret was a successful lawyer, lived a full life, retired early. But he is not all there. His seizures attached to his father's suicide and his attempt to overcome what is his birthmark. He accepts the possible illusion of a second coming at the end of the novel. I kept feeling that this was a sort New Age understanding. I was put off by the easy fairy tale answers, the acceptance of what might be some baby boomer growing older with the need to believe in something, some higher reality, like an AA's meetings "a higher being". An attempt to have spituality without religion. Or perhaps the novel is a satire showing the superfical answers that the babyboomers are seeking. I would like some input on these ideas. I would have liked more meat in this book.
—Michael
Why do people seek to imprison those near them? There is a subtext of confinement and the issues that are generated from it in this book. Will's - the male protagonist - recently deceased wife was confined to a wheelchair, did she confine him to an early retirement and others to an old folks home to put them in the same position? Allie - the female protagonist - escapes from a mental home and avoids her parents trying to re-institutionalize her. Allie's confinement is less subtle than Will's. In the novel they help each other break out. Another open question here is whether there is a God and love or feelings of such are chemical products that can be manipulated by science.Good stuff. However, I didn't love this book. It dawdles. It could be more balanced between Allie and Will. Will gets boring. Percy has a style where he tells you a big dramatic happening and then goes back for 10 pages to explain how that happening came to be. It should be used more selectively. Also Will makes a literary joke about AE Housman, which I felt was totally out of character. Other authors have written mentally abnormal characters better than Percy does Allie.This book was recommended because I liked Flannery O'Conner. I understand because they both write about the South. However, Percy doesn't have her force, drive, or exceptionalism.
—Dave
