Lost in the Cosmos

Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book by Walker Percy, 262 pages

Walker Percy begins with a question.  Why is it that you (assuming you are reasonably well-educated by 1983 standards) are likely to identify a picture of Saturn or the Horsehead Nebula with less hesitation than a photo of yourself?  Why is it that distant objects which will never - despite the fantastic imaginings of astrologers and space travel enthusiasts alike - in any meaningful way affect your life are in some way more familiar than your own face?  Why is it that in many ways you are more mysterious to yourself than are the cores of faraway stars?  His answer is that there is an essential difference between yourself and the rest of the cosmos - unlike everything else, you live in an internal world of signs and symbols, related to but not identical with your external environment.  In this internal world it is your self which alone eludes all lasting signification - so far as we know, the human consciousness is "unique in its ability to understand the world but not itself."

Having thus laid out the problem, Percy invites the reader to explore different strategies to resolve it through a series of multiple-choice questions, many of them based on imaginary scenarios.  It is here that Percy's brilliance as a novelist has free play, and his vignettes are both incisive and wickedly funny, directly involving the reader and demanding that he make concrete decisions.