"What a pleasure it is to read a real novel. THE THANATOS SYNDROME has the ambition and purposefulness to take on the world, to wrestle with its.
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Jan 12, Kirk Smith rated it really liked it Shelves: There is a lot going on in this book and I would just throw up a lot of spoilers if I try. Suffice it to say that Walker Percy is a gentleman and he always writes a good book. Jan 23, Ian rated it it was amazing. My favorite Walker Percy so far.
I started out with The Moviegoer, like you're supposed to -- I found it underwhelming. OK, but nothing special. Then I read Lancelot, which was a big ol' punch in the gut of a novel, but I respected it -- like after a pungent olive, your palate felt clearer for the experience. The Thanatos Syndrome sort of reads like Percy's take on That Hideous Strength, except the human depravity that is hinted at in Lewis is shown here in big, bold, Fellini-esque technicolor.
Not as bad as Lancelot, but occasionally nauseating and tough to get through in parts. Though a Roman Catholic, Percy is almost Calvinistic in his unflinching tendency to peer into the dark corners of the human soul.
But again, he is not trying to show human depravity as anything except human depravity. Like some of the darker stories in the Bible, you feel it is there for a reason and is shown in its true proportions.
The Thanatos Syndrome
I wish the sweet home schooler kids who want to write "Christian books" would read Percy. Anyway, much like That Hideous Strength, Percy holds up a mirror to the idols of our age in a way that will give this book a lasting importance. Jun 12, Lucy rated it it was ok Shelves: I've been excited to read a Walker Percy book for a long time. Particularly names, unnecessary names, names that you don't know and don't make sense.
I was disappointed by the story, too - I think the central plot point is interesting, but the linguistic part of the plot that's so talked up is fairly shallow, after all, and as a linguistic enthusiast, I really wanted it to be cooler. I appreciate the book as commentary on society, but gosh I've been excited to read a Walker Percy book for a long time. I appreciate the book as commentary on society, but gosh, it was terrible to read. People start behaving in weird ways and a psychiatrist tries to figure out why.
Mar 18, Christian Schwoerke rated it liked it. The later novels Second Coming and Lancelot went down easily, as I recall, but left me wanting , so I was not sure what to expect of this last?
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That novel began promisingly with a strong and poetic voice, an interesting character, and a beguiling and curious perspective, but then it led from a simple tragedy to some horrendously grandiose and preposterous conspiracy with life-changing consequences for all of humanity.
Father Smith possesses the vision of what will come of this change in his personal encounters with German eugenics before and during WWII. Lucy Lipscomb and assistance old family friend Vergil reveals that waste water from the nuclear reactor is contaminated with heavy sodium Na 24 and is being diverted into areas of Feliciana, including the prison and NIH complex housing the qualitarian center. Robert Comeaux and John Van Dorn are both behind a covert scheme to alter the brain chemistry of people at a macro level, much as fluoridation was introduced in the 50s to reduce tooth decay.
By introducing trace levels of heavy sodium in the drinking water, they have observed a positive drop in crime of all sorts and signs of improved general mental health.
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Comeaux and Van Dorn both try to bring Tom More into the program, but he continues throughout the novel to balk, until finally he controls the cards after the showdown at the Bel Ame school , and he dictates terms that will restore everything in the community to a pre-Na 24 state. There are lessons to be learned from such attempts in the past, and Percy extrapolates to another time and setting the present, in Feliciana to illustrate the unintended consequences of such an endeavor.
Again, I lament that such an engaging narrator, several interesting characters, engrossing regional observations, and some amusing and all-too-human interactions are being put to such a purpose in this humanistic parable. May 20, Kenneth rated it it was amazing Shelves: The sequel to Love in the Ruins. However, the novel is interesting in much the same way.
In the Thanatos Syndrome, the protagonist Dr. Thomas More returns to Louisiana from white-collar prison for selling prescription meds to truck drivers.
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He notices that people in town have been acting strange. More re-starts his practice in psychiatry. When he tre The sequel to Love in the Ruins. When he treats his clients they act in ways that betray the loss of normal human emotion. He teams up with his female cousin who is a doctor too, then runs the local population through private hospital computer databanks to which his cousin has access. The blood tests of his patients show that there is an elevated level of heavy sodium in the bloodstream. Heavy sodium is the same literary device that Percy used in Love in the Ruins.
When the read-out from the computer proves that part of the population is drugged, the map demonstrates that the drugging is most likely through the water supply, somewhat similar to the fluoride conspiracy. More investigates, but is caught by the police who hand him over to his parole officer, a high level doctor who is a friend from college, Dr. Comeaux informs him that the government is performing an experiment under his supervision that is testing the effects of heavy sodium on population demographics.
He tries to recruit Tom by reciting the results. Teen pregnancy down in the inner city. More counters by explaining his observations with his patients, where the emotions have been blunted, the mind reduced to a computer, or sudden outbursts of violent or irrational behavior common. More on several occasions. Comeaux dismisses him by reminding him that he is in violation of his parole.
More discovers that the faculty has been molesting the children while drugging them.
More confronts the school staff, but they deny the accusation. Van Dorn explains to Tom that with modern techniques of photography, images can be altered to incriminate people. The images of him molesting children will not hold up in court for that reason. At the same time, Van Dorn tries to retrieve the photographs from Tom who tells him not so fast. More takes the faculty hostage by gun-point, then forces them to drink from the heavy-sodium dispenser that they used to drug the children.
At first they resist, then they comply, which reduces them to the primitive state of animals. The comedy that follows is well-written satire. Cheney tries to mate the coach, then Van Dorn who regresses to an ape climbs to the highest stair where he tries to dominate the rest of the group until diverted with a candy bar. In the end, Dr. More saves the day. Comeaux and Van Dorn it turns out were executing the experiment without government approval. Rather, the plan was to achieve the desired results then gain government support with the findings afterward.
Operation "Blue Boy" is the name they gave to the project. The commentary on American culture is tongue and cheek and very humorous. I tend to believe that there might very well have been plans for this type of scandal at some point in history, which Percy might have based it on. However, who really knows. I didn't realize Walker Percy was so one dimensional. Just so everybody knows, this book is just an excuse to label anybody pro-choice as someone who approves and, he implies, joyfully endorses killing babys up to and over a year old. And he also lumps aggressive euthanasia of aging and sick people in what the real world calls pro-choice.
A quick aside; this book is written in the style where you feel the main character is really just a puppet for the author to tell you his views. And in thi WOW! And in this one he creates a world of arguments all built of straw which he easily and justifiably knocks down. There is a lot of padding and the bulk of the plot involves a behavior control technique using chemicals surreptitiously delivered in a fluoridation like method via the water supply. The problem is Anthony Burgess tackled the topic with much more intelligence and honesty in A Clockwork Orange.
Alex in the Burgess book is bad enough that you could realistically argue the world would be better off if the Ludavico technique was left in place. In Percy's story the ultra high sodium added to the water who knew salt as capable of mind control? So there is absolutely no one who would support this idea, fictional or real. In the novel the Supreme court did not rule on a woman's right to her body, they ruled on defining person-hood as starting at 18 months. Dade, the landmark case decided by the U.
In that section they are talking about a center that routinely kills infants and old people If he meant it as a fable he should have made it clearer and I think the speech by the crazy priest toward the end shows it is not a fable and it seems to be to be the what it was all leading to If you have a patient young or old, suffering, dying afflicted, useless, born or unborn, whom you for the best of reasons wish to put out of his misery-I beg only Please send them to us.
In this world people are not concerned about such things. The main points of the book are you save your soul through psychiatry and not through drugs and if you are willing to kill a zygote you are willing to kill an infant and an old person as well. Philip K Dick wrote a short story where the age of personhood kept advancing, to the point youngsters run about trying to avoid the abortion police. It was way more honest and made the point that deciding when human-ness starts is arbitrary.
I think he is wrong to say that since it is unclear, it means personhood starts with the zygote. But at least Dick was more effective in making his point. Almost 30 years ago I read some of Percy's novels and remember telling people I thought they were good. But now I am scared to revisit those early books since I kind of hope a writer learns something as they live their life, so perhaps the other novels are just as flat and I was taken in by the idea he was supposed to be a good writer.
Of course it was easy to read, so I still gave it 2 stars. Mar 01, Floremae rated it it was amazing. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Feb 23, Matt Bianco rated it it was amazing Shelves: Apparently, this book is a part two to Love in the Ruins. I can't say much, other than that this was a good novel for Percy to go out on.
Back in practice in the swampy parish of Feliciana, Louisiana, he notices odd behaviors in his patients: More puts it, without reference to self. More's detective work leads him to conclude that a secret consortium of scientists, including his friend and unofficial parole officer, Dr.
Bob Comeaux, have intentionally dumped heavy doses of sodium into the area's drinking water. Once he'd discovered, Dr. Comeaux reports proudly to More what has happened since the water was treated: The heavy sodium, they've discovered, suppresses regions of the breain that prompt human beings to push boundaries, misbehave, defy authority, and act with passion. Humans in Western countries have lost their grip on reality: People consistently fail to understand each other: That, in a word, communication is possible.
Decline of the West. Mentally, Western society is moribund. Devaluation of humanity by science. Bad faith leads to bad outcomes. Percy portrays fatal errors in both religious fundamentalists and secular humanists, commenting: But it is also necessary to criticize other dogmas parading as science and the bad faith of some scientists who have their own dogmatic agendas to promote under the guise of 'free scientific inquiry'.
Scientific inquiry should in fact be free. If it is not, if it is subject to this or that ideology, then do not be surprised if.. Weimar leads to Auschwitz. The nihilism of some scientists in the name of ideology or sentimentality and the consequent devaluation of individual human life leads straight to the gas chamber.
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Professor Ralph Wood of Baylor University suggests that what is missing from this novel is the redemptive humor of Percy's earlier work. The lasting impression of The Thanatos Syndrome is not humor but horror e. As for the novel's message, the reader is offered a sort of Catholic humanism that shades into romantic existentialism.