Volume 34, Number 11 · June 25, 1987
Danger Zones
By Robert Towers
The Thanatos Syndrome
by Walker Percy
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 372 pp., $17.95
The Rug Merchant
by Phillip Lopate
Viking, 218 pp., $16.95
As a crazed but prophetic priest in The Thanatos Syndrome says of the Jews, Walker Percy as a writer is 'unsubsumable.' Certainly he cannot be comfortably subsumed under any of the categories to which his fellow American writers are likely to be assigned. He seems to enjoy playing the part of the provincial loner who, snug in his corner of Louisiana, rides his hobby horses, railing cheerfully against the myriad evils of this disastrous century. If, in the eyes of some critic, he is 'our cool Dostoevsky,' he might also be called, on the basis of his new novel, 'the adults' Kurt Vonnegut.' As with all the novels that have followed his minor classic The Moviegoer, The Thanatos Syndrome releases a cageful of themes, which dart off in all directions. Percy's pursuit of them is exhilarating.
Review, 2489 words
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