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I have heard Percy described as a modern Southerner who laces witty, parabolic stories with deeper insight into the human condition. Having now read Lancelot, I have to concur.

Lancelot opens with the passage quoted above, and that eerily intimate tone permeates the ensuing narration. Lancelot Andrewes Lamar is a man alienated from the world, trying to find a sense a purpose in the midst of “sinful suffering humanity.�� His story is told in a unique first-person voice directed at Father Smith, who is visiting Lancelot in his hospital/prison room. Thus, Father Smith becomes “you,�� the reader, and Lancelot is able to confront us in a tone almost off-putting in its directness.

Lancelot tell us the story of how, via his daughter’s blood type, he comes to realize that his wife, an actress, has been cheating on him with her director, the famous Robert Merlin. This realization drives Lancelot crazed with emotions he cannot comprehend, since after all, as he puts it, “her fornication, anybody’s fornication, amounts to no more than molecules encountering molecules and little bursts of electrons along tiny nerves—no different in kind from that housefly scrubbing his wings under my hair.�� The more he tries to analyze his dilemma, the less sense it all makes. By the culmination of the story when Lancelot finally confesses to us why he’s been committed to this hospital/prison, we are confronted with the depth of his amorality. Overwhelmed by the meaninglessness of life, Lancelot has lost all sense of shared humanity.

Percy’s novel is one of the most peculiar, shocking, and profound works of art I have ever read. The author never gives anything to us straight; instead, he forces us to divine meaning by inverting all the basic assumptions at the heart of the text. In the same way that Lancelot struggles through life anxious and disconnected, so the reader, in a way, struggles with growing anxiety to perceive the moral conclusion of the matter.

For the conclusion which Lancelot ultimately embraces as explanation for the devastation of his life is, in fact, the exact opposite of the conclusion Percy wishes to propel his readers towards. The further we’re drawn into the novel, the more outrageous Lancelot becomes, to the point where we are absolutely forced to disagree with everything that he stands for. Lancelot himself declares that he has embarked on “the quest for the unholy grail.�� With no moral standard to govern his soul, he is left no choice but to embrace evil as commonplace, right and wrong as mere social constructs.

“In times when nobody is interested in God, what would happen if you could prove the existence of sin, pure and simple? Wouldn’t that be a windfall for you? A new proof of God’s existence! If there is such a thing as sin, evil, a living malignant force, there must be a God! I’m serious. When was the last time you saw a sin? Oh, you’ve seen quite a few? Well, I haven’t, not lately. I mean a pure unadulterated sin. You’re not going to tell me that some poor miserable slob of a man who beats up his own child has committed a sin?��

However, while it becomes clear that Lancelot’s quest leads inevitably to madness and despair, Percy’s real message lies in the inversion of Lancelot’s assertions. Salvation is not found via sexual violence. The meaning of life is not carnal love. Women’s true purpose is not to be raped, and men’s is not to rape women. There will be no “Third Revolution,�� as Lancelot prophesies. The more feverishly Lancelot insists upon these absurdities, the more we are drawn to consider the opposite: a conviction of humanity's purpose by first recognizing what it is not. As Percy alienates us from Lancelot, he propels us closer to Father Smith and the promise of hope beyond this mad world. By the end of the book we can hear the fatigue dripping from Lancelot’s voice, thoroughly revulsed by the reality of life without meaning.

“I won’t have it �� the great whorehouse and fagdom of America �� I do not propose to live in Sodom or to raise my son and daughters in Sodom �� Millions agree with me and know that this age is not tolerable, but no one will act except the crazies and they are part of the age. The mad Mansons are nothing more than the spasm-orgasm of a dying world. We are only here to give it the coup de grāce. We shall not wait for it to fester and rot any longer. We will kill it.��

Reviews of Lancelot remain incredibly mixed. Christian readers are offended by its language, its vulgarity, its amorality, and its wild, dark, profound, dizzying madness. Secular readers are intrigued by its unfettered wit but perplexed by its meaning.

This book is edgy. It’s literary. It’s hilarious. It’s complex. It’s offensive. It’s delicious. And, if taken seriously, it’s dangerous. Dangerous, because it tears away all our delusions of grandeur and points an accusing finger right through the core of our hearts to our filthiest secrets and desires. I understand why this book causes such outcry; if taken literally, it paints a profoundly distressing picture of humanity sure to leave even the sturdiest of readers uncomfortable. And this view is one Walker Percy himself may have shared with Lancelot to some extent. However, where Percy/Father Smith differ from Lancelot is that we are able to look beyond the madness to something better. The world Lancelot inhabits, a world devoid of meaning, will drive us mad. But with a driving sense of purpose, there is the promise of escape.