Novels and the End of the World

Percy, Walker. "Notes for a Novel About the End of the World" in The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, And What One Has To Do With the Other. New York: Picador.

Mention of the end of the world occurs frequently in Percy's novels. It is a big part of Love in the Ruins. The novel was published four years after this essay was published. The apocalyptic novel is a form of prophecy warning what will happen if changes are not made. This type of novel is written by a particular type of novelist. It is the type of novelist that wants to see changes in his reader. Percy writes, "A serious novel about the destruction of the United States and the end of the world should perform the function of prophecy in reverse. The novelist writes about the coming end in order to warn about present ills and so avert the end" (101).

Percy thinks the novelist is not a prophet, but is like a prophet. He does not think the novelist is necessarily called to be a prophet. He,nevertheless, sees what going on in the world and he has a certain knowledge where it might end. Percy writes, "The novelist is less like a prophet than he is like a canary that coal miners used to take down into the shaft to test the air. When the canary gets unhappy, utters plaintive cries, and collapses, it may be time for the miners to surface and think things over" (101).

Percy describes the kind of novelist he is talking about. He is defined not necessarily by "merit" but by the "goals" he has. I often think Percy is describing himself when he writes about the serious novelist. Percy continues: He is a "writer who has an explicit and ultimate concern with the nature of man and the nature of reality where he finds himself" (102). Instead of writing a novel driven by plot with familiar characters, he is more likely to "set forth with a stranger in a strange land where the signposts are enigmatic but which he sets out to explore nevertheless" (102). He thinks you could the novelist as "philosophical, metaphysical, prophetic, eschatological, and even religious." (102) He has a special meaning for calling the novelist religious. He thinks both believers and nonbelievers can be considered a religious novelist. He uses the term 'religious' in its root sense signifying a radical bond, as the writer sees it, which connects man with reality--or the failure of such a bond--and so confers meaning to his life--or the absence of meaning" (102-103). He thinks of the following novelists as religious: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Camus, Sartre, and Flannery O' Connor. He says that some might object since Sartre is an atheist. He thinks Sartre's atheism is religious in the following sense: "that the novelist betrays a passionate conviction about man's nature, the world, and man's obligation to the world" (103). Along the same line, Percy would exclude many English writers like Jane Austen and Samuel Richardson. Percy did not seem to have a high opinion of English novelists. He states that nineteenth century Russian novelists were haunted by God, as were Southern novelists like Flannery O' Connor. He thinks that English novelists were indifferent to the topic. 

Percy believes that true prophets are called by God to deliver a particular message to a particular people. He says that novelists exercise a "quasi-prophetic function" (104). His message is bad like the true prophet. He thinks that the "novelist's art is often bad" (104). The novelist seeks to "shock" the reader and warn them about "last things." They might be in "disagreement" with their countrymen. Unlike the prophet, the novelist is not often killed. He says something worse usually happens to them. They are ignored.

He compares these novelists with secular theologians. He thinks that the novelist is likely to believe in original sin and judgement, but the secular theologian is not. 

Percy wonders what is the connection modern, secular society and violence. He notes how he is often asked why he does not "write about pleasant things and normal people" (105). He agrees that there are nice people in the world and that it seems people are growing "nicer," but he wonders why as the world grows nicer that it also grows more violent. He writes: "The triumphant secular society of the Western world, the nicest of all worlds, killed more people in the first half of this century than have been killed in all of history. Travelers to Germany before the last war reported that the Germans were the nicest people in Europe" (105). One could point to the Holocaust of babies in our own time. Percy in his novel, The Thanatos Syndrome speaks about our death culture. 

Percy thinks the modern novelist is concerned with catastrophe like the orthodox theologian is concerned with original sin and death.

Percy presents his own view of his writing: "As it happens, I speak in a Christian context. That is to say, I do not conceive it my vocation to preach the Christian faith in a novel, but as it happens, my world view is informed by a certain belief about man's nature and destiny which cannot fail to be central to any novel I write" (111). 

Percy thinks that "being a Christian novelist nowadays has certain advantages and disadvantages" (111). He thinks that the Christian faith is complementary to what a novel does. Percy writes, "Since novels deal with people and people live in time and get into predicaments, it is probably an advantage to subscribe to a worldview which is incarnational, historical, and predicamental, rather than, say, Buddhism, which tends to devalue individual persons, things, and happenings" (111). He thinks with the current alienation or "dislocation" of man that it is "probably an advantage to see man as by his very nature an exile and wanderer rather than as a behaviorist sees him: as an organism in an environment" (111). He thinks that Camus's stranger has certain connections with the "wayfarer of Saint Thomas and Gabriel Marcel" (111). Percy also thinks if the time we are living in is eschatalogical, "times of enormous danger and commensurate hope, of possible end and possible renewal, the prophetic eschatalogical character of Christianity is no doubt apposite" (111).

There are, however, certain disadvantages in being a Christian novelist. But he wants to return to his question: "What does he see in the world which arouses in him the deepest forebodings and at the same time kindles excitement and hope?' (111). 

First, he sees the failure of Christendom. He says, however that the novelist is more concerned with the "person of the scientific humanist than in science and religion" (111). Not is he interested in seeing that the common Christian complaint that materialism and atheism are the enemies. 

Percy thinks that the novelist is interested in a "certain quality of the postmodern consciousness as he finds it and as he incarnates it in his own characters. What he finds--in himself and in other people--is a new breed of person in whom the potential for catastrophe--and hope--has suddenly escalated" (112). People are aware of the massive weapons at our disposal to destroy ourselves. Percy thinks the change in the postmodern conscious is what is not realized. He thinks that the "psychological forces presently released in the postmodern consciousness open unlimited possibilities for both destruction and liberation, for an absolute loneliness or a rediscovery of community and reconciliation" (112).

He describes the subject of the postmodern novel: "The subject of the postmodern novel is a man who has very nearly come to the end of the line" (112). It is odd that when he comes to a new city after overcoming all the sufferings of the past that he loses meaning. It is like he bought a ticket to take the train and when he gives the ticket to get off the train that he "must also surrender his passport and become a homeless person" (112). Percy says the American novels in the past focused on characters suffering "social evils," or about people who attacked those evils, or "expatriate Americans," or people in the South haunted by their past. This is not true of the postmodern novel. The protagonist of the postmodern novel has overcome his "bad memories" and overcome certain setbacks and he "finds himself in the victorious secular city" (1120. he has only one major problem: How does he keep himself "from blowing his brains out" (112).

Percy wonders if the Gospel is relevant to the postmodern man. In other words, can he hear the message? Does it register in his consciousness? Does the Secular Age allow the postmodern man to consider Christianity as a possible option to live in this world? Percy writes, "The question is not whether the Good News is no longer relevant, but rather whether it is possible that man is presently undergoing a tempestuous restructuring of his consciousness which that does not allow him to take account of the Good News" (113). Percy states that it is because of the success of scientism: "It is the absorption by the layman not of the scientific method but rather the magical aura of science, whose credentials he accepts for all sectors of reality" (113).  He says that people are seduced by scientism  "which sunders one's very self from itself into an all-transcending 'objective' consciousness and a consumer-self with a list of needs to be satisfied" (113). Percy continues: "It is this monstrous bifurcation of man into angelic and bestial components against which old theologies must be weighed before new theologies are erected" (113). Percy thinks that this postmodern man is unable to take account of God, the devil, or the angels. This is the reason that a catastrophe or ordeal is needed for the man to recover himself. Percy writes, "When the novelist writes of a man 'coming to himself' through some such catalyst as catastrophe or ordeal, he may be offering obscure testimony to a gross disorder of consciousness and to the need of recovering oneself as neither angel nor organism but as a wayfaring creature somewhere between" (113).