Percy points out that “the most spectacular problems of reentry seem to be experienced by artists and writers.” Percy then lists a bunch of reentry options, such as anesthesia (drugs), travel, sex, suicide, etc. (One needs to remember that the whole book is both brilliant and tongue-in-cheek, which can be hard, especially for American readers. What does the reader do after finishing either book? How long does his exaltation last? What did Dostoevsky do after finishing The Idiot? Spend three days and nights at the roulette table. What to do at ten? What did Faulkner do after writing the last sentence of Light in August? Get drunk for a week. The best film of the year ends at nine o’clock. Hat is not generally recognized is that the successful launch of self into orbit of transcendence is necessarily attended by problems of reentry. In Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos, he writes, “Exhilaration comes from naming the unnamable and hearing it named.” I was exhilarated as a reader at the point of the book when he explains a phenomenon I’d thought about, but never had a name for: “reentry.” (Actually, I had used that word before, but only when talking about being on the road and then coming back home to family life - never for the making and consuming of art itself.) A page from Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos (filed under: spirals)
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