Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (1983)

Funny, fascinating, remarkably insightful book

I read this book out of curiosity about the title. I was very disappointed. It made about as much sense to me as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is to say none at all. ( )

000500

A difficult and strange book but a quick read. I read this book after reading all of Mr. Percy's novels and have to say I understand where he's coming from quite well. If you haven't read any of his novels, the read might be confusing. ( )

Lost in the Cosmos: the Last Self-Help Book

It would be hard to over-state the effect this well-timed little book had on me when it entered my life at just the right angle. It was the first book to ever introduce me to a whole nexus of questions occasioned by this bizarre phenomenon I am using *right now*-- language; the mystery, as Percy put it in the subtitle of another work, of "How queer man is, how queer language is, and what one has to do with the other." Nor can I know whether I would have been so struck had I discovered it in other circumstances; as it was, it practically jump-started my ability to think about things. Every question suddenly swung 'round into new configurations. I had certainly thought about the traps of language, about how it constrains as well as enables thought; but to me this was just a frustrating dead-end. Percy showed me a way out that did not deny the problem but made it fruitful; by introducing me to discussion of the linguistic sign as "triadic," a term from American pragmatist philosopher Charles Peirce’s semiotics, it gave this question someplace to go. Moreover, Percy's very readable and unpretentious discussion made it quite clear that despite its pedigree, this for him was not a matter of recondite academese, but of the most gripping import for understanding and navigating day-to-day existence. This was really a breath of fresh air for a kid of eighteen who was sure that philosophy mattered vitally, but did not want to cut himself off from life.

One aspect of Percy's book is a very familiar-style easy introduction to (without the slightest whiff of "An Introduction To..." about it) philosophy of language; literally the most painless such I can imagine. It is like a subliminal tape to play while you sleep; you just wake up knowing and thinking more. Percy describes a linguistic sign as a "triad": not a dyad in which word stands for object, but a triad in which word stands for object *for somebody.* This very elementary addition proved no mere curlicue but the catalyst that snapped the whole thing into 3-D for me, for instead of locking the inquiry into fruitless debate about whether or how a word, say, "pear," "points to" an object (e.g. that funny shaped fruit which may or may not be ripe) it backs up and asks about how and where and for whom words are used: the hungry man, the orchard-owner, the still-life painter. Percy’s point (and Peirce’s, though one could argue about how faithful Percy was to his teacher) is ultimately one about how of a piece human consciousness is with language itself. Though Heidegger makes somewhat the same claim, had I tried to read Heidegger at this point, he would have seemed impossibly evasive to me (indeed, he still does sometimes); as it was, not only did Percy’s "introduction" help pave the way for this more "heavy" reading to come, but his drawing upon the wholly different American pragmaticist tradition proved a useful inoculation against some of the over-the-top Black Forest pronouncements from the onetime rector of Freiberg.

Another part of Percy's book is a discussion of artistic creativity, or indeed of any experience which takes us (whether momentarily or for an extended trip) outside ordinary experience; and about what happens when we try to "re-enter." Also in this part, Percy presents a series of scenarios exploring the end of the world, interspace travel, and the question of what to do if you encounter an alien life form, and what to do if you do not encounter an alien life form. This section is funny, sometimes the laugh-out-loud, sometimes more the bitter, chuckle-to-yourself type of funny, slightly like Vonnegut but far more humane and less cynical. It’ll also make you think. "Lost in the Cosmos" cannot be read passively. A good chunk of the book is made up of quizzes; you can’t read a quiz passively. In fact, one of Percy’s between-the-lines points seems to be that *no* book, in fact no *word*, can be read passively, because every word invites your response-- it does not neutrally carry its load of significance to your waiting neurons but requires you to reach out and accept it--or else, to contest or reject it. This makes you *responsible*--an important ethical subtext.

One might wonder what these various threads have to do with each other, but in reading Percy the transitions are seamless; I think because he felt with such great clarity the white heat of "re-entry" himself, the "coming down" after a prolonged artistic or other "high." The distinction between the mundane and the "philosophical" did not mean very much to him, I suspect. He walks you through a dozen thought-experiments with so Socratic a hand you hardly notice that you are reading a sort of existential choose-your-own-adventure book… until, too late (or just in time?), it dawns on you: that’s what you are doing *all the time*. ( )