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Original Title:	Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
ISBN:	0312253990 (ISBN13: 9780312253998)
Edition Language:	English
Literary Awards:	Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest (1983)

Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

Walker Percy

Paperback | Pages: 272 pages

Rating: 4.06 | 2247 Users | 223 Reviews

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Title	:	Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
Author	:	Walker Percy
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Special Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 272 pages
Published	:	April 1st 2000 by Picador (first published 1983)
Categories	:	Philosophy. Nonfiction. Psychology. Self Help. Humor. Religion. Literature

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I have read and reread this book half a dozen times. No doubt that number will reach a dozen or more during the course of my lifetime. It is, first of all, absolutely hilarious: a subtler, non-narrative, written precursor to "I Heart Huckabees." Who are we? Why are we here? What is the problem of the Self and how do we resolve it?

These questions are presented as both ridiculous and fundamental, a cause for laughter, sadness, and reflection. I remember wanting to cry and scream for joy when I first read Percy's discussion of signs, the way we perceive our world, and our struggle to accurately situate ourselves in that world. Who has not felt lost in the cosmos? Who has not felt like they sit on a sliding scale that takes them from being the hero of an epic universal drama to the most insignificant asshole all of existence has ever seen? We do not have signs that sufficiently represent ourselves, so how can our human minds ever really understand who we are? What are the repercussions of all this for how we live our lives?

There aren't any answers, but I love how this book lovingly jabs at those who ask the questions AS it answers the question "why do we ask questions?" It's all a little ludicrous and cerebral and frustrating, which is part of the point. Yet we're not supposed to ever stop asking.

For me, this book has served as a framework for my worldview. Sometimes it makes my brain buzz with the desire to wrap itself around something I can never quite grasp, and sometimes it shoots me right back into myself with the awareness that, sign or no sign, I'm just what I am.

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Ratings: 4.06 From 2247 Users | 223 Reviews

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Excellent satiric take on self-help books with a lot of interesting philosophical questions posed. Well-done and thought-provoking.

I disagree enough with Percy on some issues that I would, in other circumstances, give this book 4 stars. However, Percy is relentless and devastating in his assault on the problems with our postmodern culture. The fact that he offers this critique in a series of "multiple choice" Socratic thought questions makes the reader work that much harder to get the message. The fact that he cloaks his profundity in the guise of a self-help book, that genre from which we expect the least profundity, is

This is not a funny bookIt is an insightful, challenging, cunning, creative, humourous, cutting and confrontational book. But it is definitely not a funny book. After years of having this book on my birthday/Christmas wishlist my wife finally bought it for me for Christmas and I brought it on our tropical winter vacation to the Canary Islands thinking it would make light beach-reading material. This is not the case. The book is much heavier than I anticipated, (perhaps I anticipated something

I have read and reread this book half a dozen times. No doubt that number will reach a dozen or more during the course of my lifetime. It is, first of all, absolutely hilarious: a subtler, non-narrative, written precursor to "I Heart Huckabees." Who are we? Why are we here? What is the problem of the Self and how do we resolve it?These questions are presented as both ridiculous and fundamental, a cause for laughter, sadness, and reflection. I remember wanting to cry and scream for joy when I

The irony of the self-help genre is that its main function is to provide non-self-originating help those who can't help themselves. Or in rather kinder terms, to "help people who can't help themselves". It is ironic both in the name, "self-help", which is a typically attractive advertising inaccuracy, and in its goal, which is to help the self gain control over some area of its life, rather than help the self know itself in any meaningful way. Percy has written a book to help the self know that

"The Strange Case of the Self, your Self, the Ghost which Haunts the Cosmos."This is one of the most profound, enlightening, and honest books I have ever read. Written with wit, intelligence, and compassion, Percy takes readers on a bizarre journey into the unknowable self. Presented in the forms of questions (many rhetorical) and strange hypotheticals, Percy deftly reveals the absurdity of modern man. The answers may still be unclear - but the questions (and the importance of those questions)

I'm demoting it to four stars, for some irritating occasional cultural-historical backwardness, and the last scene, which, it's like he started writing <1>The Second Coming about 40 pages from the end, and unwisely made it science fiction. But oh the first part is so good.