Anita Brookner is justly famous for her elegant, almost Jamesian character studies of women poised on the threshold of life. But in Lewis Percy, she performs a remarkable leap of imaginative empathy in her portrayal of a man torn between the reassuring cloister of the library and the alluring but terrifying world of the senses, a world populated by women who persist in bewildering him.

This collection of interviews supplements Conversations with Walker Percy and occasions an additional two dozen pleasurable encounters with Percy. Primarily from the last ten years of Percy's life, they show how his presence was stimulating thought in much of humanistic America, in literature, linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, and in cultural life in general. Although this acclaimed author of The Moviegoer, Lancelot, and Love in the Ruins never overcame his shyness with interviewers, he continued to grant interviews as long as his health permitted. This act of openness illustrates his humility before his ideas and his desire to help others understand them. Although the questions he was asked almost invariably became predictable, he always managed to add an anecdote, an illustration, a topical reference, that would breathe new life into the responses he was making. The interviews in this collection show him at the height when he knew that his illness would not allow him to write any more books, and that the only way to restate his ideas and offer a valediction to the large audience to whom he had always been kind, patient, and appreciative was to speak out. Percy despised the posture of many modern self-proclaimed intellectuals who delight in cloaking ideas in jargon and abstraction. He always tried to express himself clearly and as free of reservations as possible. These interviews reflect that clarity. With this book readers will welcome yet more close encounters with him.

Pour la première fois dans un roman d'Anita Brookner, le personnage principal est un homme. Auteur d'une thèse sur la notion d'héroïsme dans le roman français du XIXe, Lewis Percy vit avec sa mère, malade et âgée, jusqu'au jour où la mort de celle-ci le laisse complètement désemparé et livré à lui-même. Lewis décide alors d'épouser la première jeune fille qu'il croise sur le chemin de la bibliothèque voisine. Adieu, l'héroïsme romantique : la vie de Lewis et de Tissy tombe vite dans la plus ennuyeuse des routines. Et quand apparaît une femme, une vraie, Emmy, l'univers de cet anti-héros s'écroule. C'est elle, pourtant, qui lui permettra de trouver sa véritable personnalité. Une fois de plus, Anita Brookner montre à quel point elle est une virtuose dans l'art des variations infimes. Passant de la tragédie sobre à la comédie souriante, Lewis Percy est un roman d'un raffinement extrême.

“A mock self-help book designed not to help but to provoke . . . to inveigle us into thinking about who we are and how we got into this mess.” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Filled with quizzes, essays, short stories, and diagrams, Lost in the Cosmos is National Book Award–winning author Walker Percy’s humorous take on a familiar genre—as well as an invitation to serious contemplation of life’s biggest questions. One part parody and two parts philosophy, Lost in the Cosmos is an enlightening guide to the dilemmas of human existence, and an unrivaled spin on self-help manuals by one of modern America’s greatest literary masters.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Wild Body. A Soldier of Humour and Other Stories" by Wyndham Lewis. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.