Reviews for Percyscapes

The average rating for Percyscapes based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-01-16 00:00:00 Sawwa Sawwas This book is based on the author's dissertation in English literature. He argues that a common theme in Southern fiction is this idea of the fugue state ' the (literal or metaphorical) loss of identity paired with the unexplained desire to wander or travel. I study history of medicine, so I was mostly using this book to get at popular/literary representations of fugue states in early 20th century America. In that, it mostly did the trick. Apart from that, Rudniki's writing isn't my favourite. It takes a long time to get the point across, with a lot of unnecessary hurdles in between. He is also very into semiotics (as was Walker Percy), and focuses much of his analysis on the philosophical/semiotic implications of the fugue state. While he does include the bare bones of how fugue states were conceptualized in the early 20th century (mostly via scientific articles), he doesn't really do anything to get at the cultural meaning/context of the fugue in that literature, which I think would have been really useful/interesting for his argument.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-03-08 00:00:00 Matthew Bufis Everyone should read this.