The Thanatos Syndrome

by Walker Percy

Book Overview

Returning home to the small Louisiana parish where he had praticed psychiatry, Dr. Tom More quickly notices something strange occuring with the townfolk, a loss of inhibitions. Behind this mystery is a dangerous plot drug the local water supply, and a discovery that takes More into the underside of the American search for happiness.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312243324
• ISBN13: 9780312243326
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Indeed the apes are our cousins

Only we are not descended from them but have descended into them. A terrifying look at what we've become. words,words, words. Words disconnected from words, from reality. Mind disconnected from reality. In sum words without meaning, sex without meaning = life without meaning. As usual, Percy tries to focus our attention on postmodern man's meaningless. Frightening indeed. If you don't get it, I'm sorry. A small caveat: this is Percy at his most obscene also. Personally, I prefer Helprin. Percy is a bit depressing.

Perhaps the best novel I have ever read

The Thanatos Syndrome relies upon a flimsy detective story to examine the greatest issues facing Americans (perhaps all of Western culture) as we enter the 21st century. Not that the genre device fails, but that it seems so inconsequential next to the ideas which hang upon it, like the rod that supports the wardrobe of existence, itself.Although this novel was written in the late 20th century, it feels as if it could be today or tomorrow. We are introduced to themes that are totally familiar, yet somehow bizarre: sex detached from love (and/or procreation), emphasis on results at play/work/and school, social engineering, amorality, mercy-killing, faith in the rightness of science/technology/and progress, abandonment of of our humanity. All this, and yet readable, engaging, absorbing and memorable.If you are interested in an entertainment that makes you think and ponder the great issues of existence, while keeping you turning the pages, I highly recommend this book.

Ignore (this book, not the review) at your own peril

Ignore The Thanatos Syndrome at your own peril. The last novel of the late Walker Percy, this often harrowing, sometimes humorous (darkly, at least) tale should set off alarms bells as you read through this thriller. The notion of Walker Percy penning a thriller is, of itself, something odd, and a point that apparently raises the ire of many academics and even many dyed-in-the-wool Percy readers.And this book is different from say, The Moviegoer, in which the inward musings and vexations of the protagonist are fairly insulated from the outside world and its views, opinions, influences. Moreover, Dr. More does not act as the prototypical loner characteristic of some of Percy's other protagonists. Percy's decision to write this novel as more of a fast-paced thriller, the central story occurs over just three days, must have been his attempt to shoot a flare that would draw attention to the dehumanization that started coalescing with more fervor some 15 years ago. (Now civility may be a lost cause: people consider it proper to conduct public arguments with unseen opponents by blathering all manner of nonsense into their cell phones.)And so the flawed hero, the same disheveled, womanizing, fallen Catholic psychiatrist Thomas More practically stumbles upon a scheme to control human behavior by adding radioisotopes to the water supply. After all, the perpetuators of the scheme remind him, look what fluoride has done for oral health. What if we can eliminate depression, crime, disease, and enhance learning, cognition, and memory at the same time? Relying of his beloved bourbon to keep him grounded, Dr. More, fresh out of prison for supplying truckers with uppers, finds his wife and children swept up in the scheme. He plays some hunches, and together with his cousin Lucy, a skilled epidemiologist who employs what was the Internet before any of us every thought about it, discovers a scheme that is both more far-reaching and nefarious than anything since the heyday of Nazi Germany. Dr. More also allies with Vergil Bon, Jr., whose moral center and keen intellect prove pivotal in discovering the physical means of dosing the population and in confronting the horrors of pedophilia lurking under the surface. Both Lucy's and Bon's clearcut, strong character fly in the face of those critics who harangue Percy for creating weak or unfocused female or black characters. Dr. More is the moral and intellectual center of the story, and, typical of many of Percy's leading characters, he struggles to reinvent himself, to get things right, to make the correct decisions. He is not awed by authority, swayed by power, or tempted by riches. Instead, he considers himself to be ''an old-fashioned physician of the soul.'' The parallels between this modern plot to make life better and to terminate anyone whose quality of life doesn't meet the "norm" are clearly drawn by Father Simon Rinaldo Smith, an alcoholic Catholic priest who has retreated to a fire tower where he scans the co

Percy's parting shot

Walker Percy, M.D. struck his final blow at utopian social engineers with "The Thanatos Syndrome". He skillfully draws the connection between the population control groups of today and the cultured Germans of the Weimar Republic and their joint enthusiasm for eugenics and abortion solutions. With that theme playing itself out in the background, he pursues the exciting plot that asks the question: If you could put something in the water that would destroy freewill, but provide perfect order to society, should you? Launch yourself into this rare combination of thriller and deep cultural examination for a great read!

Honest and hauntingly possible

Walker Percy successfully weaves a thought-provoking ethical dilemma into a complex, action-filled fictional narrative. The Thanatos Syndrome engenders a turmoil of pleasurable, suspenseful sensations and disquieting sentiments in its readers. The novel's strengths include a strongly, developed main character who is the first person narrator of the story, a logical sequence of events, and a satisfying conclusion; the novel's only weakness is its use of graphic, wholly unnecessary details of child sexual abuse (not suitable for young readers); the extent to which the abuse is described is excessive and goes beyond the needed explanation to clarify events of the plot. The Thanatos Syndrome addresses many relevant social issues - including crime, teen pregnancy, homosexuality and AIDS - in an honest and truthful manner while providing a particularly insightful look at human nature. Percy effectively portrays both sides of America's current social climate: the need for a quick-fix for its group problems and the rights of the individual within that society. I don't normally read this type of book, but I was particularly surprised by its honesty and haunted by its possibility.