Lost in the Cosmos

Walker Percy

Walker Percy won the National Book Award for The Moviegoer. In these two provocative works, Percy manages to be perceptive and playful as he more directly explores the philosophical foundations of his groundbreaking fiction. **The Message in the Bottle:** In these profound and passionate essays, Percy looks to language to answer the question of who we are as humans. He posits that the act of assigning meaning by naming things makes humans unique. Percy develops a theory of language through the example of Helen Keller being stimulated by the feel of water along with the sign for water, and explores questions such as why other animals don't talk and why humans in technologically advanced, materially comfortable societies are so sad. **Lost in the Cosmos:** Lost in the Cosmos is a one-of-a-kind mix of self-help parody and philosophical speculation. Filled with quizzes, essays, short stories, and diagrams, Percy's guide is a laugh-out-loud spin on a familiar genre that also pushes readers to serious contemplation of life's biggest questions, such as: "Why is it no other species but man gets bored?" and "Explain why Moses was tongue-tied and stagestruck before his fellow Jews but had no trouble talking to God."