Do you know what I was? The Knight of the Unholy Grail.

In times like these when everyone is wonderful, what is needed is a quest for evil….

“Evil” is surely the clue to this age, the only quest appropriate to the age. For everything and everyone’s either wonderful or sick and nothing is evil.

Honesty comes first. I’m not at all sure I understand Walker Percy’s novel Lancelot. I think I understand some of it, but it’s one of those books that I come away from pretty sure I’ve encountered something written for people smarter than me.

But it was a fascinating read, and I’ll tell you what I thought. For whatever that’s worth.

The main character and narrator is Lancelot Lamar, formerly the scion of a fine old Louisiana family, owner of a handsome estate, successful lawyer with a record of civil rights advocacy, and loving husband to a beautiful wife.

Now, as he narrates the text of this book, he is a patient in a mental hospital, having been declared insane after blowing up his home, killing his wife and her movie industry friends. His confidante is his friend Percival, a priest (or a former priest; it’s never made clear) who never contributes a word to the narrative.

Lancelot, as we learn through his own somewhat disjointed testimony, was a comfortable alcoholic, living his life in an anesthetic haze, until he discovered a fact that proved his marriage a lie. This set him on his quest—to discover the meaning of life, not in virtue but in evil. As is appropriate for an upside-down age, he is an inverted Sir Lancelot, not the adulterer but the cuckold, not rescuing the queen but burning her.

His constant refrain, as he talks to his priest friend, is that Christianity (Catholicism, of course, is the only kind that matters) has failed, or has been failed by its followers. The world requires a new spring of virtue, something harder and less sentimental, demanding honor of both men and women, and punishing them where they fail.

Author Walker Percy could hardly have been thinking of this when he wrote the book, but Lancelot’s madman’s program sounds remarkably similar to Islam.

The story is compelling, in a tragic, train wreck kind of way. The reader is meant, I believe, to wonder what Father Percival is saying in reply, but his responses are made conspicuous by their absence. That is a very effective literary technique, but only in the hands of a master, like Walker Percy.

Recommended, for thoughtful readers. Cautions for language, violence, and sexual situations.