Walker Percy - Lancelot

I could live that way, crude as it was, though I do not think men should butcher each other like animals. But it is at least a way to live. One knows where one stands and what one can do. Even defeat is better than not knowing.

Or I could live your way if it were true.

What I can’t stand is the way things are now. Furthermore, I will not stand for it.

Stand for what, you ask? Well, for that, to give an insignificant example. What you’re looking at. You see the movie poster across the street? The 69ers? Man and woman yin-yanged, fellatioed, cunnilinged on the corner of Felicity and Annunciation Streets? What would I do about it? Quite simply it would be removed.

Come here, Percival, I want to tell you something. It is not a confession but a secret. It is not a sin because I do not know what a sin is. I understand that before you can sin, you must know what sin is — Bless me, Father, for I have done something which I don’t understand. I know what a trespass or an injury or an insult is — something to be set right. So I’m telling you this and, confession or not, I consider you bound by the seal of friendship if not the confessional.

Come over here. Never mind the window. Look at me. We’ve been through a great deal together: school, war, talk, whoring, football, nice girls, hot girls, so since you understand me and my past — if you don’t, nobody does — I’m going to tell you my plans for the future. There is going to be a new order of things and I shall be part of it. Don’t confuse it with anything you’ve heard of before. Certainly not with your Holy Name Society or Concerned Christians Against Smut. This has nothing to do with Christ or boycotts. Don’t confuse it with the Nazis. They were stupid. If in fact there was a need to clean up the Weimar Republic and if in fact they did in part, they screwed everything up by getting off on the Jews. What stupidity! The Jews were not to blame. The Nazis were clods, thugs. What they should have done was invite the Jews. Half the Jews would have joined them — just as half the Catholics did. Don’t confuse it with the Klan, those poor ignorant bastards. Blacks, Jews, Catholics — they are all irrelevant; blaming them only confuses the issue. We’ll invite them and you. Don’t confuse it with Southern white trash Wallace politics. It’s got nothing to do with politics.

It is none of these things. What is it then?

It is simply this: a conviction and a freedom. The conviction: I will not tolerate this age. The freedom: the freedom to act on my conviction. And I will act. No one else has both the conviction and the freedom. Many agree with me, have the conviction, but will not act. Some act. assassinate, bomb, burn, etc., but they are the crazies. Crazy acts by crazy people. But what if one, sober, reasonable, and honorable man should act, and act with perfect sobriety, reason, and honor? Then you have the beginning of a new age. We shall start a new order of things.

We? Who are we? We will not even be a secret society as you know such things. Its members will know each other without signs or passwords. No speeches, rallies, political parties. There will be no need of such things. One man will act. Another man will act. We will know each other as gentlemen used to know each other — no, not gentlemen in the old sense — I’m not talking about social classes. I’m talking about something held in common by men, Gentile, Jew, Greek, Roman, slave, freeman, black, white, and so recognized between them: a stern code, a gentleness toward women and an intolerance of swinishness, a counsel kept, and above all a readiness to act, and act alone if necessary — there’s the essential ingredient — because as of this moment not one in 200 million Americans is ready to act from perfect sobriety and freedom. If one man is free to act alone, you don’t need a society. How will we know each other? The same way General Lee and General Forrest would know each other at a convention of used-car dealers on Bourbon Street: Lee a gentleman in the old sense. Forrest not, but in this generation of vipers they would recognize each other instantly.

You have your Sacred Heart. We have Lee. We are the Third Revolution. The First Revolution in 1776 against the stupid British succeeded. The Second Revolution in 1861 against the money-grubbing North failed — as it should have because we got stuck with the Negro thing and it was our fault. The Third Revolution will succeed. What is the Third Revolution? You’ll see.

I cannot tolerate this age. And I will not. I might have tolerated you and your Catholic Church, and even joined it, if you had remained true to yourself. Now you’re part of the age. You’ve the same fleas as the dogs you’ve lain down with. I would have felt at home at Mont-Saint-Michel, the Mount of the Archangel with the flaming sword, or with Richard Coeur de Lion at Acre. They believed in a God who said he came not to bring peace but the sword. Make love not war? I’ll take war rather than what this age calls love. Which is a better world, this cocksucking cuntlapping assholelicking fornicating Happyland U.S.A. or a Roman legion under Marcus Aurelius Antoninus? Which is worse, to die with T. J. Jackson at Chancellorsville or live with Johnny Carson in Burbank?

Yes, I’ll be out of here in a month or two. What do we intend to do, you ask? We? I can only speak for me. Others will then do likewise. But let me give you an example from my future life. Yes! I may be uncertain about the past, about what happened — it’s all confused, I’d rather not think about it — but I know what the future and the new order and my life will be like. The new order will not be based on Catholicism or Communism or fascism or liberalism or capitalism or any ism at all, but simply on that stem rectitude valued by the new breed and marked by the violence which will attend its breach. We will not tolerate this age. Don’t speak to me of Christian love. Whatever came of it? I’ll tell you what came of it. It got mouthed off on the radio and TV from the pulpit and that was the end of it. The Jews knew better. Billy Graham lay down with Nixon and got up with a different set of fleas, but the Jewish prophets lived in deserts and wildernesses and had no part with corrupt kings. I’ll prophesy: This country is going to turn into a desert and it won’t be a bad thing. Thirst and hunger are better than jungle rot. We will begin in the Wilderness where Lee lost. Deserts are clean places. Corpses turn quickly into simply pure chemicals.

Then how shall we live if not with Christian love? One will work and take care of one’s own. live and let live, and behave with a decent respect toward others. If there cannot be love — you call that love out there? — there will be a tight-lipped courtesy between men. And chivalry toward women. Women must be saved from the whoredom they’ve chosen. Women will once again be strong and modest. Children will be merry because they will know what they are to do.

Oh, you wish to know what my own life will be like? (Look at you, all at once abstract and understanding and leading me on, all ears like one of these psychologists: why can’t you priests stick to being priests for a change?) Very well, I will tell you. I plan to marry Anna here in the next room. I think she’ll have me. You can marry us if you like. I shall love and protect her. I can make her well. I know that I can just as I know I can do what I choose to do. She is much better already. Yesterday we watched the clouds flying along and she smiled. She is the first woman of the new order. For she has, so to speak, endured the worst of the age and survived it, undergone the ultimate violation and come out of it not only intact but somehow purged, innocent. Who else might the new Virgin be but a gang-raped social worker? I do not joke. Her ordeal has made her like a ten-year-old.