Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World, a finalist for the 1972 National Book Award, remains even more acutely prophetic now than when it was published almost five decades ago. “The novel is not saying: Don't rock the boat, cool it, be moderate, vote moderate Republican or Democrat,” Percy declared at the NBA awards ceremony. “No, it rocks the boat. In fact, it swamps the boat.”
William F. Buckley Jr. wryly suggested that all future presidents should be required to swear a double oath of office: not only to uphold and defend the Constitution but also to have read, marked, learned, and digested Percy's Love in the Ruins. “It's all there in that one book,” said Buckley, “what's happening to us and why.” Indeed, Percy's novel reads as if it were written in anticipation of the 2016 presidential election.
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