text: What do you do when the world is coming to an end right before your very eyes, but no one seems to believe you?  That is the concept facing Dr. Thomas More, distant relation to the famous/infamous Saint Thomas More, in Walker Percy's novel "Love In The Ruins".  The United States is at a time of crisis, but few seem to understand the implications of the events unfolding around them.  It is up to Dr. More, who knows how to diagnose the problem, but not necessarily treat it, to try to prevent the chaos from happening.
  
  The story begins on a hot fourth of July, with Doc staking out the abandoned Howard Johnsons motel in town.  In three separate rooms he has cocooned his three paramours and he is waiting for an event that he knows is going to happen; an event that could very possibly bring about the end of the world.  The novel then shifts back in time to the three previous days, tracing Doc's journey that led him to seek refuge at the motel.  The reader learns that he has created a Ontological Lapsometer, a sort of "stethoscope of the human spirit", through which he can diagnose exactly what ails a person's soul, and finally discovers how to treat it.  Meanwhile, there is a revolution brewing; the Bantus and love children are ready to take over what the white man has destroyed, if a major catastrophe doesn't befall everyone before that can happen.
  
  "Love In The Ruins" is a truly southern novel, crafted through Percy's intelligence and tempered with the same absurdity that is a trademark of great southern writers such as Percy and Flannery O'Connor.  The reader must suspend disbelief as to the events unfolding, even though they are frighteningly realistic, and not so far-fetched in this present day.  Percy's hero Doc More is an antihero on par with those of Hemingway; flawed, prone to drink, forever chasing after women who are wrong for him.  This novel is his coming-of-age, in a sense, because Doc learns what it is he wants out of life, and how to best achieve that.  Subtitled "The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World", "Love In The Ruins" is a deliciously funny and poignant look at a near-apocalyptic America
  