Walker Percy Studies

Here's an excellent essay on Walker Percy by way of Matthew Lickona
(some explicit language)

Instead of accepting the vitality of limitation which Binx had discovered in the dirt in Korea, Lancelot, thrown into a darker pit by his discovery of be­trayal, chooses to take the route of "the Gnostic impatience with human limita­tions which can [and does in Lance's case] con­vert into a hubristic denial of one's own limitations."

[...]

As John Desmond has pointed out, Lance contradicts himself in, once having admitted an irreducible mystery, proceeding to "collapse metaphysical mystery into empirical categories." Epistemologically, Lance is thus beset by a typical Gnostic dilemma. He in­stinctively re­jects a purely materialistic categorization of the human self, yet he also abhors the possibility that he may partic­ipate in a mystery that is beyond his comprehen­sion.