Space is scary: “Life” and Walker Percy’s angels and beasts
It hasn’t gone unnoticed, at least to me, the similar thematic device deployed both by Percy (Lost in the Cosmos) and David Bowie — i.e. the alienated individual with existential concerns. For Bowie there was the recurrent space traveller — “Space Oddity” to “The Man Who Sold the World” to “Ziggy”, through to revisiting Major Tom (“Ashes to…