Walker Percy

Winner of the 1962 National Book Award and one of Time magazine’s 100 Best English-Language Novels, Walker Percy’s debut The Moviegoer is an American masterpiece and a classic of Southern literature. Insightful, romantic, and humorous, it is the story of a young man’s search for meaning amid a shallow consumerist landscape. Binx Bolling, a young New Orleans stockbroker, fills his days with movies and casual sex. His life offers him nothing worth retaining; what he treasures are scenes from The Third Man or Stagecoach, not the personal experiences he knows other people hold dear. On the cusp of turning thirty, however, something changes: At Mardi Gras, he embarks on a quest for some form of authentic experience. The consequences of Binx’s quest, on both himself and his unstable cousin Kate, prove outrageous, absurd, moving, and indelible. Featuring a new afterword by Richard Ford, this new edition of The Moviegoer cements Walker Percy’s place as a giant of American literature.

A Novel

The Moviegoer

moviegoer

 I do include some spoilers & topics covered in the book, so please read at your own risk if you choose to do so 

- This book was apart of my reading list for a college class I took on existentialism politics and literature. It was wildly uncanny for me mainly because Binx’s description of life and the places he’s been were so familiar to me. Tennessee, Mississippi: these are the places I know like the back of my hand. I grew up in a small town in Tennessee, so I grew connected to his story and his background. I could see, hear, and taste the places he talked about (however, I will also mention that his terminology he uses would be highly controversial nowadays, but when we read literature like Percy’s book we cannot take everything literal or accept everything he says; it’s about the philosophy and theories that he offers that are intriguing and offer the same struggles and questions that humanity faces today). Seemingly at the end of the book, Binx, the protagonist, settles for a mundane and ordinary life. He once valued doing “something great” with his life like practicing law or scientific research, and much of this original intent is based on the standards engrained in him by his Aunt Em. Instead, Binx believes these kind of ambitions and longings are those who have fallen victim to the “everydayness,” which he doesn’t wish to do, and focuses on his “search”. The malaise is inevitably something that follows Binx’s search, despite his intentions to avoid it, because it is the feeling of emptiness, meaninglessness, and despair that comes with the failure to discover the world and one’s place in it aka existential crisis. He aims to find transcendent meaning in life and happiness. What human being doesn’t? While I may not agree with some of his choices and the way he lives, I can empathize and understand his struggle to find a way to explain the lack of explanation from the universe of humanity’s meaning or purpose in this life. Binx’s struggle with the “search”, “malaise”, and “everydayness” suggests that meaning cannot be found by passively accepting our situations nor by trying to escape or overcome mundane life, but instead, it is found through seeking to connect more deeply with our own everyday experiences. It is a must-read, and a great book to illustrate the struggles of humanity and coming-of-age in which we really begin to feel the pressure from the outside world to find our purpose or place in society. 

Lauren Lipford

 I do include some spoilers & topics covered in the book, so please read at your own risk if you choose to do so - This book was apart of my reading list for a college class I took on existentialism politics and literature. It was wildly uncanny for me mainly because Binx’s description of life and the places he’s been were so familiar to me. Tennessee, Mississippi: these are the places I know like the back of my hand. I grew up in a small town in Tennessee, so I grew connected to his story and his background. I could see, hear, and taste the places he talked about (however, I will also mention that his terminology he uses would be highly controversial nowadays, but when we read literature like Percy’s book we cannot take everything literal or accept everything he says; it’s about the philosophy and theories that he offers that are intriguing and offer the same struggles and questions that humanity faces today). Seemingly at the end of the book, Binx, the protagonist, settles for a mundane and ordinary life. He once valued doing “something great” with his life like practicing law or scientific research, and much of this original intent is based on the standards engrained in him by his Aunt Em. Instead, Binx believes these kind of ambitions and longings are those who have fallen victim to the “everydayness,” which he doesn’t wish to do, and focuses on his “search”. The malaise is inevitably something that follows Binx’s search, despite his intentions to avoid it, because it is the feeling of emptiness, meaninglessness, and despair that comes with the failure to discover the world and one’s place in it aka existential crisis. He aims to find transcendent meaning in life and happiness. What human being doesn’t? While I may not agree with some of his choices and the way he lives, I can empathize and understand his struggle to find a way to explain the lack of explanation from the universe of humanity’s meaning or purpose in this life. Binx’s struggle with the “search”, “malaise”, and “everydayness” suggests that meaning cannot be found by passively accepting our situations nor by trying to escape or overcome mundane life, but instead, it is found through seeking to connect more deeply with our own everyday experiences. It is a must-read, and a great book to illustrate the struggles of humanity and coming-of-age in which we really begin to feel the pressure from the outside world to find our purpose or place in society. 

Kate's desperate struggle to maintain her sanity forces her cousin Binx to relinquish his dreamworld

Dana Kraft

This is a well written story and while it was written over 50 years ago the themes and behaviors it explores are still relevant today. You could rework this story with social media replacing movies and it would be just as good. I feel like I have known so many people who remind me of Binx, sometimes even myself much to my chagrin.

Favorite quote is :
"Truthfully, it is the fear of exposing my own ignorance which constrains me from mentioning the object of my search. For, to begin with, I cannot even answer this, the simplest and most basic of all questions: Am I, in my search, a hundred miles ahead of my fellow Americans or a hundred miles behind them? that is to say: Have 98% of Americans already found what I seek or are they so sunk in everydayness that not even the possibility of a search has occurred to them?

The more I thought about this book, the more I liked it. That all said, I feel like it's one of those books (same applies to movies) that was so good that it was copied a lot which makes it feel less original to me.

Trever

Teetering between 3.5 and a full 4. Parts were interesting and parts weren't; there was the potential for this to be more than it is, but as-is, it's still worth a try if the premise intrigues you.

This was actually the last book I bought in 2010 but didn’t get around to reading it until the end of 2011. The first person somewhat self-conscious meanderings of one Binx Bolling, mid-(what seems to be) lifetime existential crisis could have, in the hands of a less skilled writer, gone down the path of navelgazing. Instead, this is a refreshing, intoxicating story.

Donald

This is the book kids should read instead of Catcher in the Rye.

Simon Elliott Stegall

I'm glad I read Percy's nonfiction work, Lost in the Cosmos, before reading The Moviegoer, as it introduced me to a lot of his ideas in a clear way. In his fiction they are presented more subtly. Percy's favorite topics- malaise, identity, and meaning (or lack thereof) are hit upon brilliantly in this book. I will probably reread this one in a couple years.

Kyle McDonald

In this National Book Award–winning novel from a “brilliantly breathtaking writer,” a young Southerner searches for meaning in the midst of Mardi Gras (The New York Times Book Review). On the cusp of his thirtieth birthday, Binx Bolling is a lost soul. A stockbroker and member of an established New Orleans family, Binx’s one escape is the movie theater that transports him from the falseness of his life. With Mardi Gras in full swing, Binx, along with his cousin Kate, sets out to find his true purpose amid the excesses of the carnival that surrounds him. Buoyant yet powerful, The Moviegoer is a poignant indictment of modern values, and an unforgettable story of a week that will change two lives forever. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Walker Percy including rare photos from the author’s estate.

The Moviegoer A Novel

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