The Moviegoer

by Walker Percy

The Moviegoer

published

April 14th 1998 (first published 1960) by Vintage

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binding

Paperback, 256 pages

literary awards

National Book Award

isbn

0375701966 (isbn13: 9780375701962)

description

This elegantly written account of a young man's search for signs of purpose in the universe is one of the great existential texts of the postwar era a...more

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 2658)

Matt

Matt rated it:

03/17/08

Read in January, 2008

recommends it for: Everyone living in modernity

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

The Sacramental Kiss of a Bloody Finger

Binx Bolling marries Kate Cutrer, even though a bystander, much less the Cutrer family, would not have suspected these two were in love. The Moviegoer is the strange story of one week of Binx’s life, on the eve of his thirtieth birthday, which happens to fall on Ash Wednesday. Binx is searching for something in life, but for what he is not too sure. He is just a normal guy living in Gentilly, a New Orleans suburb, with a normal stockbroker job in a fi...more

Like this review? yes (4 people liked it)

3 comments

Kelly

Kelly rated it:

03/17/07

recommends it for: someone who connects with "the search"

The Moviegoer's fictional "Binx Bolling" is about to turn 30. He contemplates life, apathy, and the escape of movies. It's a book about the search for meaning and the malaise that comes with it.

Walker Percy's writing is heavily influenced by modernism, Christianity, and the South.

Some felt Percy's moviegoing was a sign of his easy-going nature. He felt movies were a complex escape,...and more intense, more real, than everyday life.

In an interview, Percy commented, "F...more

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Chuck

Chuck rated it:

07/05/07

bookshelves: readoveralonglifetime

Read in February, 2001

This is my favorite novel of all time. It is the story of Binx Bolling, a successful, socially prominent New Orleans stockbroker from an old and wealthy family, and how he faces his life in the week of Carnival leading up to his thirtieth birthday on Ash Wednesday. Binx is an avid and successful skirtchaser, but he really loves his stepcousin Kate, a manic depressive. The book tells us that a life spent seeking happiness is almost doomed to failure, that happiness, both as a concept and as a ...more This is my favorite novel of all time. It is the story of Binx Bolling, a successful, socially prominent New Orleans stockbroker from an old and wealthy family, and how he faces his life in the week of Carnival leading up to his thirtieth birthday on Ash Wednesday. Binx is an avid and successful skirtchaser, but he really loves his stepcousin Kate, a manic depressive. The book tells us that a life spent seeking happiness is almost doomed to failure, that happiness, both as a concept and as a reality, is difficult to grasp and difficult to retain. Instead we might strive for a life of alert, intelligent engagement with those around us. It will involve pain as well as pleasure, but it is an approach that gives us the possibility of authenticity. "Joy and sadness come by turns, I know now. Beauty and bravery make you sad, and victory breaks your heart, but life goes on, and on we go..." The six or seven major characters (just about the right number) show us how many ways there are of dealing with the world and with one another. We are not sure how the lives of Binx and Kate and the others "end up," but we see how the world affects them and they affect the world. This is, in a sense, a very modern novel. To give an example, there is a scene in which Kate comes to Binx at 3:00 in the morning. Binx has been warned by his aunt that this is a possibility, so he is sitting in the bus stop in front of his house when Kate's taxi pulls up. They discuss their lives and their possible marriage, and, as dawn approaches, the disease comes upon Kate again.

"Ohhhh," Kate groans, Kate herself now, "I'm so afraid."

"I know."

"What am I going to do?

"You mean right now?"

"Yes."

"First we'll go to my car. Then we'll drive to the French Market and get some coffee. Then we'll go home."

"Is everything going to be all right?"

"Yes."

"Tell me. Say it."

"Everything is going to be all right."

In an older, more classical literature, "Everything is going to be all right" would mean just that: I'll see to it that the bills are paid and your power-seeking brother won't kill your sons and the crops will come in every year. Binx knows that he is unable to give this kind of assurance, because life is not like that. I think that what his "Everything is going to be all right" means is that things may go well, things may not go well, but Binx will face it all with Kate, no matter the difficulties of standing with her. In this case, I am convinced, "Everything is going to be all right" is the functional equivalent of "I love you." And in the contemporary world, maybe that is the best we can do, and maybe it is enough....less

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Sam

Sam rated it:

06/25/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in May, 2007

recommends it for: People who like Catcher in the Rye

This is a slow-burner. A seether. It simmers. Lots of events, but uneventful. But the sense of urgency is steady, and the emotional dynamics are thorough and broad. I didn't expect it to be so obsessed with the existential search. I thought I was getting into Southern Fiction, so I expected a parable of race and class, an articulation of social paradoxes.

I suppose there is some of that behind this all. The first-person narration of Binx Bolling does not explicitly mull over his position in a...more This is a slow-burner. A seether. It simmers. Lots of events, but uneventful. But the sense of urgency is steady, and the emotional dynamics are thorough and broad. I didn't expect it to be so obsessed with the existential search. I thought I was getting into Southern Fiction, so I expected a parable of race and class, an articulation of social paradoxes.

I suppose there is some of that behind this all. The first-person narration of Binx Bolling does not explicitly mull over his position in a teetering line of New Orleans aristocracy, but we piece this together from the world he moves in. The cast of family and friends, the homes and neighborhoods, all help us know his cultural and historical context. That is, who he is supposed to be.

Maybe that's why, with no apparent awareness of these expectations, and a total fixation on his own quest, Binx is our hero. By moving himself away to the suburbs--a nicely bland, uninscribed world--he choses to glean his identity instead from the movies, arguably the American consensus. Here's how he describes one movie, in it's entirety:

"Paul Newman is an idealistic young fellow who is disillusioned and becomes cynical and calculating. But in the end he recovers his ideals."

That's it! No genre, no setting, no events. Just an existential arc will define what this movie is about.

Now toward the end of the book, where you often get that long speech by a secondary but crucial character that defines the meaning of the wrapup thereafter, we get just that. Binx's great Aunt, who has clearly represented the aristocratic element, finally lays out on the line all the stuff that's been seething below the surface, laying bare her disdain for the fate that has befallen her kind at the hands of negroes and the less classy elements of society who stick up for them.

What we end up with is a book about the dissolution of class-consciousness amongst what would become the suburban middle-class, and the freedom that affords to pursue a more narrow and narcissistic, but also a more self-perfecting quest for morality.

That doesn't feel quite right. This book's about more than that. And perhaps I haven't read it quite closely enough. But consider that a thread, at least.

...less

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Melissa

Melissa rated it:

07/02/07

Recently, I recommended this book to a friend. It had been years since I first read it and, with my terrible memory, any hopes of discussing it with him were lost. So I read it - and a couple other of Percy's books - again and quickly remembered why I keep it - and them - on my shelves.
Percy has a way of bringing out the very puzzles of existence, and discomforts of living in the world, in the most fragile ways. As people live "normal" lives around the main characters, those charac...more

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Doug

Doug rated it:

02/18/08

bookshelves: read-in-2008

Read in February, 2008

This novel will linger. The changes in the Binx Bolling are subtle, and he remains a searcher, seeking a state of being, his place in the world. His self-isolation is not successful. The effect of others on his search and of him on them are clear, and they become more apparent to him in the course of the novel.

"But one step out into the brilliant March day and thereit is as big as life, the genie-soul of the place which wherever you go, you must meet and master first thing or be met a...more

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Travis

Travis rated it:

01/30/08

Read in February, 2008

My favorite book. Sort of a 'call to be great' story, without the actual 'call' or 'greatness'. It's a fairly short novel about a single fellow in his late twenties in New Orleans who is coasting through life (he has a well paid job, strong family, and active social life), but at the same time is gently avoiding any sort of spark or passion. He busies himself with movies, and dalliances with his secretaries. He feels exiled, but he relishes his isolation. His ordinariness. But he is not ordinary...more

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Sam

Sam rated it:

04/15/08

Read in April, 2008

Binx, Binx, Binx... Jack Bolling. The best novel I've read where virtually nothing happens. Of course, this is speaking purely of the finitude. Binx is surely preparing for great movements in the infinite, which is what this novel is about. It is more concerned with the search than with the finding, like in Dostoevsky's Notes From the Underground, man takes a greater joy from the building of a castle than from actually living in it.

This novel borrows HEAVILY from Kierkegaardian Existenti...more

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Andrew

Andrew rated it:

02/25/08

Read in February, 2008

Percy's first novel has one of the most compelling narrators I have read in quite a while. The voice is funny, intelligent, interesting, and original. Throughout, Percy's prose is brilliant. All in all, I enjoyed the book. However, I do have two main critiques. First, Percy seems to be able to tell too much without telling enough. There are points in the book where the narrator seems too direct in describing his existential "search," and yet, in the book as a whole, I don't think enoug...more

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Espen

Espen rated it:

03/09/08

Read in January, 1994

Reread this one after 10 years, to see whether if I could understand better what the fuzz is about (The Moviegoer is regularly held up as a major event in American novel-writing.) The protragonist , Binx Bolling, lives a comfortable if nondescript life as a small-time stockbroker in New Orleans, going to movies and hitting on his secretaries. During most of the book goes on a "search", essentially trying to figure out what to do with himself. In the background lurks a changing society ...more

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Darren

Darren rated it:

02/25/08

Read in February, 2008

recommends it for: everybody

When you read a book like this - and the only other books like this are "The Stranger" and "The Catcher in the Rye" - you have to be just a little bit skeptical of all the supposedly "great" novels which test your patience, your vocabulary, your ability to juggle existential subtlety with thematic overinterpretation and whatever other depth we may ascribe to whatever we don't understand.

Like "The Stranger" and "The Catcher in the Rye," this b...more

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Jesse

Jesse rated it:

01/25/08

Read in January, 2008

This is a novel I had known of for a long time (it being compared to "Revolutionary Road" and "Rabbit, Run" both books I'd enjoyed) however it took a NYTimes Reading Room discussion to finally motivate me to read it. It was a fast read: well written, interesting plot, solid characters. Yet something seemed missing, which I guess is the point as Binx Bolling (the protagonist) can't seem to find what he's looking for (he constantly speaks of the malaise which seems like a tame ...more

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David

David rated it:

06/05/07

Read in June, 2007

Although my appreciation for The Moviegoer grew upon contemplation (elevating it from 2 to 3 stars), I didn't find it a very engaging or enjoyable read. To a certain extent, I liken my initially low level of appreciation for The Moviegoer to my reaction upon seeing Citizen Kane for the first time: "...so what's the big deal?" I didn't get what the fuss was all about because Welles' technical innovations, for example, had so influenced the movies with which I was familiar that they di...more

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Laura

Laura rated it:

(review of isbn 0413773272)

08/17/07

Read in June, 2006

"The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life... To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair."

I've been meaning to read this novel for around seven years when it was first recommended to me as being quite excellent. However, you can't just rush into a book with a main character by the name of Binx Bolling, you know.

I'm quite thankful I waited as well b...more

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K.K.

K.K. rated it:

09/23/08

bookshelves: 2008-book-log

Read in September, 2008

recommended to K.K. by: David Weatherman by way of David Wyant

The Moviegoer is a surprise. A slow, hard-earned surprise. David bought this book for me based on the recommendation of a friend. And that friend said that he finished the book and immediately wanted to quit everything in his life to write a novel.

With a rec like that and my chosen life pursuit, I, of course, had to read the book for myself.

Its credentials were outstanding, having won a National Book Award. My expectations were high - which was my first mistake.

The book centers on o...more

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Nick

Nick rated it:

07/03/08

Read in July, 2008

Man, I love those New Orleans fiction writers. This is the second novel I've read by its native sons, the other was a Confederacy of Dunces. While the latter was lighter, it was still sad knowing that its author will never write again. The Moviegoer, however, is so beautiful and romantic, and terribly real and sad sometimes, but it is a book of hope, especially knowing that this is the first of many by Percy.

The prose is so gorgeously Southern, and the dialog helps create real, three dimensi...more

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Jessica

Jessica rated it:

07/04/08

Read in July, 2008

I liked this book. Almost enough to add one more star, but not quite enough. I liked it because Percy's descriptive style is so, well, descriptive. As I read along, I could form clear pictures in my mind. His dialogue between characters is ingenious. And it just has the authentic feel of Louisiana - a little lazy, a little strange, but never boring. I think the fact that he has the Kirkegaard quote at the beginning really tells us what the story is meant to be about. It's a book that, once you ...more

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Lowry

Lowry rated it:

08/28/07

Read in January, 1979

recommends it for: anyone

This is one of the essential American books of the 20th century, though I guess many readers now don't know about it. Walker Percy was a doctor by training, but never practiced; he contracted TB while doing research on cadavers, and after he recovered, he began writing philosophical essays (collected in The Message in the Bottle, also a great book). When he was about 40, The Moviegoer (his first novel) was published and won the National Book Award. He is one of the best writers of English sent...more

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Daryn

Daryn rated it:

12/30/07

This is a good novel, but I don't think it deserves its reputation as a modern classic. If you take away the mildly existentialist musings of the narrator, what you have is pretty ordinary and shallow--another novel about a white male bachelor going through a mid-life crisis. It's like a Southern version of Updike. Percy's prose style is distinctive and the major characters are well-drawn, but the minor characters are two-dimensional (the black characters especially are treated with racist conde...more

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Bob

Bob rated it:

07/26/07

bookshelves: top100fictionof1900s

Read in July, 2007

#60 on the top 100 list. Easy read compared to many on this list and quite entertaining.

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