The Moviegoer

According to Binx, "the search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. He has a regular work schedule. He tunes in faithfully to the radio show "This I Believe" every night.

He goes through the motions of middle class existence and yet through all of it he seeks the search not so much for reaching the specific goal or destination as because it is an alternative to not seeking, which he sees as surrendering to despair. Among Binx's preoccupations along the course of the Search are repetitions and rotations.

A repetition Binx defines as "the reenactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which as lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle. The events of the intervening twenty years were neutralized because Nivea Creme was exactly as it was before.

A rotation is "the experiencing of the new beyond the expectation of the experiencing of the new. For example, taking one's first trip to Taxco would not be a rotation, or no more than a very ordinary rotation; but getting lost on the way and discovering a hidden value would be. Meanwhile, Binx accompanies Kate on her mental rollercoaster and proposes marriage. She dismisses him by emphasizing that she would not want her mental instability to ruin such a union but readdresses the subject later and agrees to the possibility that if he guides her and tells her what to do she will trust his guidance and that will provide a foundation for stability.

He impulsively asks her to join him on a business trip to Chicago and she agrees. She has difficulties but Binx manages to guide her through the minefield until his aunt catches up with them and chastises him for taking her with him without informing anyone what had become of her, taking full advantage of the opportunity to deliver her 'what are you going to do with your life' lecture and asking him what he truly believes. At the novel's conclusion, Binx appears to accommodate both the expectations of society and Aunt Emily as well as the compulsions of his Search. We do not know how successful he and Kate will be but at least the collective pursuit of their individual searches may prevent succumbing to the depths of the malaise.

Binx's existential search recalls another fictional searcher, the narrator of Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time. Binx searches not for a holy grail but for the novelty of living. In a sense it is a celebration of the hidden misfit. Binx is perhaps more subversive than most political radicals because he is outwardly a conformist, living a conventional life, observing the rituals of the middle class life and fulfilling society's expectations. Beneath the conservative exterior lurks a strange eccentric moviegoer categorizing the world, undergoing a search as existential as any Kafkaesque or Dostoevskian antihero.

The Moviegoer

The existential crisis is timeless so the 50 years since Percy Walker wrote The Moviegoer don't matter. If you ignore some superficial differences, I am Binx Bolling. You read The Moviegoer for comfort - you are reassured searching is common. But, it doesn't provide you with the answer to your search - it tries to get you to give up. As unattractive as Binx Bolling is to you, your search is that unattractive to others. Is Binx's search real or is it an excuse?

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He could be tackling the hardest question or he could be using it as an excuse for his movie going and secretary chasing. The existential crisis is a perfect trap. The first step is the easiest - realizing many people are fooled into thinking their lives have meaning. Binx is quick to rejects other's beliefs - southern aristocracy or religion. He can deconstruct anything, but he has nothing to replace it with. If you can't find anything meaningful to do, you might as well enjoy a meaningless diversion.

So what is the answer to the search? Frankl flips the question around. But life is generally good and easy, so it is easy to convince yourself that life expects very little. Maybe the answer lies in relationships. Does the chaos of his relationships with his aunt and Kate prevent him from growth. Has being manipulated for so long prevented Binx from forming caring relationship. You get of glimpse of a human, caring Binx. As he cares for his step brothers and sisters you think there may be hope for him. Binx's primary escape are movies. Today he would escape online.

It is interesting to think about the differences. Binx's is attracted to the cinetography of movies - everything more beautiful, loves more intense, and the meaning is clear. The internet offers a different escape than movies. When I was deciding on the second book that every American should read, I wavered between those two. With all their freedom, Americans now struggle with what to do with that freedom. Ironically, a nation founded on the pursuit of happiness is populated by people largely in despair.

After an attempt to commit suicide, she realizes that life is a choice. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. The novel ends with an affirmation of life that most people, including Bloom, either ignore or debunk. Binx and Kate end up together and their marriage signifies a change in Binx; the existentialist wanderer has made a commitment to love and to community. Walker Percy was a Catholic convert. He moved from agnosticism to faith and simultaneously made a move from science to fiction.

A recent documentary by Win Riley http: It's not that I never personally feel existential dread -- I do, far more often than I'd like -- but, for the most part, I got the reading of these types of novels out of my system I come away from "The Moviegoer" with very mixed feelings. It's not that I never personally feel existential dread -- I do, far more often than I'd like -- but, for the most part, I got the reading of these types of novels out of my system as a teenager. That's when I read Camus's "The Stranger," for instance.

I probably should have read about Binx Bolling's search for meaning in the modern world back then. What's weird about that is that I'm now far closer to both Binx's age and place in life than I was as a teenager. And maybe that's the problem. Perhaps these kinds of books are meant to prepare us for where we will be later in life -- or even allow us to say to ourselves, full of self-righteousness, "I'll never be like that! Maybe it's just too much to take, hitting us too close to where we live now. That all being said, I want to go back to my first point: This passage, from after Binx tries unsuccessfully to consummate an affair -- the mind was willing, but the flesh wasn't -- is just one example: I never worked so hard in my life, Rory.

I had no choice: Christians talk about the horror of sin, but they have overlooked something. They keep talking as if everyone were a sinner, when the truth is that nowadays one is hardly up to it. There is very little sin in the depths of the malaise. The highest moment of a malaisian's life can be that moment when he manages to sin like a proper human Look at us, Binx -- my vagabond friends as good as cried out to me -- we're sinning! We're human after all! It'd be hard to argue with Binx on that point. View all 10 comments. Mar 10, Bram rated it really liked it Shelves: I'm a sucker for books that employ existential musings in a way that feels genuine and unforced; thus, I greatly enjoyed The Moviegoer.

It's an ambitious novel for one so slim--it skims many weighty topics, from hedonism and his better-dressed twin, capitalism , to religion's place in America, to the nature of responsibility and that of her incubus, apathy , to mental health and paranoia. There is even a nice riff on Salinger where Percy replaces Holden's "phonies" with those who are "dead" in I'm a sucker for books that employ existential musings in a way that feels genuine and unforced; thus, I greatly enjoyed The Moviegoer.

There is even a nice riff on Salinger where Percy replaces Holden's "phonies" with those who are "dead" in their hollow interpersonal interactions. While I was occasionally disappointed at Percy's hesitation to explore some issues more fully, it is this deft reticence that ultimately provides the book with such poignant and unique flair. Just as Nick's reliability as a narrator in The Great Gatsby is at times questionable, Binx's own truthfulness or at least his self-perception is occasionally suspect.

He professes to be apathetic and lazy despite great success with his financial work, and the only thing that motivates him more urgently than his day-job is his highly successful womanizing career. He goes on and on about his metaphysical "search" and listens faithfully to religious broadcasts while concurrently claiming an inability to consider questions about God, existence, or the relevance of such questions even if the answers are in favor of belief.

And while maintaining that his actions come only from selfish impulse, Binx is exceptionally generous with those whose needs he can, at least temporarily, fulfill i. Kate, Lonnie, and even Aunt Emily. In the end these contradictions serve primarily to accentuate Binx's Dostoevskyan duality--and, therefore, his humanity. Despite the absence of any inner resolutions for the lead characters, Percy still manages to provide a modestly uplifting message via his unrelenting focus on the malaise associated with "everydayness". It is this heightened perception of the malaise that ultimately allows one to at least recognize the road that can lead to despair--to emotional and moral flaccidity.

As the novel's epigraph, quoting Kierkegaard, explains: View all 9 comments. Sep 19, Megan Baxter rated it really liked it. Let me preface this by saying that I'm quite sure that nothing in this review will come close to equalling the great one Jeffrey Keeten did, which I am purposely not rereading until after I write this, as it will intimidate the heck out of me. The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook. View all 13 comments.

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Oct 31, Katie rated it did not like it. Nothing like a boring book to put a damper on reading. I can't remember the exact day that I started this book, but it feels like forever ago. For a some page book, it felt like a page book, and just dragged on for a long time. The main character Binx Bolling who names their kid Binx? In the book, there's about five interesting events, six entertaining converstations, Nothing like a boring book to put a damper on reading. In the book, there's about five interesting events, six entertaining converstations, three unique ideas, and the rest, just boring ramble inside Binx's head.

The title of the book, implies that Binx sees a lot of movies, but really I think he sees maybe three or four. I think that I'd recommend skipping the book, and going to see a movie instead. So, I read it.

I guess it kind of redeems itself towards the end, but for much of the first pages or so, it was filled with sickening Southern witticisms and references to by-gone nonsense. Too much about the "malaise" and the "genie-soul" - which means what exactly? And, what kind of grandiose shit is this? When I was a junior in high school, my favorite English teacher told us about Walker Percy. He lived across Lake Pontchartrain, she said, and she made him sound like a reclusive eccentric. He had a new book out, she told us, called Lancelot and highly recommended his Love in the Ruins.

We didn't read him in class, but I heard enough about him to be intrigued and I read him on my own. Though my teacher had introduced me to him, I felt like he was my own discovery. I don't remember the first time I When I was a junior in high school, my favorite English teacher told us about Walker Percy. I don't remember the first time I read this, his first novel, but I think the second time was with a group at a local bookstore in the mids.

I remember the group's moderator, the owner of the store, saying that all through her reading, she wondered why she was bothering, until she got to the end. I believe I read it next with a small Yahoo group of women I had been online friends with for awhile earlys and I remember their strong reaction to Aunt Emily's speech near the end.

I read it this time because my daughter had been wanting to read it with me for years, ever since she didn't get a chance to take a New Orleans Lit class at the local university before graduating, and we finally found the opportunity. Every time I reread a Percy novel, I am struck by his prescience I especially felt that way after rereading Love in the Ruins after Hurricane Katrina , or maybe it's just that nothing much has changed in the world from then to now and, like Binx, Percy was an astute observer.

I also appreciated this novel's humor more this time around, especially its depiction of the exclusive echelon inhabiting the Garden District of uptown New Orleans. Perhaps this book should be rated 4 stars, but I'm in agreement with the bookstore owner about the ending and I'm on record elsewhere saying an ending can make a novel for me.

There was so much I'd forgotten in between this read and the one before, but not the ending--that I remembered.

• Goal of Life.
• The Moviegoer - Wikipedia;
• NEWBEARD THE GREAT - The Decision.
• On the Margins: Extremist Parties in Democratic Systems (World Politics Review Features);
• The Moviegoer by Walker Percy?
• .

And then there's that power of discovery I don't know what I was expecting, a nostalgic trip through the golden hours of cinema history, something along the lines of Truffaut or of the more recent Oscar laureate The Artist? I didn't even pay attention to the year of publication or the setting New Orleans.

Mostly the impulse to pick it up came from a goodreads review full of great movie posters, and I was looking for something to validate my own obsession with the silver screen magic I had periods when I watched movies I don't know what I was expecting, a nostalgic trip through the golden hours of cinema history, something along the lines of Truffaut or of the more recent Oscar laureate The Artist?



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Mostly the impulse to pick it up came from a goodreads review full of great movie posters, and I was looking for something to validate my own obsession with the silver screen magic I had periods when I watched movies per day. The actual novel surprised me in many ways, mostly in good ways, but turned out to be completely different from what I imagined and from what the opening chapter promises.

John Bickerson Bolling, aka Binx, is indeed a kindred spirit, a loner with a passion for the larger than life dramas produced in Holywood's dream factories: Our neighborhood theater in Gentilly has permanent lettering on the front of the marquee reading: Where Happiness Costs So Little. Going to the movies is as natural and as necessary to him as eating or breathing: The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie.

Joining Binx on his leisurely walks through a sleepy neighborhood in the hour before dawn, or strolling down Bourbon Street trying to spot a famous actor William Holden mixing with the public, maintaining his cool, detached demeanour with friends and family, I was too quick in judging him a more amiable, laid back version of Ignatius J Reilly: Binx is an entirely different kind of character.

His eyes are wide open instead of turned inward, his mind sharp and focused instead of delusional, his business flair excellent, his social skills almost flawlessly those of a classic Southern gentilhomme, his heart is in the right place, always ready to lend an attentive ear or a helping hand to siblings or casual acquaintances: I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen.

When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see. I wouldn't want to give the impression Binx is an innocent, an angel of grace and understanding. He's a self confessed womanizer, and some of the funniest moments in the book detail his slick technique for serially seducing his secretaries, relying on his two-seater MG sportcar and the romantic appeal of a secluded Gulf Coast beach.

Since I mentioned the novel's heady mix of humor, despair and acurate social observations, here's a passage that I think remains as relevant today as in the day it was written: Whenever I feel bad, I go to the library and read controversial periodicals. Though I do not know whether I am a liberal or a conservative, I am nevertheless enlivened by the hatred which one bears the other.

In fact, this hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world. This is another thing about the world which is upside-down: Behind all the women and the sparkling movie idols Binx carries a deep seated despair, a malaise worthy of the pen of Baudelaire or Emil Cioran. He is a man in the middle of an existential crisis, exasperated by the waste of precious moments in trivial pursuits and by the insufficiency of words to capture the essence of life.

In his own words, he is a searcher, always looking for answers to ellusive questions. What is the malaise? The malaise is the pain of loss. After experiencing a personal moment of transcendent illumination while lying wounded in a foreign war, Binx can no longer be satisfied to be 'anyone, anywhere' , lost in the tedious 'everydayness' of common survival.

He finds the big cities of the North particularly repulsive in their dehumanizing industriousness and soul crushing agglomeration: The only person to understand him and his torment, is his cousin Katie, an extraordinary character in the great tradition of Southern literature. Katie may also hold the key to Binx redemption and reintegration into the human race that he no longer feels a part of, by giving him a sense of purpose and by sharing the burden between them. Other memorable characters in the novel can be presented wholesale in the form of the two extended families that Binx is part of: His little brother Lenny is another memorable Southern staple, reminding me, among other things, of Forest Gump or Deliverance.

Lenny is another key to the unlocking of Binx loneliness, bringing out the best in him and probably inserting some Christian teachings about the happiness to be found in the heart and not in the mind. The prose of Walker Percy is instantly recognizable in themes and style as Southern Novel, dense and often indirect, allegorical, oblique. I needed from time to time to get back and re-read a particular passage, but the extra effort was worth the trouble, allowing me to discover and savour a particular turn of phrase, cinematic scenery or emotional twist.

The pacing is slow, almost sleepy under the Louisiana sun, yet the restrained passions could become explosive at any moment - witness a memorable rant of aunt Emily about modern American 'nobility'. Personally, I would have liked more movie references, but the tribulations of Binx held my interest to the final page. I tried to read more on the net about the author and the novel, and I have come across the controversy of the literary prize it received.

While I admire Joseph Heller and his Catch 22 , for me the quality of the Moviegoer is not in dispute, and I consider it well worth the time I spent with it, even a good candidate for a re-read.

Scandal at the National Book Awards

Having finished the novel, there are few clear conclusions to be drawn, other than the fact that life is worth living probably , and that 'moviegoer' can be translated either as a 'searcher' or as a 'romantic' , someone still believing in the goodness of the people around him. Jul 14, Rayroy rated it liked it. He's the most boring man alive He finds all he needs in a movie theater. Driving cars gives him a feeling of malaise. He carries war scars, he doesn't share. He awakes 'in the grip of everydayness' it's the enemy, with no escape. He doesn't always go to the movies, but when does he goes as a moviegoer.

He is the most boring man alive. Nov 08, K. John "Binx" Bolling will soon be turning An ex-Korean war soldier, he is adrift. A lost soul searching for signs where to go, what to do with his life, or even what his existence means. He works in the office as a stockbroker sharing his office with his secretary, Sharon who he is secretly in love with. Since his brother's death when he was 8, his Aunt Emily took care of him. His mother got married and went to another town when his father died before his brother. His Aunt Emily wanted him to be a successful man but Binx does not know what he wants to do in his life.

He is suffering from malaise that Percy defines as: The world is lost to you, the world and the people in it, and there remains only you and world and you no more able to be in the world than Banquo's ghost. Banquo is the ghost in Shakespeare's play, Macbeth.

The plot is simple and Percy's philosophical musings can definitely bore mainstream readers. However, check Percy's life history: Six novels to his name with The Moviegoer as the most popular one. A life well lived yet, while reading the novel, you cannot help but empathize with Binx in his loneliness, his Holden-like angst, sense of loss, his confusion. The doldrum of his daily life: The daily grind in the office working with a series of secretaries whose names happen to be the most popular in the South: Marcia, Linda, Sharon and the possibility of having Stephanie if he continues working there.

He has a cousin, Kate who he loves but he does not know - as he is lost - what to do about it. Their dialogs are a joy to read: My favorite is the closing scene: And oh the movies. Percy has this theory called certification. It means your life does not exist until you see it or a part of it on the celluloid screen. Once you do, it is certified. Just like being in San Francisco in October where many popular American movies were shot.

She is secretly following her mother played by Lorna Tolentino and she is about to find his mother's long-kept secret: Upon finding the secret, Bea, like Binx, experienced a deep sense of loss, confusion and even pain. However, time heals wounds however deep they may be. Bea, like Binx, also spent the rest of the movie confused and bitter. After all, pain is part of our life's journey. Who knows, like Walker Percy, the Beas and Binxes in us may in the end will be leaving this world with well-lived lives despite all of its twists and turns.

View all 18 comments. Mar 01, Wyndy rated it really liked it Shelves: For me, this was the quintessential tale of two halves. For the first pages, I was slogging through these people's lives - bored, not liking or disliking a single character, completely uninvested. A year-old existentialist, a year-old manic depressive, a year-old frat boy turned lawyer, a well-meaning but interfering matriarch. A magic wand of meaningfulness waved over the final half of the book.

Five Books Every American Should Read: The Moviegoer, Number Three

This was my first experience with Mr. Per For me, this was the quintessential tale of two halves. Percy, and it sure won't be my last. The truth of course is the exact opposite: When everything else fails, all I have to do is consider suicide and in two seconds I'm as cheerful as a nit-wit.

But if I could NOT kill myself - ah then. They keep talking as if everyone were a great sinner, when the truth is that nowadays one is hardly up to it. The highest moment of a malaisian's life can be that moment when he manages to sin like a proper human. Mar 04, Sara rated it really liked it Shelves: Binx Bolling is a man in search of meaning. There is no shortage of persons to tell him who he is, or at least who he ought to be, only a shortage of people who Binx Bolling is a man in search of meaning. There is no shortage of persons to tell him who he is, or at least who he ought to be, only a shortage of people who actually know who he is or want to see him for himself.

But then, there is his cousin not really because his aunt is only her stepmother , Kate, and Kate, like him, is a searcher who cannot find her way. I loved the way this story developed, particularly the psychological unveiling of the characters as the plot unfolds. Binx has reasons for his state of confusion, he has survived the trauma of the Korean War and he has failed to pick up his life and sink back into the oblivion of the everyday. Kate, likewise, has endured a traumatic event and been left running from the loss of her planned future and the pointlessness of the life that has been spared to her.

Aunt Emily is their foil: Percy has woven very believable characters into a very realistic world. It is a world of class distinction, pre-determined futures, and family expectations. And, his South seems very real as well. That he understands his subject is obvious. He captures the world of New Orleans and the pressures of a Southern identity. Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North. Knowing all about genie-souls and living in haunted places like Shiloh and the Wilderness and Vicksburg and Atlanta where the ghosts of heroes walk abroad by day and are more real than people, he knows a ghost when he sees one, and no sooner does he stop off the train in New York or Chicago or San Francisco than he feels the genie-soul perched on his shoulder.

Percy won the National Book Award for this, his first, novel, and I can see why. It has a lot going on beneath the surface. I imagine many of us have hoped to escape into the safety of a movie screen, where at least a happily-ever-after is a possibility. What Binx Bolling discovers is that there are no ordinary lives, there are just lives in which all the meaning we need, or get, might rest in the most ordinary of things and days, and the people who are able to see beyond our surface and glimpse into our soul.

Fergus Great review, Sara! The tragedy of a hyper-self-conscious era! Sara Thank you, Fergus. I certainly agree that our young people today have too much focus on self. I think we crossed from too little to too much without e Thank you, Fergus. I think we crossed from too little to too much without even observing the line. Aug 10, Diane Barnes rated it really liked it.

I wasn't sure how much I would like this book when I started, but by the final page I loved it so much I'm going to have to put it on my re-read shelf. This book contains a lot in it's pages: There is also a lot of wisdom and AHA moments for the reader, written in elegant prose. Two of my favorite sentences: True, our moral fiber is rotten.

Our national character stinks to high heaven. But we are kinder than ever. Now I have to add him to "the list". Jan 25, Matt rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: Everyone living in modernity. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.