NEW ORLEANS CANON?: BOOK REVIEW, THE MOVIEGOER BY WALKER PERCY
BOOK REVIEW: THE MOVIEGOER BY WALKER PERCY. IS IT PART OF NEW ORLEANS LITERARY CANON?
By Paul Oswell
I was thinking recently about what constituted the ‘New Orleans canon’ with regard to books. The most obvious pick is John Kennedy Toole's satire A Confederacy of Dunces, its chaotic lead character (name of Ignatius J. Reilly) even enjoying his own bronze statue outside the Hyatt Hotel on Canal Street. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981 (Toole tragically died by suicide in 1961).
Ann Rice’s seminal 1976 book Interview with the Vampire is surely another contender, and if we include published versions of plays, then a good few of Tennessee Williams’ works are inarguably essential New Orleans reading.
One book that could be considered, but which I don’t see much discussion about (and maybe I’m just reading the wrong periodicals) is Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, which won the National Book Award in 1961. As debuts go, that’s no small achievement. I recently picked up a copy and was curious to see how the vague plot description on the jacket played out.
The book is set in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, and follows our protagonist Binx Bolling, a stockbroker on the cusp of 30 with all the trappings of success: a decent job, material comforts, wealthy family connections. Through an observational, first person commentary, we soon understand that this is also a man who is completely adrift. He watches movies at the cinema by himself, living vicariously through actors, some of whom he even spots (and follows) in the French Quarter. He casually romances his secretaries. “Money is a great joy,” he says at one point, perhaps an admission of his own shallowness.
The upcoming milestone birthday coincides with the season, and it inspires in Binx a new search for meaning. The central question of the novel becomes apparent: how do you find fulfillment when you're stuck in comfortable, middle-class conformity? One immediate thought is: Why should we care about this rich white kid’s malaise? It’s a fair point, but personally I found that the alienation of post-war America described in Percy’s writing more than intriguing.
Told in the present tense and first person, Binx’s thoughts are sharp and witty, as if writing a diary on the fly. It’s a clever, barbed internal monologue that seems to reflect with some honesty, (although all first person narrators could be questioned as unreliable given that we only have their version of events). Sometimes the writing makes you stop and reread sentences, just to appreciate them: “To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”
This is a novel that’s big on what the kids these days call ‘vibes’. There's no real plot to speak of. Binx dates his secretary, has awkward encounters with his traditional Southern aunt (a stand-out character, I picture Dame Maggie Smith with a Louisiana lilt), and develops complicated relationships with his cousin Kate (a local hot mess, awash with pills and divorce). Binx wanders the French Quarter during Carnival, and flits to Chicago and around the Gulf Coast.
He is paralyzed by his own inertia, and yet he keeps on at what he calls ‘The Search’. Binx encounters people of all stripes, has philosophical thoughts, and attempts to define himself in relation to an abstract world. "What is the nature of the search?", he says at one point, almost addressing the reader directly. “Really it is very simple; at least for a fellow like me. So simple that it is easily overlooked. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life.”
The Moviegoer is a subtle, witty book about the drift to materialism post World War II and a sense of lost compassion. The ending, if you can really call it that, leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and stands some thinking after finishing the book. I think it’s the charisma of Percy’s stylistic prose that keeps us caring when there’s really not too much to sympathise about. My takeaway is that the author senses this materialistic shift in society, and is suggesting that we check our ‘progress’ against its costs. The malaise and detachment could be the symptoms of a nation finding itself without obvious direction.
It’s very much a New Orleans novel, though, and, I'd argue, a fitting inclusion in that 504 canon. Parades and Krewes are name-checked, and it's interesting to see the various neighborhoods described through Binx' eyes: "For the past four years now I have been living uneventfully in Gentilly, a middle class suburb of New Orleans. Except for the banana plants in the patios and the curlicues of iron on the Walgreen drugstore, one would never guess it was part of New Orleans. […] But this is what I like about it."
..........
Further reading
I liked this related feature - Gentilly Days by Thomas Beller
Trivia from the Wikipedia page regarding a film adaptation:
"During the 1980s, Terrence Malick worked on a screen adaptation, but eventually dropped it. Malick's 2015 film Knight of Cups was partly inspired by the novel. Malick had lead actor Christian Bale read the book as preparation for the film."
I was thinking recently about what constituted the ‘New Orleans canon’ with regard to books. The most obvious pick is John Kennedy Toole's satire A Confederacy of Dunces, its chaotic lead character (name of Ignatius J. Reilly) even enjoying his own bronze statue outside the Hyatt Hotel on Canal Street. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981 (Toole tragically died by suicide in 1961).
Ann Rice’s seminal 1976 book Interview with the Vampire is surely another contender, and if we include published versions of plays, then a good few of Tennessee Williams’ works are inarguably essential New Orleans reading.
One book that could be considered, but which I don’t see much discussion about (and maybe I’m just reading the wrong periodicals) is Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, which won the National Book Award in 1961. As debuts go, that’s no small achievement. I recently picked up a copy and was curious to see how the vague plot description on the jacket played out.
The book is set in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, and follows our protagonist Binx Bolling, a stockbroker on the cusp of 30 with all the trappings of success: a decent job, material comforts, wealthy family connections. Through an observational, first person commentary, we soon understand that this is also a man who is completely adrift. He watches movies at the cinema by himself, living vicariously through actors, some of whom he even spots (and follows) in the French Quarter. He casually romances his secretaries. “Money is a great joy,” he says at one point, perhaps an admission of his own shallowness.
The upcoming milestone birthday coincides with the season, and it inspires in Binx a new search for meaning. The central question of the novel becomes apparent: how do you find fulfillment when you're stuck in comfortable, middle-class conformity? One immediate thought is: Why should we care about this rich white kid’s malaise? It’s a fair point, but personally I found that the alienation of post-war America described in Percy’s writing more than intriguing.
Told in the present tense and first person, Binx’s thoughts are sharp and witty, as if writing a diary on the fly. It’s a clever, barbed internal monologue that seems to reflect with some honesty, (although all first person narrators could be questioned as unreliable given that we only have their version of events). Sometimes the writing makes you stop and reread sentences, just to appreciate them: “To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”
This is a novel that’s big on what the kids these days call ‘vibes’. There's no real plot to speak of. Binx dates his secretary, has awkward encounters with his traditional Southern aunt (a stand-out character, I picture Dame Maggie Smith with a Louisiana lilt), and develops complicated relationships with his cousin Kate (a local hot mess, awash with pills and divorce). Binx wanders the French Quarter during Carnival, and flits to Chicago and around the Gulf Coast.
He is paralyzed by his own inertia, and yet he keeps on at what he calls ‘The Search’. Binx encounters people of all stripes, has philosophical thoughts, and attempts to define himself in relation to an abstract world. "What is the nature of the search?", he says at one point, almost addressing the reader directly. “Really it is very simple; at least for a fellow like me. So simple that it is easily overlooked. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life.”
The Moviegoer is a subtle, witty book about the drift to materialism post World War II and a sense of lost compassion. The ending, if you can really call it that, leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and stands some thinking after finishing the book. I think it’s the charisma of Percy’s stylistic prose that keeps us caring when there’s really not too much to sympathise about. My takeaway is that the author senses this materialistic shift in society, and is suggesting that we check our ‘progress’ against its costs. The malaise and detachment could be the symptoms of a nation finding itself without obvious direction.
It’s very much a New Orleans novel, though, and, I'd argue, a fitting inclusion in that 504 canon. Parades and Krewes are name-checked, and it's interesting to see the various neighborhoods described through Binx' eyes: "For the past four years now I have been living uneventfully in Gentilly, a middle class suburb of New Orleans. Except for the banana plants in the patios and the curlicues of iron on the Walgreen drugstore, one would never guess it was part of New Orleans. […] But this is what I like about it."
..........
Further reading
I liked this related feature - Gentilly Days by Thomas Beller
Trivia from the Wikipedia page regarding a film adaptation:
"During the 1980s, Terrence Malick worked on a screen adaptation, but eventually dropped it. Malick's 2015 film Knight of Cups was partly inspired by the novel. Malick had lead actor Christian Bale read the book as preparation for the film."