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. Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. Would you like to tell us about a lower price? Read more Read less. Audible book Switch back and forth between reading the Kindle book and listening to the Audible book with Whispersync for Voice. Kindle Cloud Reader Read instantly in your browser. Customers who bought this item also bought. Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1. Love in the Ruins: The Power and the Glory. Our Man in Havana. Binx Bolling, inveterate cinemaphile, contemplative rake and man of the periphery, tries hedonism and tries doing the right thing, but ultimately finds redemption or at least the prospect of it by taking a leap of faith and quite literally embracing what only seems irrational.
Percy touches the rim of so many human mysteries. See all Editorial Reviews. Product details File Size: March 29, Sold by: Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Read reviews that mention new orleans walker percy binx bolling main character aunt emily national book book award mardi gras korean war cousin kate young man going to the movies deep south search for meaning meaning of life orleans stockbroker years ago read this book confederacy of dunces sunk in the everydayness.
Showing of reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. I am millennial and am not the best at appreciating or digesting literature, however, I am trying to read more and get better at it. For this reason, I think this was a great book. It was compelling to read for me because of the slight mystery of it all and the "search". I think it alludes well the "religious" sense we all have no matter the creed and a desire for truth. Although at the end of the book I couldn't help but ask myself "what just happened?
And at first I was disagreeable at best to the question, but I'm glad the book left me with that question and forced me to think about the characters and their lives. I would recommend this book to people who like Flannery O'Connor and whereas the main themes aren't always the most clear, and deeper thinking needs to go on in order to appreciate and understand the novel. I can't overemphasize the impact this book has had on my life, intellectually and personally. In college I read in for two courses, one on religion and modern literature, and one on politics.
This book covers themes of ennui, despair, self and selflessness, cultural decline, the promise and failure of religion -- but does so in a vividly personal style. This is a book to savor. I like the realism of emotions, from joy to despair, that Percy explores in this book about a Southern man and his family.
His first novel, and it won the National Book Award. The existentialist world view from his era, the late fifties, feels appropriate for today's world. There's wonderful dialogue between the characters about their feelings and ideas, and sharp, minute observations of other people and their relationships. I just finished reading this great novel for the third time because I wanted to begin the year with an experience of something that I knew was great. The last time I read it was just over 14 years ago as part of the preparation for my first and to date, only trip to New Orleans.
The impression that I've been left with each time that I have read it is that it is one of those singular novels that presents a first person narrator with a very unique perspective and way of viewing reality. It coats every page of the novel and it is so thorough that the character or the character's creator even creates his own lexicon for categorizing and flavoring the world in a similar way as the narrators of Kurt Vonnegut's 'Cat's Cradle' and Richard Brautigan's 'In Watermelon Sugar'. The Message in the Bottle Lost in the Cosmos National Book Award for Fiction — Complete list — — — Retrieved from " https: Knopf books Novels set in New Orleans.
Pages to import images to Wikidata. Views Read Edit View history. In other projects Wikiquote. Languages Deutsch Edit links. This page was last edited on 13 November , at By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. His passions in life are movies had you guessed? But is it enough? He must have wanted us to speculate.
Though there were tangible elements to it a possible change in career in line with his aptitude for medical research, for one, or a good mate to share his life with, for another , the bulk of his searching was more abstract. Lines like this hint at a moral or spiritual dimension: My mother's family think I have lost my faith and they pray for me to recover it.
On the other side of the ledger lies a pretty profound Weltschmerz. It was a theme with heft to spare. Had that been all there was, it might have seemed a tad ponderous. Percy may have sensed that, knowing to provide lighter fare as sides. Occasional humor helped the cause. And like many from the South, his language was rich and entertaining. Speaking of characters, there was a wealth of good ones beyond Binx and New Orleans. One was his aunt, a woman of rare insight and suasion.
Such plot as there was had Binx and Kate driving. Four very solid stars. View all 51 comments. Oct 21, LeAnne rated it really liked it. It is also the annual weekend of his memorial literary fest in St Francisville. I feel lucky to live where we do. Beautiful sentiments by the sculptor - he was actually friends with Percy It's been too many years since I read this to comment on details but I've got a warning and a betcha-never-knew-this piece of trivia. First, I would warn new readers that the book is a time capsule. In order to truly appreciate it, one has to consider how women and minorities were treated half a century ago well, or in Hollywood like last year..
Patting a woman's rump isn't going to win any admiration from today's society, but as far as historical accuracy goes, you'll get a taste of it here. Now, there are scads of reviews of this terrific book out there and all of them penned by readers far more eloquent than me. But here's the tidbit you may not see anywhere else! For those who have sampled the outstanding books written by Ron Rash , you will recall that small little actions of his characters speak volumes of unspoken or unwritten words.
In one of my favorite novels by Rash, a character walks into the s board room of a timber camp office. It is luxurious as only a space can be amidst mud caked shanties and a decimated forest, now razed for its timber. There is serious money - a fortune in these virgin trees. As one feline predator of a woman strides in - her name is Serena - she spies the massive meeting table in the center of the room.
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It is a solid slab of one single behemoth tree. Serena leans over and slowly glides her hand over this conquered wood and practically purrs. I was doing an author chat with Ron Rash regarding this dark masterpiece of his and noted something really unusual to him. By sheer coincidence, I'd been reading The Movie Goer the week prior to our author dial-in, and holy slabbed trees, Batman!
When The Movie Goer's Binx walks into an uptown Garden District home, of all the gorgeous and ornate furnishings, he singles out only a beautiful table to admire. Its top is made of one solitary slab of a massive tree.
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He slides his hand along it, reveling in the luxury. My question to Rash was - did slabbed tables at one time define affluence? Ron Rash was thrilled to hear my little parallel discovery! It turns out that he did his doctoral dissertation on Walker Percy. That fawning hand-slide in Serena was an homage - an Easter Egg! Nobody had ever noticed it before! Now you too are in on the secret. Mar 26, Perry rated it really liked it Shelves: Southern Existentialism New Orleans is both intimately related to the South and yet in a real sense cut adrift not only from the South but the rest of Louisiana A proper enough American city and yet within the next few hours the tourist is apt to see more nuns and naked women than he ever saw before.
Walker Percy I love this Percy quote because he so aptly captures the essence of this city below sea level, affectionately known as The Big Easy. Walker Percy was awarded the National Book Award Southern Existentialism New Orleans is both intimately related to the South and yet in a real sense cut adrift not only from the South but the rest of Louisiana Walker Percy was awarded the National Book Award for this novel--his first novel--centered on Binx Bolling, a detached and depressive thirty-year-old stockbroker in New Orleans, and his quest for purpose and redemption, through movies and literature until, finally, he makes life-altering discoveries in life during the week of Mardi Gras.
In it, Percy explores ideas of cultural and spiritual alienation with a light lyrical tone while drawing on elements of Dante by paralleling his life to that of the Divine Comedy's narrator. Binx's aunt asks him to watch over his suicidal female cousin during the Mardi Gras season. Binx describes his life in terms of the aesthetic, religious and ethical, in his search for meaning and spiritual redemption.
He constantly daydreams, cannot maintain sexual relationships and finds more meaning and urgency in movies and books than in his own humdrum life. He reflects on race and class as he wanders the streets of the French Quarter and travels along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, reflecting on the people and things he encounters, as he provides numerous elegant descriptions of Southern landscapes and an enlightened Southerner's perspective on escaping, for the most part, the legacy of the Old South.
What is the nature of the search?
The Moviegoer
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. May 22, Daniel rated it liked it Shelves: I come away from "The Moviegoer" with very mixed feelings.
Walker Percy was a beautiful writer, and I found myself reading several passages more than once just to enjoy the language, but I think I may be too old, even at 35, to truly appreciate and connect with a novel driven almost completely by existential 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 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. 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.
The Moviegoer - Wikipedia
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?
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. 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.
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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.