Walker Percy's The Moviegoer is a book I didn't know much about, but was one, nevertheless, that I was rooting for, that I wanted to enjoy. It had, after all, the makings of something lasting: strong, clear prose; an interesting, if wayward, central character; and an alluring setting in the form of New Orleans and the American South.
But what I found instead was a book in search of itself, and a character -- Binx -- who never fully emerges, who never quite proves his literary worth. I found this frustrating, not least because Percy gets off to such a strong start: there's intrigue around Binx and his family, and his love interest, Kate, is troubled in a way that evokes both sympathy and understanding.
As the novel progresses, Percy seems to lose control (particularly of the themes he introduces). Binx is motivated by money and material culture, but at the same time is cast as something of a loner, a moviegoer in search of the profound. He's further interested in women, but feigns an intellectual streak that runs counter to his rakish behavior.
The same, I think, could be said for others of Percy's characters: both Binx's aunt Emily as well as Kate seem so profoundly torn between the themes Percy works to introduce that in the end they represent something far simpler than he imagined. Kate, for instance, seems ultimately to represent a confusing mixture of both freedom and constraint, while Emily emerges as a vision of the Old South, as the voice of the genteel, of the aged.
All of this, of course, is a shame, because Percy is an excellent writer: there's a clarity here which I found rewarding, and an exploration of "nothingness" that I considered absorbing. But the concepts Percy introduces are too heavy handed, too explicit: it's as if they overwhelm his characters, and in the end, what emerges is a novel in search of characters with meaning, with momentum. Binx cannot be everything at once: he cannot be both on the road and a victim of social custom; he cannot be loose in his morals but eager to philosophize.
Well, maybe he can. But the result is a confused reading experience, one in which Percy struggles -- in my estimation, at least -- to fully capture a time, a place, a family. The despair to which he so often alludes simply did not come to life.
I reread The Moviegoer a few years ago, and thought that it holds up. It seems to me that Bolling is depicted as one who has an intellectual streak but feigns more interest than he feels in money (certainly) and women (perhaps, or maybe just any given woman). Some of The Moviegoer is about what to do when you can do almost anything anything, as is the case for many of the leading characters. The older generation seems to have had this figured out--the protagonist's father apart--the younger generation not.
ReplyDeleteI thought that Percy had an excellent ear for how people sound when they are talking to impress, or perhaps simply to fill a role: Emily, Sam Yeager, Kate. Unfortunately, Percy seemed to have no ear at all for what he himself sounded like, and he sounded more and more like himself as the years went on.
Thanks, George. This is helpful perspective, especially the bit about freedom of motion. I can see what you're getting at there. Certainly Bolling manifests that theme.
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Oh Jesse, one of my favorite books ever, eviscerated. I loved Percy's capture of Binx' shallowless, rootlessness, the structures of the South failing him and others. They are, as George wrote above, real people, masterfully done. And for a really nice revisiting of the people and and expansion of these themes, read "The Second Coming" which is Percy writing about Binx and some of the others, years later, when they in middle age and "settled."
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