The Moviegoer

The Moviegoer
by Walker Percy
read: 2012
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #60, Guardian 1000 Novels, National Book Award

Franny Glass of Franny and Zooey also reminded me a bit of Kate Cutrer, narrator Binx Bolling's distant cousin and sometime love interest in Walker Percy's The Moviegoer.  Like Franny (and The Bell Jar's Esther Greenwood), Kate slips into depression not because of a disastrous event that happened to her, but just as a reaction to everyday events around her.  She falls into a malaise where even the process of getting through her day is overwhelming to her.

Bolling is in a similar funk, though it manifests itself differently.  He professes to contemplate the point of existence but seem to spend a lot of his time avoiding such contemplation.  He goes through his job mechanically, has shallow affairs with his secretaries, and, as the title betrays, watches a lot of movies.  The novel is narrated in first person, but the story is in what Binx doesn't tell you as much as what he does.

Looking back on the story, I think of John Cheever's Falconer, another book that raises a lot of questions without spelling out the answers.  I imagine I'll want to revisit both books down the road sometime.