Thoughts on "The Moviegoer"

Where does one begin in summarizing "The Moviegoer"? Making conservative use of the book's 242 pages, author Walker Percy crafts an essentially plotless story into a study of Big Questions. No mere coming-of-age character study, "The Moviegoer" rewards patient readers with a (relatively) happy ending, a forum for endless discussion (though some may consider that a negative), and a solid entry in the Existential Angst sub-genre of literature.

In true fashion for the genre, "The Moviegoer" is very ambiguous, raising more questions than it cares to answer (the plot, such as it is, is driven by the narrator's quote-unquote "search"--and as to what the search is for, your guess is as good as mine). This approach gives Percy more creative freedom to rely on imagery, and vague characters with vague intentions come and go throughout the novel, as unknowable to the reader as any stranger on the street. We readers know only what the narrator, a pushing-30 stockbroker named Binx Bolling, knows, and even then Walter Percy denies us most of that, too.

This is where "The Moviegoer" also becomes infuriating. Relying more on the New Orleans locales (where most of the novel takes place) to tell the story than our humble narrator, "The Moviegoer" traces one man's making sense of his own by-design senseless world. We know that high childhood expectations and a tragic tour of duty in Korea helped shape Binx into the womanizing lost soul he is today, but Percy keeps us at a distance. Analysis is a tough job made tougher when it comes to the ambiguity of "The Moviegoer".

A good book, methinks, but an imperfect one, for sure.