This is supposed to be a classic of literature. I didn't get it. ( )

I felt like I was doing this book a disservice by reading it. I was bored half the time and I really couldn't tell you why. I guess I didn't fall in love with the main character as quickly or as easily as I wanted to. What is there to say? Binx "Jack" Bolling is a 29 year old stock broker who dates his secretaries. He's good at what he does so he earns everyone (including himself) a lot of money. He appears to be a shallow man who spends most of his free time going to the movies. The majority of the story takes place in New Orleans which was fun. I have always been fascinating by that area of the south.
For the most part The Moviegoer was a social commentary on a man who prefers to watch life from the sidelines. He doesn't spend a great deal of effort actually getting out there and making things happen. He has no clue who he is. Probably the most telling moment of the story is when Binx is being questioned: "'What do you love? What do you live by?' [he is asked.] I am silent'" is his reply (p 226). He can't even answer the question of what he holds sacred, of what makes him live. ( )

I'm not confident I can give a full review of Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, the 1962 winner of the National Book Award, so this may look and sound more like a "pondering."

The best word to describe this book may be "meandering." The setting, the language, the characters...they all just seem to kind of wander. Percy tells the story of Binx Bolling, a 29-year-old New Orleans stockbroker who is semi-bored and searching for...something (religion? redemption? meaning?). The story focuses on the week prior to Binx's thirtieth birthday, which proves to be the week that shakes things up in his life. He's fallen into a habitual lifestyle that includes work, frequent romps with his secretaries, and going to the movies. During this week leading up to his birthday and Mardi Gras, Binx is on a quest for fulfillment that ends up angering his family and jeopardizing the safety of his manic-depressive step-cousin, Kate.

On the one hand, this book was boring. On the other hand, I know it requires (at the very least) a second reading [the first time I read The Great Gatbsy, I hated it. The second time, I loved it].

This is a theme-driven, not plot-driven, story. Percy uses a rambling prose (which I quite liked) to explore Southern religion, family, civilization, society, humanity (etc, etc, etc) from a completely existential perspective. I'm sure there are hundreds of analytical essays written on The Moviegoer, but to me, it seems as though Binx summed it up in one line:

"We're human after all!'

I look forward to reading again in the future. ( )

A tough one to rate. After reading fast paced Bond and Dave Robicheaux novels a subtle slice of life from the past in a southern novel was initially slow. But reading is not all constant suspense and titillation. This book from the past and its references to the past and the near combustible southern future was a well written thoughtful look at modern life and how one should live it. In a time that today we may think of as almost pre-modern people were struggling with change and how to live in it. Just like today. Truly thought provoking with racial references and attitudes which would possibly not be allowed in today's works. ( )

Rather a light read, and oddly enough, to get a clue as to what the book is about, one should pay attention rather to the books mentioned in the novel, than the movies.

I bought this book a few years ago, because nothing else was available. I was not sure whether I would like it, and over the years, between buying and reading it, a feeling had grown on me that I might not like it.

However, having read the book now, I feel, though not exalted, it is a somewhat interesting book, for the time it was written. ( )

I have heard great things about Walker Percy and collected several of his books for reading. I started with this one and as it established Percy in as a Southern author to read. I had trouble getting into the book and didn't always follow the story line. The main character does have some good insights at times but I came away disappointed. ( )

Is Bix in a box or out of the box at the end? Either or both.

I'm one of the peole, along with the rest of my small book club, who just doesn't get this book. I am unable to connect at any level with the main characters. The plot, while it does proceed chronologically, bounces around between maudlin soliloquies, scene shifts, and disjointed conversations. ( )

The novel is a winner of the National Book Award relating the story of Binx Bolling who is the moviegoer--a New Orleans young man who lives for the celluloid fantasy of the screen. He finds himself involved though with a beauty who pulls him towards disaster during Mardi Gras week that will change both of their lives.

This is a spectacular novel, replete with all the mordant humor and superb characterization that one expects from an eminent Southern author. The Moviegoer is fundamentally a meditation on identity, authenticity, and reality itself. The protagonist, Mr. Binx Bolling, is possessed by a need to discover some meaning underpinning his plodding and unsatisfying life. For Binx, movies proffer a sort of mythical framework through which the rest of his reality is tinged and vivified. The work is a joy to read, and switches readily between the riotously funny and the utterly haunting. This is the work that established Percy as a great Southern author in the line of Faulkner, O'Connor, Agee, Welty, and Tate. I absolutely could not recommend it more highly. ( )

I read The Moviegoer at least once every year. This is my favorite novel. ( )

Finished The Moviegoer by Walker Percy early this morning.
For a Southerner coming so late in life to Southern writers, I sure am enjoying what I've come across so far! While at least this Percy entry is not as convoluted and layered as Faulkner, he certainly presents New Orleanians as I know them. This is the way it was in the '50's and '60's. He has the sometimes ambiguous racial relationships down pat, the familial ups and downs are well done, and the ambiance of New Orleans is perfect.

I know these people, hell, I might even be these people.

I hate to admit I had this on the shelf for at least two or three years, a quarter finished. But I started over again, and am verra glad I did. ( )

Not knowing anything about this book, I went into it expecting another quaint, southern tale with old people doing old people things and young people shaking their heads in amusement then everyone eating shrimp, drinking Dixie or sipping tea on the porch while watching the dogs lay in the dusty road scratching their mangy coat.

I didn’t’ expect to find Binx Bolling, and in Binx… a reflection of myself. The frequency of this book was tuned in to my station. I found it a joy to read; loved Percy’s language and his ability to record the small details. Like the following that captured Uncle Oscar so vividly:

Dinner over, Uncle Oscar waits in the dining room until the others have left, then seizes his scrotum and gives his leg a good shake.

But while I enjoyed this book immensely, it made me feel a bit uncomfortable. In many ways I am Binx and reading this book was like watching an old family super 8 film where I’m captured doing something silly unawares… it exposed me to me; and that, I did not expect.

The major difference between Binx and myself is that I find a need to keep moving. The search dictates that I not stay in familiar territories, thus my hopping further and further away from my home and its genie-soul as Binx calls the spirit of a place. And now that I’ve put the maximum physical distance between my current station and my place of origin, I ask where next…

This book was personal. It struck me like a fully cocked blind-sided punch during a piano recital. ( )

A dreamy, rich New Orleans moviegoer searches for commitment in life--evocatively written but ultimately not very interesting. Perhaps I missed something. Worth a reread? ( )

I didn't like the macho posturing of the protagonist, and found his sexist perspective difficult to swallow. I did enjoy the descriptions of New Orleans neighborhoods; once one has lived there, one can't get enough of the local color. It does capture a certain post-war ennui, but in all, I really didn't enjoy it. ( )

3186. The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy (read 23 Apr 1999) This is no. 60 on the Modern Library panel's list of the 100 best novels in this century in English. When I finished this I decided reading it was an"event" in my reading life and I am glad I read it. It is an odd book and story, but I enjoyed it much more than the previous Percy book (Lancelot) I read. ( )

Dated monologue about not much. I read about half the book and gave up when realised I was just reading the words without being emotionally engaged. I suspect its one of these books if I heard it read by an actor then it may well work. But wry, wrenching, rich in irony and romance it is not! ( )

A character strangely resembling a friendlier version of Camus's Meursault wanders around New Orleans and not much happens. Moments of clarity here and there. A pleasant, odd book. ( )

It's one of my favorite books. It's true, there is not much of a plot in it, but this is part of the "message" as I understand it. Being on the search means that there's not necessarily a red line leading through a story with a clear cut plot line. And perhaps this is just one reason that makes this novel quite exceptional.

What makes this book so awesome to me is the protagonist’s (Binx Bolling) existential state of loneliness, in fact it is not only his state but humankind’s as a whole taking the existentialist’s point of view: being conscious of oneself and not knowing why one exists, loaded with an indefinite responsibility. The typical answers that might give meaning to human life, love, wealth (not art!) are unmasked as illusions easily. Yes, it reminds of Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby in some ways. It is this strangely purposeless (is it?) life filled up with horror on different layers of meaning, a silent horror in some ways, which all seems to be accepted in a somewhat stoical way. What adds up to the authenticity of this "human search" is not described with importunity but inwardly, quiet, and even gentle. At the same time I read it as a criticism against a nonsensitive, loud and superficial "Southern environment in the beginning 60ies" (easily to be transported into any other time and place, a “chiffre” for humankind as it is and was) a normality which lacks any understanding for life's main questions. That this is a major reason for the protagonist's cousin's (Kate) depression is nothing but one more logical consequence in this subtle novel in which there is much understanding for man’s basic state of existence and its resulting bewilderment. ( )

http://forreststokes.com/wordpress/?p... ( )

http://www.eastern.edu/academic/trad_... ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed this foray into "Kierkegaard's narrative." No, the novel doesn't say much, but it's not supposed to, I guess. And Percy has a wonderfully charming manner of saying nothing. ( )

Walker Percy's writing is excellent, which is why I gave this 4 stars. But his ideas, although thought provoking, really lead nowhere. Most of the book is spent on Binx's fixation on his "search". At the end, I did not feel there was any real conclusion to the search, which to me made most of the book pointless. ( )

I read this but didn't enjoy it much. About Binx Bolling and his search for meaning. I think that I'm not really cut out for existentialism, because navel-gazing and searching for meaning and complaining about malaise aren't really features I enjoy in a book. ( )