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Moviegoer Walker Percy
Moviegoer Walker Percy
Moviegoer Walker Percy
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The Southern Literary Journal
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In a 1989 interview, just two years before his death from pros-
local scene like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Gone With the Wind, something like
that" (qtd in Lawson & Kramer More Conversations 223). Though most
of his protagonists are southern by birth and New Orleans figures prominently in The Moviegoer (19 61), the role of the region in Percy's fiction is
a far cry from Lanterns on the Levee (1944), the nostalgic memoirs of his
cousin and adopted father, William Alexander Percy. Rather than writ-
Though Binx Boiling lives in New Orleans and muses over his aunt's
views of southern society, Percy claims that the novel ultimately focuses
Chapel Hill Department of English and Comparative Literature. All rights reserved.
IO6
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In considering Binx's struggle with alienation, a number of critics reflect on Percy's own interest in Kierkegaardian existentialism and
attempt to decode the way it is manifested in his fiction. Such criticism,
however, works in something of a vacuum, as it tends to consider Binx's
recurrent melancholia and the "search" he resolves to continue in the first
Lawson and Victor Kramer and in his own articles, Percy repeatedly
emphasizes the importance of the particular in literature, arguing that
if fiction does explore larger social conditions or philosophical concepts,
it should do so through the experience of one individual and his specific
circumstances. In short, the novel should reflect "the life of its time" (qtd
represents, or in what concrete circumstances Binx Boiling finds himself. Though the novel does deal with alienation, there is also a great deal
of time and attention devoted to consumer culture and cultural products such as movies, television, and radio programs. Furthermore, much
is made of Binx's life in the 1950s New Orleans suburb of Gentilly and
his attention to consumerism and the media. Though Binx lives in New
Orleans and his narration is filtered through that particular geographical
and cultural lens, his experience nonetheless represents national, social,
and economic trends. When the reader first meets Binx Boiling, he is living a life quite typical of young postwar adults.
ture had moved away from considering specifically regional issues and
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about the South . . . but family, community, the weight of southern history, and the brooding presence of the region itself were less and less inte-
gral to the story" (267). While Bartley views The Moviegoer as evidence
of the South 's move away from regional concerns, Margot Henriksen
offers an alternative reading in her 1997 study of American Cold War cul-
ture. Henriksen interprets Binx's malaise as evidence of Cold War anxiety, arguing that "Binx's understanding of the perversions of atomic age
life, of the bomb's sickness in a professedly humanist and God-believing
nation, exposes the dawning cultural recognition of humanity's contradictory and death-conscious comportment in this age" (199). While these
two arguments are not mutually exclusive, or even necessarily in oppo-
sition, as the temporal point Bartley identifies with the South 's modernization corresponds with the beginning of the atomic age, Henriksen's thesis deserves a more detailed exploration. Reading The Moviegoer
through a larger socioeconomic lens reveals that the social changes often
viewed as evidence of the South 's shift away from its traditional value
system are also indicative of Cold War culture. Positioning the text and
the social tendencies it reflects in a wider historical framework establishes
that Binx's persistent malaise may be connected with atomic anxiety and,
more significantly, suggests that Percy's novel is no less concerned with
the region or its place in the union than earlier works, but reflects the
uncertain timbre of its age by following a protagonist seeking security in
Though Binx never directly comments on current events or specifically attributes his malaise to the nuclear threat, the Cold War does
present itself as the backdrop of the novel and is suggested linguistically
by Binx's narration. When he visits his aunt Emily's house in the first
chapter of the novel, her butler Mercer brings up current events; though
the reader is not privy to the conversation, the topic is clearly the mis-
sile gap between America and the Soviet Union. Apparently trying to
downplay the Russian threat by emphasizing the United States' military
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IF NUCLEAR ENERGY IS NOT MISUSED" (190). Rather than marking the text that follows, the gentleman produces scissors and clips the
entire section. Again, the reader is not privy to the subject, but the article
cle's content, Binx is thinking about the nuclear threat on the train; he
notices "in a ditch outside ... a scrap of newspaper with the date May 3,
1954. My Geiger counter clicks away like a teletype" (190). Although no
historic event is recorded for May 3, the first hydrogen bomb was detonated in March 1954 and information about the test was released the fol-
lowing month (Oakes 58). Furthermore, the March 1954 issue of Time
contained a feature article on living with the atomic threat.
During Binx's most intense moments of anxiety, Cold War terminology also emerges. At some point in the casual conversations that convince
him that the world is already dead, Binx hears himself "or someone else
saying things like: 'In my opinion, the Russian people are a great people, but - '" (100). Twice during the novel he makes reference to malaise settling like fallout, and he mentions "the Geiger counter in [his]
head" when he meets Jews on the street and when he observes the scrap
of newspaper from 1954 (166, 228, 88). He recalls times of speculating "on
the new messiah, the scientist-philosopher-mystic who would come striding through the ruins with the Gita in one hand and a Geiger counter in
the other" (181-182). When he meets Nell Lovell on the street, Binx con-
cludes that people have already accepted their death and move through
life like automatons, and during his final and most intense bout with
anxiety, he directly connects this experience of living death to the nuclear
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no Southern Literaryjournal
God, and men are dead, dead, dead; and the malaise has settled
like a fall-out and what people really fear is not that the bomb will
fall but that the bomb will not fall - on this my thirtieth birthday,
attempt to make his life equally depthless; he lives in the suburbs, enter-
tains himself with movies and radio programs, and tries to remove all
complex issues from his life. This lifestyle largely represents the "Arma-
meant the end of mankind; no one and nothing could survive an allout atomic attack, nor would anyone want to. The early 1960s heralded
an extensive rebellion against civil defense measures as the public began
to understand the reality of nuclear war and the resulting fallout and to
realize that shelters and other methods of civil defense were ultimately
useless endeavors.2 Throughout the novel Binx tries to avoid anxiety by
normalizing the atomic threat, yet the cultural trends he looks to for
diversion and security are, ironically, products of Cold War uncertainty
that provide only temporary distractions.
In the first chapter of The Moviegoer, Binx tells the reader that for the
and the curlicues of iron on the Walgreen drugstore one would never
guess it was part of New Orleans .... But that is what I like about it. I
can't stand the old world atmosphere of the French Quarter or the genteel charm of the Garden District" (6). Living in his aunt's house is stifling for Binx, as it offers little opportunity to pursue his own desires.
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The newness of the neighborhood is what appeals to Binx. When suffering from insomnia, he walks through the darkened streets where "[t]he
concrete is virginal, grainy as the day it was poured" (84). He notices the
"smooth and well-fitted and thrifty aluminum" of the elementary school
... It is easy to visualize the tile cube of a building with its far flung
porches, its apron of silky concrete and, revolving on high, the immaculate bivalve glowing in every inch of its pretty styrene" (112). The lot is for
sale for twenty thousand dollars and Binx confesses that he has already
approached a Shell distributor.
decides to sell the site of his father's former duck club for whatever he
can get, as it is only "a worthless piece of swamp in St. Bernard Parish"
(71). When a man named Sartalamaccia offers eight thousand dollars for
the property, Binx realizes he should accept the offer on the spot, but
instead plans to meet Sartalamaccia at the site to negotiate. While touring the site, Binx takes more pleasure in the new housing developments
that flank his property than in memories of his father, taking particular
interest in the way Sartalamaccia rubs his thumb "over the sawn edges of
sheating" (94). Ironically, it is Sartalamaccia's sentimentality that postpones the sale and results in Binx receiving more money than originally
offered; Binx has only proposed the meeting so he can take a trip with his
secretary, Sharon Kincaid, and because he imagines negotiation as some-
thing Gregory Peck would do. He feels no sense of loss at having sold
the land he refers to as his "patrimony," and when he does feel depressed
because of his unfulfilled desire for Sharon, he distracts himself with "the
consolation of making money. For money is a great joy" (94).
In his study of the treatment of place in The Moviegoer, Martin Bone
argues that, as the novel progresses, Binx becomes increasingly skeptical of the "capitalist redevelopment of traditional 'southern spaces'" and
ultimately "obscures his own involvement in the capitalist production of
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lessly undermined the paternal foundation of the old social order. The
sense of roots, place, and stability that had for so long been central to
the southern value system retreated before new ideological currents . . .
By the 1960s middle-class houses were no longer homeplaces; they were
capital investments" (266).
If Binx's view of land and development as an investment opportunity is typical of Bartley 's new southern middle class, suburban expansion and development also represented a materialization of the American
ship was not an opportunity only for the upper and middle classes. As
Nixon boasted to Khrushchev in 1959, thirty-one out of forty-four mil-
lion American families owned their own homes (163). Eugenia Kaledin
situates the government's subsidization of suburban sprawl in a Cold War
context, specifically in terms of the political commitment to containing
the spread of Communism. Suburbia offered an equal opportunity American dream - people with funds could, in theory, buy their own homes,
ultimately produced more satisfied Americans and confirmed the superiority of the capitalist way of life. Furthermore, out-migration from urban
centers offered practical Cold War benefits. In her study of the family
in postwar America, Elaine Tyler May points to a 1951 issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists which proposed "depopulating the urban core
to avoid a concentration of residences or industries in a potential target
area for a nuclear attack" (151). In a 1954 issue of Newsweek, Val Peterson
of the Federal Civil Defense Administration endorsed a policy of "mass
evacuation," arguing that the best way to survive an atomic attack on a
city was simply not to be there. In addition to the socioeconomic sense
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almost empty, which is pleasant for him, but troublesome for the manager. He has a similar experience later when a Gentilly theatre manager
location. Jules Cutrer assumes that Binx will be eager to give up his
suburban bond office for a downtown location, and Binx reports that
"[p]eople often ask me ... what I do in Gentilly, and I always try to give
an answer." Yet when Eddie Lovell and Walter Wade ask this question,
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Eddie and Nell Lovell despite their repeated invitations, all of which is
made easier simply because he does not see these people very often. As
the novel progresses, it becomes clear that Binx does not go on hunts or
visit friends because he does not want the responsibility of personal connections, and he uses the distance the suburbs provide as a logistical and
emotional obstacle to maintaining relationships.
This attempt to remove himself from connections with others plays
a significant role in Binx's attempt to create a lifestyle so simple that
even the most intricate details do not require much thought or emotional investment. He follows the rules society dictates, buys the products Consumer Reports recommends, and does not litter because a service
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for the big happiness but the sad little happiness of drinks and kisses, a
good little car and a warm deep thigh" (136, emphasis added).
By minimalizing the complex relationships in his life, Binx has more
in any way. Early in the novel, he claims: "I am a model tenant and a
model citizen and take pleasure in doing all that is expected of me. . . .
It is a pleasure to carry out the duties of a citizen and to receive in return
does not want to admit this because "Who wants to be dead last among
one hundred and eighty million Americans? For, as everyone knows, the
polls report that 98% of Americans believe in God and the remaining 2%
are atheists and agnostics - which leaves not a single percentage point
for a seeker" (14). Nothing gives him more pleasure than appearing on
the first day to pick up his auto tag and brake sticker, and he is careful
claims that consumerism made it "easy to be distracted from the Russian menace," as Americans used their postwar wealth to purchase "hula
hoops, Davy Crockett hats, deodorants, and chlorophyll toothpaste, and
Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. ... [A] world that seemed to cater
to every possible taste emerged to satisfy a great variety of needs" (121,
125). In a word, materialism offered security. Americans bought cars and
refrigerators and television sets and, according to Gary Donaldson, "by
i960 there were some 45 million sets in use, and three national networks
broadcasting everything from variety shows to quiz programs to the news
and sporting events" (130). After taking the job managing the Gentilly
office of his uncle's bond brokerage, Binx buys a car that is appropriate
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important," Binx decides on "a new Dodge sedan, a Red Ram Six. It
was a comfortable, conservative and economical two-door sedan, just the
thing it seemed to me, for a young Gentilly businessman. When I first
slid under the wheel to drive it, it seemed that everything was in order here was I, a healthy young man, a veteran with all his papers in order, a
U.S. citizen driving a very good car" (121). He and his secretary go "spinning along in perfect comfort and with a perfect view of the scenery like
The trick, the joy of it, is to prosper on all fronts, enlist money in the
service of love and love in the service of money. As long as I am getting rich, I feel that all is well" (102). When Harold Graebner cheerfully
informs Binx that he has netted over thirty-five thousand for the year,
Binx understands his excitement and claims, "I know what he means.
Every time American Motors jumps two dollars, I feel the same cheerful
suits because "Money is a better god than beauty" (52). Making money
comes easily to Binx and produces tangible results. To pursue a career in
medicine or science would require one to be "absolutely unaffected by the
singularities of time and place"; whereas Binx's former research partner is
"like one of those scientists in the movies who don't care about anything
but the problem in their heads," Binx quickly becomes bored with such
work and gives up research to spend his vacation "in quest of the spirit
of summer and in the company of an attractive and confused girl from
Bennington who fancied herself a poet" (52). Years later, Binx's lifestyle
is very similar - he spends much of his time pursuing the spirit of sum-
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Coast, searching for momentary pleasures that provide little joys rather
than lasting memories.
At the outset of the novel, Binx claims that "there is much to be said
for giving up such grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life
imaginable, a life without the old longings; selling stocks and bonds and
mutual funds; quitting work at five o'clock like everyone else" (9). Along
with his original ambitions, Binx also gives up strong feelings of any
kind. He explains that he has moved out of the Garden District because
program in which listeners state their personal philosophies. This program fills him with a sense of affection for society in general, as he finds
pleasure in listening to other listeners' upstanding ethos without espousing any of his own. In fact, there is no point in the novel at which Binx
truly connects himself to any set of principles. When Emily refers to the
southern order she sees passing away, he claims not to know what she is
talking about, though he decides to agree with her for simplicity. When,
during their final conversation, Emily asks "'What do you love? What do
you live by?'" Binx is unable to answer (225).
What Binx loves and what he lives by, more than anything else, are
movies. Though he enjoys making money and likes buying high-quality
products, both serve as temporary distractions; he never personalizes his
belongings or uses them to make his life in Gentilly more comfortable or
permanent. He does not collect personal mementos of memorable places
or events, nor does he reflect too much on his own past; in fact, the only
moments important enough to commit to memory are scenes from film.
"Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives:
the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise, the summer night one
met a lonely girl in Central Park and achieved with her a sweet and natural relationship," Binx narrates. "I too once met a girl in Central Park, but
it is not much to remember. What I remember is the time John Wayne
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Stagecoach^ and the time the kitten found Orson Welles in the doorway in The Third Man' (7). Explaining his attraction to movies, Binx
claims that it is the movie stars' "particular reality which astounds me"
(17, emphasis added). When he stes William Holden in the French Quar-
ter, Binx watches him walk down Toulouse, "shedding light as he goes.
An aura of heightened reality moves with him and all who fall within it
feel it" (16). Furthermore, after Holden has disappeared, Binx wonders,
"Am I mistaken or has a fog of uneasiness, a thin gas of malaise, settled
on the street? The businessmen hurry back to their offices, the shoppers
lar culture. Instead, I argue that the movies lend depth to Binx's world;
Canal Street comes alive when William Holden appears and when he
disappears, Binx's melancholy reappears. Much like the political journals
and heartwarming articles, movies provide a way for Binx to experience
the emotions he has removed from his own life, but without the related
anxiety. Binx not only perceives the world on film as somehow more
authentic and memorable than his own, but also adapts his behavior to
imitate certain actors. While working with Sharon, Binx is careful to
"keep a Gregory Peckish sort of distance" towards her; when he receives
a phone call, he "think[s] it over Gregory-Peckishly," and when he realizes she is dating someone else becomes "Gregory-grim" (68, 70, 71). He
speaks of his sexual encounter with Kate in the form of conversation with
Rory Calhoun, wishing he had done "what you do: tuck Debbie in your
bed and, with a show of virtue so victorious as to be ferocious, grab pillow and blanket and take to the living room sofa, there to lie in the dark,
hands clasped behind head, gaze at the ceiling and talk through the open
door of your hopes and dreams" (199). Yet the level of consciousness Binx
finds in film does not translate into his own life - in fact, he is never able
to truly realize sex with Kate in terms of guilt or enjoyment. Rather, the
flesh that has been "until this moment seen through and canceled, rendered null by the cold and fishy eye of the malaise - flesh poor flesh now
at this moment summoned all at once to be all and everything, end all
and be all, the last and only hope - quails and fails" (200). Musing over
how "Christians talk about the horror of sin," Binx realizes "they have
overlooked something. They keep talking as if everyone were a great sinner, when the truth is that nowadays one is hardly up to it. ... The high-
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terminally - but he does not visit or keep in touch; when he and Sharon
visit the Smiths' fish camp, he has not seen the family for six months. He
chides his mother for not calling when Lonnie received extreme unction
during a particularly bad bout with a virus, but when the visit is over,
Binx does not think any more about his brother. On the whole, Binx
does not express a great deal of concern for or interest in his family, nor
does he sacrifice his own needs for theirs.
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and security against the cold forces of disruption and alienation. Children would also be a connection to the future and a means of replenishing a world depleted by war deaths. . . . Marrying young and having
lots of babies were ways for Americans to thumb their noses at doomsday predictions" (17-18). In the first chapter of the novel Binx refers to "a
(8). Though Binx speculates about "perhaps one day settling down and
raising a flock of Mareias and Sandras and Lindas of my own," he has
not considered marriage before Kate brings it up and imagines having "a
rosy young Stephanie perched at [his] typewriter" twenty years down the
road (8-9). When Emily asks if Binx does not feel obligated to make a
contribution to society, he replies that he does not, and when Nell Lovell
explains her commitment to leaving the world a bit better than she found
it, Binx finds "nothing to do but shift around as best one can, take care
not to fart, and watch her in a general sort of way" (101). Binx's only concept of the future is a variation of his present lifestyle - staying with Mrs.
viction that everyone around him is dead: "It happens when I speak to
people," he explains, "[i]n the middle of a sentence it will come over me:
yes, beyond a doubt this is death" (99). When he meets Nell Lovell he
cannot help but wonder "why does she talk as if she were dead? Another
forty years to go and dead, dead, dead" (102). Kate claims that Binx
reminds her "of a prisoner in the death house who takes a wry pleasure
in doing things like registering to vote. . . . [his] gaiety and good spirits
have the same death house quality" (193). Yet Binx willingly accepts this
death-in-life existence by consciously replacing his ambitions and emotions with the most ordinary life imaginable; he chooses the path of least
resistance. The promise of disaster serves as a constant in Binx's life - he
preemptively accepts death rather than suffer the anxiety of the nuclear
threat. In many ways, Binx dreads uncertainty and malaise more than
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ity that he has actually hoped for the end of the world, and reasons that
"what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb
will not fall," because then the fabric really will dissolve (228, emphasis
added). So long as the atomic threat exists, there remains the possibility of giving order to chaos through civil defense measures and finding
distractions through consumerism and popular culture. These measures
provide a sense of control over the present and offer a diversion from the
onciling the widening gap between southern heritage and national prog-
their tragic force"; speeches such as these are "undercut and ironized in
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dangerous to Binx's tenuous hold on his own way of life, much as the
possibility of escaping nuclear annihilation has caused despair. When
Emily concludes that Binx has ignored her teachings, he contradicts her:
"You say that none of what you said ever meant anything to me. That is
not true. On the contrary. I have never forgotten anything you ever said.
the role of existentialism and Christianity in Binx's search and noted the
influence of outside texts such as War and Peace and All The Kings Men.
Yet they have not considered the issues Binx struggles with as a southerner during the first decades of the Cold War. Though Binx appreciates
of the country except possibly New England in the last century" and
when he steps off the train in Chicago, Binx is convinced that "Nobody
but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities in the
to terms with his anxiety, as I am not sure that his dilemma can even
be solved by renewed religious faith or regional loyalty. To my mind,
Percy's most innovative move lies in the interstitial position Binx occupies throughout the novel, trapped as he is for all intents and purposes
between an increasingly objectionable past and an indeterminate future.
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the impossible double bind" (6). The "stone paralysis" Raper associates
with fealty to place is complicated further by Binx's lack of faith in the
future.
Thus, I would argue, the most significant achievement of The Moviegoer is not Binx's journey and ultimate redemption, but the complex posi-
overcomes. Though he is aware of the Cold War and does take part in
cultural trends in an attempt to avoid nuclear anxiety, his solid anchoring in the present also prevents him from reconciling the southern past
with the uncertain American future. He realizes that Emily's perspective is colored by nostalgia, that she "transfigures everyone. All the stray
bits and pieces of the past, all that is feckless and gray about people, she
pulls together into an unmistakable visage of the heroic or the craven, the
noble or the ignoble" (49). Yet Binx is ultimately unable to disregard this
perspective any more than he is able to protect himself from the ambiguity of the national future. Furthermore, this double vision ultimately
marks the complexity of his character. While Binx may not find a clear-
of the South 's position at mid-century. Though the region did perceptively move toward a cultural reunion with the nation at large, the South
largely retained its own distinctive problems in terms of race and politics,
1. Paul Boyer discusses this issue in depth in By The Bomb's Early Light,
the public into nuclear responsibility (65-76). Such tactics included detail
descriptions of nuclear attacks; Life magazine's November 1945 issue inclu
fictional scenario of nuclear war with corresponding illustrations. Yet when
campaign of fear did not yield the desired results, producing widespread a
rather than vigilance, the fear campaign was abandoned for a more positiv
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3. As late as 1961, the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. William
Libby, insisted that in the event of a nuclear war 90-95% of the population
could be saved by [bomb] shelters" and civil defense measures (Kaledin 117).
4. See Singal's The War Within: From Victorian to Modernist Thought in the
Lawson, Lewis A. and Victor A. Kramer, eds. Conversations with Walker Percy.
Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1985.
Kaledin, Eugenia. Daily Life in the United States, 1940-1959:
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183-202.
Oakes, Guy. The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture.
New York: Oxford UP, 1994.
Percy, Walker. The Moviegoer. New York: Noonday P, i960, 1961.
Spigel, Lynn. Make Room for TV: Television and the Fam
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