Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

[RHONDA MCDONNELL <rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com>]

Hello Leonard,

Thanks for your thoughts!! I’m fascinated by the connections you’re drawing between Gatsby and Moviegoer. Besides both narratives being about men turning 30 and being stockbrokers, what other similarities do you find? I suppose also Nick and Binx are great observers of others. Perhaps if I think about it long enough I might come up with some other connections but at the moment I can’t think of any. 

In regards to autobiographical links one that has recently occurred to me is the scene of Binx coming to himself while wounded in Korea and discovering the possibility of the search seems to echo what happened to Percy when he contracted TB and was sent to the sanatorium where he embarked on a search that ultimately led to his conversion to Catholicism and his abandoning his medical career to pursue philosophy, semiotic, and fiction writing. Now that I’ve thought of it, I’m surprised this link hadn’t occurred to me before. 

I also find Binx’s study of Mercer interesting. You’re right in saying he might get some flak for it today.  Some people seem to consider being offended as a good way to indicate their sympathies with the plights and histories of others. But when I consider 1950s Louisiana when Percy was writing The Moviegoer, I have the idea that he was a good deal ahead of his time. Many white southerners still saw someone in the role Mercer held as a bit invisible—there to serve but not to have any identity or true sovereignty (in Percy’s sense of the word). However Mercer is as fully and carefully drawn as the other characters and is, in fact, more individualized than some, such as Eddie. Percy had an awareness of the tightrope walk that changing times created for blacks and of the impact on their sense of identity that seems unusual for the time. Of course I might be wrong and I might be overstating Percy’s progressiveness in relation to most people of his time, place, and social class. Not having been present for that time period leaves me to make semi-educated guesses!

All the best,

Rhonda

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 10, 2024, at 12:37 AM, Leonard Hughes <hughesl6363 AT aol.com> wrote:

Ms McDonnell and other Percyphiles:

So great to hear from people about a book I've been living with for 50 years. My book club here in Hyattsville may kick me out if I don't stop talking about Walker Percy.

I hope my responses to your questions are coherent.

--I considered Binx's varied names were a way of illustrating different relationships people have with him. Aunt Emily regards him more formally than does Kate, for example. It would also be relevant to Percy's ideas of the complex Self (as in his comments on horoscope readings in "Lost in the Cosmos").

--Binx seems to use "research" to refer to THE Search as well as the common usage of scientific research, which is Emily's use of the term. Binx's search goes beyond science to a different reality (he doesn't confirm he is searching for God). Movies seem to be for him an artificial version of that other reality; the amnesiac in the first film he describes is in a position to pursue the search, but he sells out for a happy ending.

--"Wonder" is what motivates the search. To me, it harkens back to "The Great Gatsby," especially the climactic scene where Nick Carraway contemplates Gatsby's "wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock," comparing it to the wonder in the minds of America's discoverers. This is significant to me, having contended elsewhere that "The Moviegoer" is intimately connected to "Gatsby." It's hard for me to re-read "The Moviegoer" without seeing "Gatsby" all over the place.

--I'm not sure about autobiographical connections. Percy lived in the Garden District for some time. And Galatoire's was his favorite eaterie there. Like Binx, he avoided spending his life in the city, settling in Covington across the lake. From what I've read, he probably, like Binx, enjoyed the companionship of women in his younger days.

--His portrayal of black characters will probably get him into trouble these days of heightened sensitivity to race relations, but I find it interesting that he has Binx discussing Mercer in the way he observes everyone and everything in terms of varying levels of reality, aware of Mercer's different ways of approaching others, and Emily's way of fantasizing about his personality. The Klan float had to have been inspired by Percy's own observations during a time when race relations were about to explode.

--Binx's observations of Mercer's "realities" are consistent with his opinions of other "minor" characters. Ed Lovell has created a reality that is based on material-world survival--practical, but leaving him far from ever contemplating a "search." To Binx, Walter is similarly distracted, as shown by his obsession with renovating the house he may be in line to inherit.

--Finally, I've never thought of anything Percy has written as "dated." I thought, for a time, that "Love in the Ruins" was showing its age, but it seems more relevant with every passing year. Themes, characters in "The Moviegoer" are universal, and even the setting--the French Quarter, the Garden District--thankfully hasn't changed dramatically through the decades.

Thank you for listening,
Leonard Hughes