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

[Percy-L Listserv Manager <percy.listserv.manager AT gmail.com>]

I am forwarding to the reading group the below post contributed by Leonard Hughes in response to Janet's opening post on MG Chapter Five in case it was missed.  Chapter Five discussion is active.

Henry Mills

Percy-L Listserv Manager

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: hughesl6363 AT aol.com <hughesl6363 AT aol.com>
Date: Sun, Aug 11, 2024 at 3:35 PM
Subject: [percy-l] Moviegoer-Ch 5; Response to Janet
To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>

Dear Percy Purveyors:

 

     I’ll try responding to Janet’s remarkable comments in color, taking her cue.

 

I’ve been grateful for her observations about Percy’s literary style throughout our discussion, because I think it is often overlooked. In the course of this “slow read,” I ran across a disappointing opinion in a May 2010 “New Atlantis” article by Ari Schulman, who observes Percy’s favor had lost momentum because (he says) the characters represent “types,” illustrating philosophy rather than being realistic. That’s my paraphrase; in Schulman’s words:

 

"Part of the reason Percy’s prominence seems to have plateaued may be that he occupied a vital but nebulous region between fiction and philosophy, and between academic and popular writing."

 

I imagine you may disagree, but it’s possible to so conclude because of the  

volume of scholarly discussion of Percy’s philosophical ideas in his nonfiction.

 

 

Commenting on my own notes:

 

 I forgot to make note of how Kate, now working on herself by seeing Dr. Mink regularly, sees Lonnie and is heartbroken to notice how thin he is. For the first time, Kate is thinking of someone else and having empathy for him. Beautiful.

Janet Cantor

 

Your recalled point is a good opener for your sensitive reading…this went right over my head.

 

 

These two sections together make up the shortest part of the novel. But what I have to say will not be as economical with words. My comments and questions will probably be longer than what has come before in the discussion of the four previous chapters.

 

In passing I mentioned that I try not to judge a book until it is ended because I want to see what the author is driving at to see if the work is any good. It is safe to say that the way Percy ended The Moviegoer is so perfectly exquisite that if the rest of the book were less good, it wouldn't matter because the end turns it into a masterpiece. Themes and variations happen in symphonies and I consider this book by this measurement, a symphony.

 

I had the same reaction; I was surprisingly touched at the end this time around (partly for melancholy personal reasons). By the way, judging a book by its ending was never so relevant to me as it was years back, when I had given up finishing “On the Road,” until a good friend told me to skip to the final page. I hate knowing the end of anything, but when I gave it a shot, I couldn’t wait to go back to where I left off.

 

My questions will appear at the end, but let's get started.

 

Short as this part of the book is, it is astonishing to note that fully one third of it is Aunt Emily creatively dressing down Binx for his irresponsibility in taking Kate to Chicago at such a vulnerable time in her life.

 

There is that letter opener, what Hitchcock would call the McGuffin, a thing the audience focuses on because they think it is important. It was once sharp like a weapon, but Binx remembered bending it when he tried to open a door. Perhaps that is a metaphor for the fact that Aunt Emily's sharp rebukes cannot wound him seriously because he knows she loves him.

 

And I love that you find symbolic meaning in a simple physical object. It reminded me of a climactic scene in “Love in the Ruins” when Dr More escapes his imprisonment using the sword of Saint Michael from a small statue (he compares it to a letter opener!).

 

 She says things are expected of us, we have standards. and you failed. We are better - this is a class thing. Binx is helpless before her. He takes whatever rebuke she gives him. She asks him if he was listening as she was trying to teach him good standards all his life. He doesn't answer, but in his head says he thought about every word she said to him all his life.

 

Their mutual study of the Crito is mentioned on page 226. It is worth reading about this episode about Socrates et al. It reflects a lot of what Aunt Emily is trying to instill in Binx.

 

Page 228 has merde references and naturally brings up the dung beetle whose work is to move merde. And that adorable 98% reference to believers is brought up again where 2% are non believers leaving no room for searchers. This whole page is gorgeous. It is like an oration. Binx is 30.

 

I think it’s significant that Nick Carraway also turns 30 in the course of “The Great Gatsby.” There’s much to compare between those two guys, who stand in the sideline and make philosophical assessments of characters and action. 

 

But his search has been abandoned. It is no match for his aunt. Compare page 228 to page 26. We are seeing a recapitulation of themes now.

 

Nice contrast! His reaction to Emily is different, but I don’t think Binx permanently abandons the search.

 

Binx is at sea, literally and figuratively. He needs a girl. Uh oh. This is not what I want at this point. Not to worry. Percy is merely giving us a cute little episode to entertain us while Binx is waiting for Kate who promised to meet him here. He finds a phone booth and calls Sharon. She is out with her fiance. Ha. So he tries to woo her roommate, Joyce. so funny.

 

 Hahaha!  Yes!

 

He is watching children at play in the water. Innocence. Joyce invites him over . There will be others there. He asks if he can bring his fiancee. Ha! Progress. Binx is acting his age.

 

The playground is deserted. Apt phrase here. Binx is growing up.

 

More sensitive observations! Kids are “innocence,” their disappearance signifies a maturation, as does the word “fiancée.”

 

Along comes Kate. She is annoyed that Binx just took his aunt's rebukes and didn't tell her that they were going to be married. Binx will satisfy his aunt and go to medical school.

 

Page 234, mirroring 116 and 61 in the book, Kate asks again if Binx would tell her what to do.

 

Wow..reading with you is like having a concordance.

 

It is Ash Wednesday. The chapter ends with a tour de force about a negro going into a church to get the ash on his forehead. Binx asks is he doing it because he is moving up in the world or  because he  believes G-d is present, or is it for both reasons.  Or is he coming for one reason and receiving the other as G-d's importunate bonus? Importunate means annoyingly persistent.

 

Case in point: focusing on connotation of a single word. It opens another door to explore. My dictionary suggests the “annoying” quality is less contemporary than the “persistent” quality of the word. Nothing wrong with considering both. Same with the word “edifying” when Binx mentions the indirect nature of religion in the search.

 

The epilogue recapitulates the novel for us. It opens with a reference to a Dylan Thomas poem about his 30th year.

 

Thank you for sending me to Dylan Thomas (I was too lazy to google the line myself). Again, death rears its head in an allusion to a poem which contemplates mortality, and Percy could not have ignored that Thomas died only nine years after he wrote that poem. 

 

Binx's aunt has become fond of him and she and Kate make fun of him on occasion.

 

There is a mention of the Danish philosopher - that would be Kierkegaard, who died at a mere 42 years old. Binx had better get going (also considering Dylan Thomas—Leonard’s point, in case the color print doesn’t convey).

 

In the beginning of the novel his Aunt tells him about the death of his older brother and says he has to be brave. Now Binx has to talk to his siblings to calm them about the death of Lonnie. Binx is "telling Kate what to do". She must accomplish a task for him so he can comfort the children.

 

Another pairing that went right over my head.

 

Reading this again is so moving. If how a writer finishes is important, then good job, inc. This is all gorgeous music.

 

***

 

Now some observations and then some questions.

 

In discussing Chapter Four, Leonard asked why there were so many fragments and interruptions. I think when something is important to Percy, things are not interrupted. For example, Lonnie is pivotal to the book. So the scenes with him are intact ones.

 

Nice!

 

Binx claimed he didn't get G-d. But G-d's importunate grace is out there like low hanging fruit and all we have to do is reach for it, and whether Binx know it or not, he reached 

for it. He may not get G-d, but G-d got him!

 

Charles said biographical concerns are irrelevant. Just read the book and enjoy what's on the page. But there are some things that stand out:

 

1. Binx goes from being a money man, self centered and sort of meandering to becoming a man of science like his aunt wanted him to be. (and his mother, it seems.)

 

2. Percy began as a man of science, a physician, got TB and wound up in a sanitorium for a long stay and spent his time reading philosophy and literature and decided to change to become a writer. So Percy's journey is a mirror image of Binx's in a way.

 

3. Percy began as a non believer and a womanizer and a drinker (like F. Scott Fitzgerald—Leonard’s comment).

He met his Bunt, Mary Bernice Townsend, and wanted to marry her. She refused because of his lifestyle. He eventually gave up drinking and other women and even converted to Catholicism (Fitzgerald gave up Catholicism).

 

 His persistence and self betterment won. She finally married him. All of Percy's novels reflect these life changes I believe. The endings of his novels are what they are because of his new persona. So much for ignoring biographical details when reading a Percy novel.

 

Love it! Even though I’m an old-school I.A. Richards/Brooks and Warren student, and tend to embrace Chuck’s idea.

 

4. Tom asked, "... I'm wondering how Lonnie's integration of his disability and suffering into his religious faith relates to Percy's own embrace of Catholicism. I've always found the latter a bit perplexing." 

 Lonnie for me is essential to the book even more than Aunt Emily and Kate. Percy had just converted to Catholicism and that was important to him and I believe Percy wanted to make that central to the story in his first attempt at authorship. He used the very sympathetic character of Lonnie and his positiveness to bring the reader to understand the importance of faith. Lonnie's hope and optimism in the face of his impossible life is gorgeous. 

 

***

 

At the conference in New Orleans where they celebrated the 50th anniversary of when The Moviegoer won the National Book Award, one of the speakers asked, "What was it those people on that committee saw in this novel that made them single it out as the best one for that year and the one that deserves this prestigious award?" She answered that she thought they saw something new.

 

I would like to give my two cents about what they saw.

 

The first half of the 20th century made us all lose our innocence and idealism. We saw humans kill humans on a scale never seen before - in the tens of millions. Starvation, slave labor, torture, dehumanization in G-dless societies with no regard for suffering. The more we learned the more impossible it was going to be from now on simply to write ordinary comedies or dramas. In Italy Ionesco was writing his absurdist plays. In France Camus and Sartre were writing their existential novels. In Ireland Beckett wrote about two tramps on an unending barren landscape trying to amuse each other to pass the time waiting for someone to come and rescue them. No one ever came. In one of Beckett's works came the famous quote, "I can't go on. I'll go on."

 

This is the climate Walker Percy faced when first trying his luck as a novelist. I believed he was trying to fit in with the new hopelessness, to seem to be like them with a protagonist who had no religion, had the disease of everydayness and needed a search to try to find meaning and order in the universe. But my personal belief is Percy, through his life learning - sorry Charles Lowry - had something extra to add. Because of his life changes in his effort to win over his Bunt, he was offering the world the thought of the possibility of G-d's importunate bonus to look forward to if one only reached out for it. In fact I believe each of Percy's novels ends the same way - despite all of the goofy or funhouse things that go on in the story, especially after The Moviegoer, they all come to the same conclusion - Get over yourself, care about someone else, and prepare yourself to accept G-d's grace. 

 

And that is what I think that committee saw. They saw an answer to the negative, despairing, empty-of-hope writers - a new way of dealing with this world. Percy was saying to the absurdists and the existentialists, your reactions to the horrors we know about is logical. But there is another alternative and perhaps some hope.

 

Very nice summary of the context of Percy’s writing.

 

***

 

Questions:

 

I really would like someone to suggest an answer to the question I have posed more than once. All of those light reflections off of waves, golf clubs, door knobs, etc. dozens in this novel, and used often in other Percy novels, what do you think they signify?

 

I never examined Percy’s imagery enough, I can see. First thing that comes to mind is a possible connection to the movie image.  Lewis Lawson points out the concept of Plato’s cave in “The Moviegoer”: people are separated from reality and can only see shadows on the wall; so are moviegoers who are watching the world from projections on a screen [my oversimplification].

 

As I said once before, I’ve always been drawn to Percy because of his presentation of the material world as a means to contend with—whatever you want to call it—despair, alienation, malaise or just plain boredom. Through Percy, I’ve seen ways to “re-enter the lovely ordinary world,” as Dr. More says. I’m no stranger to depression…I know people have been treated for that, and Percy has said, perhaps only half seriously, suicide is the sole cure for depression.  But despair—ignoring what’s around you, or being in a constant state of boredom—is a condition worse than depression. Percy best describes it (to me) in his essay “The Loss of the Creature” where he speaks of “the layman’s relation to natural objects in a modern technical society”:

 

“He does not even see the thing—as Gerard Hopkins could see a rock or a cloud or a field.”

 

The essay goes on to suggest ways of recovering the lost world, establishing a “sovereignty” over it. I believe the reflections you notice are possibly ways of enhancing “natural objects,” as Hopkins observed, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. / It will flame out, like shining from shook foil… .”  I’m not suggesting I or Binx are saying God is the cure for despair; I’m only trying to be edifying in bringing up Hopkins. (Besides, considering your gift of Dylan Thomas, one good poem deserves another.)

We all know Percy is a brilliant writer. Every paragraph proves that. Every character drawn proves that. The end of this book that I am writing about proves it. But why do I like Percy? I am not a southerner. I am not a Catholic. I understand nothing about philosophy and that is an understatement. I don't know from semiotics. Why do I like him? I know that people write about Percy and get doctorates taking apart his work. I am no scholar. I am just a reader. Yet I do love Percy's novels. It remains a mystery to me. But if I love him as an ordinary reader, that is something too, isn't it?

 

More than “something”; it’s “something else.”

 

Thank you for an amazing treatment of “The Moviegoer.”

 

Sincerely,

Leonard

 

***

A final thought:

 

I am so proud to have shared this exercise with Rhonda, Charles, Tom and Leonard. We hope you have enjoyed the ride.

 

But we did not begin this slow read of The Moviegoer to talk to each other. 

Now that we have gone through the book, what has been left out that you wanted mentioned? What questions remain with you that you want answered. There are so many of you out there and we have not heard from most of you. Come on. Let's have your input.