From: "Henry P. Mills III" <wppdirector AT gmail.com>
To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [[percy-l] ] "We Still Live Within the Mediated, Alienated World of The Moviegoer"
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2024 00:55:02 -0500
Thank you, Chuck and Marcus, for the enjoyable posts reminding us of Binx's "birthday" and offering the vivid images of the start of Lent in New Orleans.
I recall a Paul Elie essay, which appeared in the New Yorker a few years ago, that Jim Forrest posted earlier. Jim was a long-time member of our community from Holland who passed not long ago. Many of you may recall him as quite a prolific writer.
Here is the introduction to Elie's essay and the New Yorker link, and also a chance for us to remember Jim in gratitude,
Best wishes,
Henry
--------------- *We Still Live Within the Mediated, Alienated World of The Moviegoer"
Walker Percy's novel, from 1961, may be the first work of what we call contemporary American fiction.
That it isn't really about movies is the first surprise. Binx Bolling, the novel's main character, is only an occasional moviegoer, both by the standards of postwar America (when Martin Scorsese would see a movie a day) and those of the present, when many of us spend most of our time looking at one screen or another.
The Moviegoer isn't really about movies, and yet the title remains unexpectedly apt, just as it was when the novel, published in 1961, became a surprise winner of the National Book Award and made a sudden Southern eminence of its author, Walker Percy, a nonpracticing physician and self-taught philosopher in early middle age. It's apt because it moves the novel (and our expectations for the novel) out of the South. It intimates that this novel, set in New Orleans, the region's most storied city, isn't about history or legacy, isn't about place at all: it's about how we see things -- a novel of perception and sensibility, dealing with the search for authenticity in a scripted, stylized, mediated world...
[[percy-l] ] "We Still Live Within the Mediated, Alienated World of The Moviegoer",
Henry P. Mills III, 02/22/2024