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
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