Novel
The Moviegoer
Walker Percy · 1961
Synopsis
On the eve of his thirtieth birthday, Binx Bolling runs a small branch of his uncle's brokerage firm in Gentilly, a suburb of New Orleans. He earns a good living, dates his secretaries one after another, and the cinema is his favourite evening outing. He calls “the search” a quest whose object he does not know. His aunt Emily would like him to study medicine. During the week of Mardi Gras, his uncle sends him to a conference in Chicago, and Kate, his aunt's stepdaughter, fragile since the death of her fiancé, goes with him.
Context
Accepted by Knopf after a year of rewriting with Stanley Kauffmann, the book appeared without the publisher's backing, in a print run of 1,500 copies, and Knopf did not submit it for the National Book Award. Jean Stafford, a member of the jury, added it to the shortlist on the advice of her husband, A. J. Liebling, and the jury awarded it the prize unanimously. Its author, forty-four at the time of publication, had published only philosophical essays in journals.
Who it is for
A novel of about two hundred and forty pages, in the first person, without a tight plot and with constant irony. Translated by Claude Blanc in 1982.
Prizes and reception
National Book Award 1962, ahead of Joseph Heller's Catch-22 and J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey.
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