The Moviegoer

My initial reaction to Walker Percy's The Moviegoer was one of remote appreciation. The more I really began to get a feel, though, for the story and for Percy's prose, that appreciation became less guarded. I started to see in his writing much of what I've loved in that of Flannery O'Connor — the eye for detail, the mind that knew which details were important; the ear for voice; the coexistence of the seemingly dichotomous realms of high-minded literary craftsmanship and uniquely southern mannerisms (“No'm,” a colloquial shortened form of “No ma'am,” comes to mind).
The more I've learned about Percy — his underlying religious conviction, and his being a religious writer but not one whose target audience is necessarily religious — the more this comparison made sense.
I identified with the novel on a few different levels: with Binx at several points in his search, and with Percy in some aspects of the novel's composition and his approach to it.
I found it particularly interesting how, beyond the major events that occurred in Binx's life and undoubtedly influenced him as he was growing up, it was his aunt that seemed to hold great sway over his early development, and his aunt who was so frustrated by who he became. She told him all he had to do was be a soldier, and then later in his life, when he is an actual soldier rather than a figurative one, he is wounded. This, of course, is the jump-off point of sorts for his 'search'.
Some of the characters, the names (i.e. the celebrities, for most readers today), and the terms (“Negress,” for example) have certainly dated, but the novel is still, I think, a work for the ages.