Finder and Maker Reversed in The Moviegoer Essay -- Moviegoer Essays P

artificer and Maker Reversed in The motion-picture fan Walker Percys novel The Moviegoer chronicles a week in the life of stockbroker Binx Bolling, and his eventual marriage with his step-cousin Kate Cutrer. to a greater extent than that, it sketches Binxs peculiar philosophy, and Kates equ bothy strange orientation, and their eventual transposition. Binx begins as an enjoyer of reality, a searcher, or finder of relief from tedium, and Kate as a frantic searcher who becomes a maker of crises to relieve her post-modern ennui. But by the end of the novel, their beginning positions be almost reversed, muddled together to form a more well relationship. Both Binx and Kate are self-aware characters in a world of actors, the only when ones to realize the inherent falseness, the cliches, in all things. The very characters sound deal movie stars pseudonyms Binx Bolling, Lyle Lovell, Walter Wade, with their assonance sound all too much the like Robert Redford, James Earl Jones, the too -memorable monikers of film stars. Aunt Emilys manservant Mercer is threading his way between servility and supposal (p. 17), now one way then the other, with a dignified visual aspect precisely behind the mustache, his face... is not at all devoted save is as sulky as a Pullman porters. (ibid.) Even Mercers exaggerated breathing while serving dishes (pp. 156-157) is the act of a stereotypical servant make ridiculous. Binxs biological mother displays a fondness carefully guarded against the personal, the heartfelt, a fondness deliberately rendered trite. (p. 139) The radio program I Believe (p. 95) is a collection of hoary platitudes, and Binxs pleasant tingling sensation in the inguen afterwards (p. 96) reveals it as nothing but moral masturbation. Binxs Theosop... ...tion to detail is notwithstanding there -- Why is he so yellow? Hes got hepatitis. (p. 209) But Kate seems healthier, whether by means of treatment with Merle or association with Binx. And her self-destructiv e practice of crisis base seems quelled -- instead, Binx has become her director, her cinematographer. The care with which they plot out her errand -- what streetcar to ride, where to sit, where to toil her cape jasmine -- is like the close composition of a camera shot, all so that Binx, through his imagination, can keep Kate in focus and sane. He is no longish the passive observer, but the active arranger she no longer the out-of-control crisis-creator, but an obedient actress looking for direction. Binx has moved on to the true movie-lovers dream he has become a director. Works CitedPercy, Walker. The Moviegoer. New York Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1961.