The Moviegoer (1961) by Walker Percy

1,001 Novels List

The Moviegoer (1961)

by Walker Percy

New Orleans, Louisiana

Louisiana: 1/30

 I'm not sure where I read about The Moviegoer, Walker Percy's 1962 National Book Award Winner, but I found an Audiobook copy in the Libby Library act and I couldn't resist:  A National Book Award Winning author I've never heard of is irresistible.   I've noticed that Major Literary Prizes don't do a great job of picking titles that endure- most (all?) major literary prizes are decided by a committee so you are talking about horse-trading and compromise in the quest to pick a winner for any particular year.  Back in 1962, the National Book Award named nine finalists and one winner.  The Moviegoer beat Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.  One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was eligible to be nominated but did not make the list of finalists.  We Have Always Lived in the Castle was published in the eligibility period but didn't make the list of finalists.

   Is The Moviegoer better than any of those other books?  No.  But here you have it, the 1962 National Book Award.   An additional grounds to doubt the worthiness of this book as a prize winner is the fact that Percy never got close again, even though he continued to publish.   There is nothing wrong with winning a major literary prize with your first novel, but if you don't come close to doing it again it calls into question your literary legacy.   This leaves a contemporary reader asking the question, "Why?"

 I think, in this case, the answer is that was doing a regional variation on a theme that was still in vogue in 1961-62:  The existentialist anti-hero.  Percy's Moviegoer is a classic existentialist hero, like someone you might find in an early Jean Luc Godard film.  He is a college graduate, a returned Vietnam Vet and a stock broker in New Orleans.  It's worth observing that while Percy didn't make the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die List, this book is on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America, representing New Orleans.

  New Orleans is in Chapter 5: Blues & Bayous, Deltas & Coasts, which includes all the states from Florida to Louisiana.  Louisiana has 30 titles on the list, 13 of those are from the city of New Orleans.  

My sense is that while the existential hero AND southern literature were in style when he won, both trends have dropped in prominence over the past half century.   Percy also wrote The Moviegoer right before the 1960's revolution in culture, which means that it is going to get crowded out by books written after and books written before it was published.

  Is there any question that of the books mentioned in this post, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the most canonical title and that Catch-22, Revolutionary Road and We Have Always Lived in the Castle are better picks than this one.