Meaning of authenticity in Walker Percy's The Moviegoer

Introduction

Walker Percy was a famous novel writer and a respected American author, as his contributions to the human thought go beyond his novel writing. Walker Percy was born in Birmingham on 28th May 1916 and had died on May 10th 1990. He also won National book award in the year 1962, for his first novel The Moviegoer. Walker Percy use to write more fictions, but before his death he published five further novels in addition to three non fictions works which were basically dedicated to exploring the unusual situation that is the human condition. These are the more formal philosophical fascination with the nature of the language and its relationship to our humanity which characterizing the latter writings (McGreevy, 166).

Walker Percy has written two unpublished novel in 1950, he also spent those years of his life in developing his interest in philosophy. While philosophy is the language in which Percy wrote comprehensively very well. He also received a medical degree in 1934; during his medical training he explored humanistic interest. Walker Percy's first novel “The Moviegoer” was published in 1961, after the publication of Walker Percy second novel “The Moviegoer” his work has been widely read and was critically evaluated by different scholars. Because no other scholar has examined that how shifts in American Catholicism and the changes in the second Vatican council has impacted the ways in which Walker Percy have written about and has approached the modern world.

Discussion

The Moviegoer tells the story of a Binx Bolling, who was a young stock broker in a post war of New Orleans. The main charcter of the novel was John Bolling he is essentially an outsider with the few true friends and has a unclear purpose in life, he enjoys going to the movies and he prefer his career as a financial investor. Binx believes that the malaise can be only exceeds through the pain and suffering and this belief of Binx separates him more from God and world. Binx is clearly brighter than he allows himself to recognize, and understands much of what is going on around him, despite his regular retreats into his own head. Another example of Binx's analytical mind can be seen in the tone in which he recalls things (Harwell, 45).

He is reductive, and detached; like an objective third party observer of his own life. Throughout The Moviegoer, Binx is a womanizer who cannot connect with humanity in even the smallest of ways. In fact, as we have already seen, Binx is in the middle of a phone call to his secretary, pursuing her as usual, when he suddenly experiences his moment of revelation. Binx is up to his usual business, and the reader is certain that there will not be a moment of redemption. He is a lost cause, incapable of hearing God's call, and then suddenly, inexplicably, he changes: “The final solution for Binx is Catholicism. Embracing the Catholic faith and committing himself to ...