The Moviegoer — Elisabeth Donnelly

“He cuts a transfixing figure for even an ordinary reader’s curiosity: the book-jacket photographs with their silvery-bronze patina suggesting a pale-eyed cattle rustler, his laser-blue gaze smudged simultaneously with apprehension and derring-do, a tin-woodman tint evoking a man of metal and mettle, in sorrowful quest of his forgotten heart.”

— Lorrie Moore on the fact that Richard Ford is a stone-cold fox in The New Yorker. Read this sentence aloud, it’s masterful.

For anyone who’s ever done an interview, Chapter Seven-ish of The Sportswriter, by Ford, is a hilarious and uncanny satire of the parry and back and forth between a writer and subject, hyper-aware of what each person wants from the interaction. Fabulous. Coincidentally, I read Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer and The Sportswriter at the same time, and made a lot of changes in my life months later, in an effort to cure myself of dreaminess.

July 12, 2011 Elisabeth Donnelly

stusherman:

The Moviegoer is one of those dangerous books that might just make you quit your job or marry your first cousin…
I enjoyed the terms he, Binx Bolling the protagonist, comes up with to describe how cinema has affected the world. T… — stusherman:

The Moviegoer is one of those dangerous books that might just make you quit your job or marry your first cousin…

I enjoyed the terms he, Binx Bolling the protagonist, comes up with to describe how cinema has affected the world. The best by far is certification. This is the term when something one knows, a neighborhood perhaps, appears in a movie. It’s existence on the silver screen makes it certified, worthy of existence. This concept also comes up in his description of a couple meeting a celebrity. How seeing that person in real life add an authenticity to their life, even if that person is know for playing someone they are not.

Bix lives through the medium of cinema (I believe the book predated McLuhan). He sees the world becoming a vessel of experience in which people use the simulacrum as a measure of realness, and not the other way around.

The Moviegoer is a dangerous book, and I say that with experience. I just adore my first cousin. (j/k!) I love the fact that someone on the New York Times Magazine staff had that and Independence Day by Richard Ford on their list of favorite books (Carina Chocano would be a guess if she’s on staff, but probably not? Probably a dude, is my guess.) - I had read both books simultaneously, quite by accident, which was fun since the latter was quite plainly a Moviegoer re-write of sorts. The part of me that related to these two lost boy characters was very, very terrified and has made some major decisions as a result. Not completely, but these books were there in the background. Nobody ever wants to be “dreamy” as a character trait. It’s too vaporous.

And if you’ve ever done an interview in your life, Chapter 6 (or 7? I forget) of Independence Day basically nails what it’s like in a way that had me rolling on the floor. It’s really the takeaway of the book for me. The Moviegoer seems sadder and more creepily relevant, day after day after day. It actually may be a favorite book of mine. In about slot #18 or so, sad men in 50s America division.