The Moviegoer

Prior to logging into blogger.com, I sent a brief email to my mother. Just everyday topics: school, money, boys, what have you. I closed with a P.S. which read:

"Have you ever read The Moviegoer? I just did for my American Literature class and I'm not quite sure what to think of it. It didn't stir up any strong emotions in me, just half-formed impressions and opinions. What a foggy novel."

That is truly my response to this piece. There were pieces within it which appealed to me - descriptive passages with a twisted narration, dialogue which expressed much more at second glance. About a third of the way through this book, I grabbed a pencil and started underlining intriguing elements (my God, the abundance of cultural references!). Binx Bollings' investigations and observations were appealing to me ... but he had a sort of attention deficit disorder which jumped from one thing to another and once he had pulled me in with the description of newlyweds he jumped to another character and so on he proceeded, jumping from one lilypad to the next like a frog seeking a fly across the pond. So went his search, search for meaning, search for a higher power, search for a cure to the malaise.

And what to say of Kate? She is both better and worse than our protagonist. She herself admits that it is better to lose hope and admit it rather than lose hope and hide it from oneself, accusing Binx of the latter. She also admits that she is always frightened, and is not sure she will ever be able to overcome her anxiety. She needs Binx to keep the fear at bay.

Binx is an ordinary man when viewed from a distance, but a storm of questions is trapped within him. Kate, however, has sacrificed external calm for self acceptance - she knows she is flawed, maybe permanently. She is strong in her weakness; she is weak in her strength. They both seem to envy each other somehow. Binx aches to pursue his quest by escaping the rigidity of the everyday ... I think part of him wants Kate's freedom. Kate has no grip on the everyday and has made several quests - at the end of each of her "dark times" she came to an answer which seemed life-changing at the time but never resulted in any change ... her situation always remains the same.

They prove that there is no path to the answers. Or rather, the path leads nowhere. The answers do not exist. but perhaps, by accepting a common life, can one survive.

So many things arose in my mind throughout the reading. I don't know quite how to express them looking back; perhaps I will have to go over my underlined phrases...

Part Two, Chapter 1

I get a strange joy out of reading those passages which are derogatory and/or politically incorrect. As Binx's private thoughts form the narrative of this novel, we are treated to gems he would have censored if he knew he was being watched:

"From the sleaziest house in the sleaziest town, from the loins of redneck pa and rockface ma spring these lovelies, these rosy-cheeked Anglo-Saxon lovelies, by the million. They are commoner than sparrows, and like sparrows they are at home in the streets, in the parks, on doorsteps. No one marvels at them; no one holds them dear. They flush out of their nests first thing and alight in the cities to stay, and no one misses them. ...But I marvel at them; I miss them; I hold them dear."

Am I a sparrow? I always found sparrows interesting, hopping about and watching their surroundings with their beady eyes. Not quite sure why....but I digress.

Poor Walter. Yet, not as poor as Binx ... I admit. At least Walter has some idea of what he wants (Kate); Binx just has some vague search. I don't know what he's searching for. I don't think even he knows what it is he is pursuing.

Kate wants to be kicked out of the house and forced to stand on her own. I can relate: she feels sheltered, protected ... but part of her can't sever her ties to her family, and she will never leave the nest until it falls out from beneath her.

The word "love" is tossed around so nonchalantly in this narrative. He is in "love" with Sharon and every other secretary that has come before her. His description of her is full of phrases so natural to our narrator ... but to me his style is borderline insulting:

"...her arms come out of the armholes as tenderly as a little girl's. But when she puts her hand to her hair, you see that it is quite an arm."


"...it is this very crowding of the cheekbone into the eye socket, narrowing the eye into a squint-eyed almost Chinese treacherousness, which is so ugly in him [Sharon's father] and so beautiful in her."

In the 1960s, China was shifting to a communist state. It is possible that Sharon's father was unattractive to Binx because he resembled a man of Chinese ancestry ... a group of people in ill repute among U.S. citizens.

"I have been as aloof and correct as a Nazi officer in occupied Paris."

What an ironic statement - ironic, yes, but only "correct" in the officer's own mind. The response of an outsider looking in on the officer runs parallel to that of a reader looking in on Binx's behavior.

"My Sharon should not read this kind of stuff [Peyton Place]."

My Sharon? I really scorn the thought that anyone can be the property of someone else. Nor is one person entitled to guide another's pursuits; I suppose I am a bit of an isolationist in this case. Though I do not think it wrong to vocalize one's opinions in an attempt to persuade another to alter their actions. However, it is ultimately a person's decision to make for himself.

And then when Binx derides himself for reading Arabia Deserta, having only read "fundamental" books in the past - War and Peace, A Study of History, What is Life?, The Universe as I See It, The Expanding Universe, The Chemistry of Life.

For everyone's benefit, I have included a brief description of each book, courtesy of Wikipedia:

• Peyton Place follows the lives of three women—lonely and repressed Constance MacKenzie; her illegitimate daughter Allison' and her employee Selena Cross, a girl from "across the tracks," or as it is called in the book, "from the shacks." The novel describes how they come to terms with their identity as women and sexual beings in a small New England town.
  
  
• War and Peace tells the story of Russian society during the Napoleonic Era. It offered a new kind of fiction, with a great many characters caught up in a plot that covered nothing less than the grand subjects indicated by the title, combined with the equally large topics of youth, marriage, age, and death.
  
  
• A Study of History is a twelve volume magnum opus which traces the birth, growth and decay of some 21 to 23 major civilizations in the world.
  
  
• What is Life?is a non-fiction book on science for the lay reader written by physicist Erwin Schrödinger.
  
  
• The Universe as I See It is actually titled The World as I See It. It is a collection of essays, articles and letters that reveal the other side of the Albert Einstein: the advocate of a world of peace and mutual helpfulness.
  
  
• The Expanding Universe applies the theory of relativity to astronomy.
  
  
• The Chemistry of Life provides a clear and authoritative introduction to the world of biochemistry.

• Arabia Deserta details a man's travels through Saudi Arabia.
  

I will end with these lines, which left me wondering what caused the change in Binx's life.

"During those years I stood outside the universe and sought to understand it. ...Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion."

The Moviegoer: PART ONE

So... I read it. And while it didn't exactly make me cry out for more...

(the fact that this innocuous phrase throws my mind into the gutter is probably indicative of severe psychological issues)

...I can definitely relate. I feel numb sometimes...

(and no, that's not a fetish thing)

...and get lost in a never-ending cycle of eat-sleep-poop.

(Crude? Maybe. I think I ripped it off from a book or movie; I never say "poop". It's just a misleading word ... with the soothing "oo" sound flanked by two percussive Ps. It's like just when the word becomes endearing, it's ended abruptly. And then the meaning sets in and I am lost in a state of disgust. Alas, we have happened upon more evidence of my mental issues.)

I can relate, but I don't have much concern for the character at this point.

(Proof of this point: I can't even remember his name without looking at the back cover. I've never read a book and forgotten the name of the character after sixty pages. Not even that trash Twilight. ...But I won't go there.)

He has chosen to wrap himself up in this meaningless world where he doesn't have to live up to anyone's expectations. He doesn't have to try because all of his dreams are coming true on the movie screen. He escapes to the movies because problems are posed and solved in the span of two hours and he isn't even involved. He cycles through secretaries because they are readily available at work and he doesn't want to make an effort to find a woman that is right for him. He works at a job where he can basically just show up and get paid. He joined a fraternity and did just enough to get in with the inner circle. Then, upon making it to this point where he could avoid criticism from his fraternity brothers, he returned to his vegetative state.

He is a passenger in the vehicle of life.

(Which is, of course, a bus.)

He watches out the window as he is driven through it.

Sigh. Perhaps this book is so far below my radar right now because I'm reading Beowulf in my other course...I sure hope PART TWO gets on with this vague search ... because I am searching for justification for the glowing reviews on the back cover.