I recently had the pleasure of joining one of my favourite shows, the Catholic Culture Podcast, to discuss Walker Percy’s novel The Moviegoer. We discussed the protagonist’s search for meaning and some aspects of cinephilia which the book touches upon.
This was my first reading of a Percy novel and I was quietly touched by the intensity and compassion of its strange conclusion (which I won’t spoil). I was also struck by how Percy’s depiction of a kind of casual Americanized cinephilia (‘moviegoing’) had certain parallels with the more well-known, highly intentional French cinephilia which was well underway overseas and (by 1961, the date of the book’s publication) about to break into American culture.
Check out the podcast on Youtube, Apple, or wherever else you do such things. I hope you enjoy our conversation.