" The Most Ordinary Life Imaginable": Cold War Culture in Walker Percy's The Moviegoer

Author(s): Virginia Nickles Osborne

Source: The Southern Literary Journal, Vol. 41, No. 2 (SPRING 2009), pp. 106-125
Published by: University of North Carolina Press
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"The Most Ordinary Life

Imaginable": Cold War Culture

in Walker Percy's The Moviegoer
by Virginia Nickles Osborne
There is much to be said for giving up such grand

ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable,

a life without the old longings; selling stocks and

bonds and mutual funds; quitting work at five o'clock

like everyone else.

- Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

In a 1989 interview, just two years before his death from pros-

tate cancer, Walker Percy addressed his reluctance to be identified as

a "southern author," explaining that "if you're described as a southern
writer, you might be thought of as someone who writes about a picaresque

local scene like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Gone With the Wind, something like

that" (qtd in Lawson & Kramer More Conversations 223). Though most
of his protagonists are southern by birth and New Orleans figures prominently in The Moviegoer (19 61), the role of the region in Percy's fiction is

a far cry from Lanterns on the Levee (1944), the nostalgic memoirs of his

cousin and adopted father, William Alexander Percy. Rather than writ-

ing to lament the passing of an old southern order or because of some

personal connection with the region, Percy explains that, for him, southern settings simply provide the means of writing about specific circumstances, about "a particular fellow living in a particular house and finding himself in a particular concrete predicament" ("Culture Critics" 247).

Though Binx Boiling lives in New Orleans and muses over his aunt's
views of southern society, Percy claims that the novel ultimately focuses

Southern Literary Journal, volume xli, number 2, spring 2009

2009 by the Southern Literary Journal and the University of North Carolina at

Chapel Hill Department of English and Comparative Literature. All rights reserved.

IO6

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Cold War Culture in Walker Percy's The Moviegoer 107

on the alienation of the individual in the modern age, the existence of
one particular subject in a world transformed by science.

In considering Binx's struggle with alienation, a number of critics reflect on Percy's own interest in Kierkegaardian existentialism and
attempt to decode the way it is manifested in his fiction. Such criticism,
however, works in something of a vacuum, as it tends to consider Binx's
recurrent melancholia and the "search" he resolves to continue in the first

chapter of the novel without exploring the specific social or historical

context of The Moviegoer. Throughout the interviews collected by Lewis

Lawson and Victor Kramer and in his own articles, Percy repeatedly
emphasizes the importance of the particular in literature, arguing that
if fiction does explore larger social conditions or philosophical concepts,
it should do so through the experience of one individual and his specific
circumstances. In short, the novel should reflect "the life of its time" (qtd

in Lawson & Kramer Conversations 25). Despite Percy's insistence on the

primacy of each character's specific circumstances, and regardless of the
unique regional, national, and global milieu at the time of The Moviegoers publication, literary critics have not asked what life or time the novel

represents, or in what concrete circumstances Binx Boiling finds himself. Though the novel does deal with alienation, there is also a great deal

of time and attention devoted to consumer culture and cultural products such as movies, television, and radio programs. Furthermore, much
is made of Binx's life in the 1950s New Orleans suburb of Gentilly and
his attention to consumerism and the media. Though Binx lives in New
Orleans and his narration is filtered through that particular geographical
and cultural lens, his experience nonetheless represents national, social,
and economic trends. When the reader first meets Binx Boiling, he is living a life quite typical of young postwar adults.

In his 1995 analysis of the South 's modernization, Numan Bartley

argues that Binx Boiling's experience points up an increasingly individualized society as southerners joined the rest of the nation in modern-day
alienation. By "shedding the values of an older South, the New South had

become a place where credit cards defined an individual's identity." In

Percy's fictional middle-class world, according to Bartley, "a person lived
without values, measured success by money, and alleviated boredom with

periodic sexual conquests. Romance and involvement were things one

found in movies, or on television" (266-267). This argument explains
Binx's alienation as evidence of cultural homogenization and also supports the largely accepted theory that by mid-century southern litera-

ture had moved away from considering specifically regional issues and

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io8 Southern Literaryjournal

joined the mainstream. By taking up modern themes, southern literature
became less its own distinctive entity and joined the canon of American
literature at large. As Bartley writes, "Writers continued to produce works

about the South . . . but family, community, the weight of southern history, and the brooding presence of the region itself were less and less inte-

gral to the story" (267). While Bartley views The Moviegoer as evidence

of the South 's move away from regional concerns, Margot Henriksen
offers an alternative reading in her 1997 study of American Cold War cul-

ture. Henriksen interprets Binx's malaise as evidence of Cold War anxiety, arguing that "Binx's understanding of the perversions of atomic age
life, of the bomb's sickness in a professedly humanist and God-believing
nation, exposes the dawning cultural recognition of humanity's contradictory and death-conscious comportment in this age" (199). While these
two arguments are not mutually exclusive, or even necessarily in oppo-

sition, as the temporal point Bartley identifies with the South 's modernization corresponds with the beginning of the atomic age, Henriksen's thesis deserves a more detailed exploration. Reading The Moviegoer
through a larger socioeconomic lens reveals that the social changes often
viewed as evidence of the South 's shift away from its traditional value
system are also indicative of Cold War culture. Positioning the text and
the social tendencies it reflects in a wider historical framework establishes
that Binx's persistent malaise may be connected with atomic anxiety and,
more significantly, suggests that Percy's novel is no less concerned with
the region or its place in the union than earlier works, but reflects the
uncertain timbre of its age by following a protagonist seeking security in

a historical moment when past and present seem equally precarious.

Though Binx never directly comments on current events or specifically attributes his malaise to the nuclear threat, the Cold War does
present itself as the backdrop of the novel and is suggested linguistically

by Binx's narration. When he visits his aunt Emily's house in the first
chapter of the novel, her butler Mercer brings up current events; though

the reader is not privy to the conversation, the topic is clearly the mis-

sile gap between America and the Soviet Union. Apparently trying to
downplay the Russian threat by emphasizing the United States' military

power and superiority in weapons production, Mercer argues that that

"they still hasn't the factories and the - ah - producing set-up we has"
{Moviegoer 23). Although Binx does not pay attention to the conversation, instead musing on Mercer's trustworthiness as a house servant and
studying the family pictures he has seen many times before, he does ulti-

mately agree that "[ujnilateral disarmament would be a disaster" (25).

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Cold War Culture in Walker Percy's The Moviegoer 109

A similar incident occurs on the train trip Binx takes with his cousin
Kate to Chicago. As he tries not to sleep, Binx notices a fellow passenger
draw a box around the headline "SCIENTIST PREDICTS FUTURE

IF NUCLEAR ENERGY IS NOT MISUSED" (190). Rather than marking the text that follows, the gentleman produces scissors and clips the
entire section. Again, the reader is not privy to the subject, but the article

probably focuses on the scientific community's advocacy of international

control of nuclear energy. The one phrase that Binx is able to read is "the
gradual convergence of physical science and social science," which most
likely reflects the idea that, with proper control, atomic energy did not
necessarily spell the destruction of humanity; rather, if used responsibly,
atomic energy could actually improve modern life.1 Regardless of the arti-

cle's content, Binx is thinking about the nuclear threat on the train; he
notices "in a ditch outside ... a scrap of newspaper with the date May 3,
1954. My Geiger counter clicks away like a teletype" (190). Although no
historic event is recorded for May 3, the first hydrogen bomb was detonated in March 1954 and information about the test was released the fol-

lowing month (Oakes 58). Furthermore, the March 1954 issue of Time
contained a feature article on living with the atomic threat.
During Binx's most intense moments of anxiety, Cold War terminology also emerges. At some point in the casual conversations that convince
him that the world is already dead, Binx hears himself "or someone else

saying things like: 'In my opinion, the Russian people are a great people, but - '" (100). Twice during the novel he makes reference to malaise settling like fallout, and he mentions "the Geiger counter in [his]
head" when he meets Jews on the street and when he observes the scrap
of newspaper from 1954 (166, 228, 88). He recalls times of speculating "on
the new messiah, the scientist-philosopher-mystic who would come striding through the ruins with the Gita in one hand and a Geiger counter in
the other" (181-182). When he meets Nell Lovell on the street, Binx con-

cludes that people have already accepted their death and move through
life like automatons, and during his final and most intense bout with
anxiety, he directly connects this experience of living death to the nuclear

threat. On his thirtieth birthday he realizes that his only talent is

smelling merde from every quarter, living in fact in the very century of merde, the great shithouse of scientific humanism where
needs are satisfied, everyone becomes an anyone, a warm and creative person, and prospers like a dung beetle and one hundred per-

cent of people are humanists and ninety-eight percent believe in

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no Southern Literaryjournal
God, and men are dead, dead, dead; and the malaise has settled
like a fall-out and what people really fear is not that the bomb will
fall but that the bomb will not fall - on this my thirtieth birthday,

I know nothing and there is nothing to do but fall prey to desire.

Nothing remains but desire. (228)
The Cold War is going on around Binx, and despite his concerted effort
not to fall prey to anxiety, the nuclear threat is part of his cultural milieu.

He watches television shows featuring nuclear testing, urges clients to

take advantage of the financial opportunities of the "dawning age of missiles," and imagines tending the wounded with an attractive girl after the

city is bombed (106, 13).

According to Henriksen, "Binx cannot escape the chaos or the

impending catastrophe he senses, and he wonders at the lack of feeling in
the everyday lives of those around him" (198). Yet Binx makes a conscious

attempt to make his life equally depthless; he lives in the suburbs, enter-

tains himself with movies and radio programs, and tries to remove all
complex issues from his life. This lifestyle largely represents the "Arma-

geddon attitude," a phrase coined by Newsweek in 1961 to describe the

widespread apathy resulting from the belief that nuclear war necessarily

meant the end of mankind; no one and nothing could survive an allout atomic attack, nor would anyone want to. The early 1960s heralded
an extensive rebellion against civil defense measures as the public began
to understand the reality of nuclear war and the resulting fallout and to
realize that shelters and other methods of civil defense were ultimately
useless endeavors.2 Throughout the novel Binx tries to avoid anxiety by

normalizing the atomic threat, yet the cultural trends he looks to for
diversion and security are, ironically, products of Cold War uncertainty
that provide only temporary distractions.
In the first chapter of The Moviegoer, Binx tells the reader that for the

past four years he has been "living uneventfully in Gentilly, a middle

class suburb of New Orleans. Except for the banana plants in the patios

and the curlicues of iron on the Walgreen drugstore one would never
guess it was part of New Orleans .... But that is what I like about it. I
can't stand the old world atmosphere of the French Quarter or the genteel charm of the Garden District" (6). Living in his aunt's house is stifling for Binx, as it offers little opportunity to pursue his own desires.

Everything about his aunt's existence - her house included - is steeped

in regional and familial tradition, and the very antiquity of the Garden
District supports such a lifestyle. Gentilly, on the other hand, provides

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Cold War Culture in Walker Percy's The Moviegoer m

anonymity; it is an enclave too new to have formed traditions of its own.

The newness of the neighborhood is what appeals to Binx. When suffering from insomnia, he walks through the darkened streets where "[t]he
concrete is virginal, grainy as the day it was poured" (84). He notices the
"smooth and well-fitted and thrifty aluminum" of the elementary school

he has invested in and experiences something like religious sentiment

(10). Along with its new structures and economical materials, Gentilly
represents a move away from the traditional southern perception of land
ownership - property represents value rather than heritage, which Binx
appreciates both aesthetically and financially. At the corner of his street,
he notices a vacant lot "chest high in last summer's weeds. Some weeks
ago the idea came to me of buying the lot and building a service station.

... It is easy to visualize the tile cube of a building with its far flung
porches, its apron of silky concrete and, revolving on high, the immaculate bivalve glowing in every inch of its pretty styrene" (112). The lot is for

sale for twenty thousand dollars and Binx confesses that he has already
approached a Shell distributor.

Just as he makes plans to acquire a potentially profitable lot, Binx

decides to sell the site of his father's former duck club for whatever he
can get, as it is only "a worthless piece of swamp in St. Bernard Parish"
(71). When a man named Sartalamaccia offers eight thousand dollars for
the property, Binx realizes he should accept the offer on the spot, but
instead plans to meet Sartalamaccia at the site to negotiate. While touring the site, Binx takes more pleasure in the new housing developments

that flank his property than in memories of his father, taking particular

interest in the way Sartalamaccia rubs his thumb "over the sawn edges of
sheating" (94). Ironically, it is Sartalamaccia's sentimentality that postpones the sale and results in Binx receiving more money than originally
offered; Binx has only proposed the meeting so he can take a trip with his
secretary, Sharon Kincaid, and because he imagines negotiation as some-

thing Gregory Peck would do. He feels no sense of loss at having sold
the land he refers to as his "patrimony," and when he does feel depressed
because of his unfulfilled desire for Sharon, he distracts himself with "the
consolation of making money. For money is a great joy" (94).
In his study of the treatment of place in The Moviegoer, Martin Bone
argues that, as the novel progresses, Binx becomes increasingly skeptical of the "capitalist redevelopment of traditional 'southern spaces'" and
ultimately "obscures his own involvement in the capitalist production of

a postsouthern form of built space" (64). Yet Binx is never skeptical of

Gentilly or its development - in fact he suggests to Kate that they live in

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112 Southern Literaryjournal

the suburbs several times in the novel - and he does not conceal his own
role in suburban expansion from himself or anyone else. Furthermore, he
reveals in the epilogue that he has sold his duck club to Sartalamaccia for
twenty-five thousand dollars rather than for the eight thousand originally

offered. Instead of a reconverted traditionalist, Binx may be more aptly

characterized as what Bartley calls the "new middle class" that "relent-

lessly undermined the paternal foundation of the old social order. The
sense of roots, place, and stability that had for so long been central to
the southern value system retreated before new ideological currents . . .
By the 1960s middle-class houses were no longer homeplaces; they were
capital investments" (266).

If Binx's view of land and development as an investment opportunity is typical of Bartley 's new southern middle class, suburban expansion and development also represented a materialization of the American

dream for many young adults in postwar America. As Richard Nixon

pointed out in his now famous "kitchen debate" with Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev, suburbia itself was proof of capitalism's superiority,
as even the most ordinary citizen could own his own home and the land
it was built on. For the first time in American history property owner-

ship was not an opportunity only for the upper and middle classes. As
Nixon boasted to Khrushchev in 1959, thirty-one out of forty-four mil-

lion American families owned their own homes (163). Eugenia Kaledin
situates the government's subsidization of suburban sprawl in a Cold War
context, specifically in terms of the political commitment to containing
the spread of Communism. Suburbia offered an equal opportunity American dream - people with funds could, in theory, buy their own homes,

an opportunity which decreased unrest among the working classes. As

William Levitt argued, "no man who owned his own house could be a
Communist because he had too much to do" (qtd in Kaledin 62). Government programs helped increase the number of property owners, which

ultimately produced more satisfied Americans and confirmed the superiority of the capitalist way of life. Furthermore, out-migration from urban

centers offered practical Cold War benefits. In her study of the family
in postwar America, Elaine Tyler May points to a 1951 issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists which proposed "depopulating the urban core
to avoid a concentration of residences or industries in a potential target
area for a nuclear attack" (151). In a 1954 issue of Newsweek, Val Peterson
of the Federal Civil Defense Administration endorsed a policy of "mass
evacuation," arguing that the best way to survive an atomic attack on a
city was simply not to be there. In addition to the socioeconomic sense

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Cold War Culture in Walker Percy's The Moviegoer 113

of self-worth homeownership provided, civil defense literature assured
suburbanites that with proper education and planning, which advocated
incorporating civil defense measures into the family's lifestyle and moving away from urban centers, a nuclear war would not be the apocalyptic
nightmare most had come to fear.3
Yet along with the sense of security that distance from the city provided, suburbia also increased personal isolation. According to Lynn Spigete study of television and the nuclear family in the postwar era, "One
of the prevailing historical descriptions of the ideology that accompanied
this move to suburbia emphasized a general sense of isolationism in the
postwar years, both at the level of cold war xenophobia and in terms of
domestic everyday experience. From this point of view, the home functioned as a kind of fallout shelter from the anxieties and uncertainties of
public life" (100). Though suburban homes and the families that resided
in them were often very similar, personal interaction was limited; furthermore, because more families owned televisions, newspapers and magazines were no longer integral to following the news, and in-home entertainment caused financial difficulties for many local movie houses. This
is a trend Binx identifies at several points in the novel. When he goes to
a suburban movie house in the first chapter, he notices that the theatre is

almost empty, which is pleasant for him, but troublesome for the manager. He has a similar experience later when a Gentilly theatre manager

named Kinsella "actually [pulls him] in by the coatsleeve for a sample

look .... Mr. Kinsella has his troubles too. There are only a few solitary
moviegoers scattered throughout the gloom" (73-74).
Though Binx personalizes the otherwise solitary pursuit of moviegoing by making personal connections with ticket takers and managers like
Kinsella, his lifestyle nonetheless represents the isolation Spigel connects

with suburban life. He mentions several neighborhood acquaintances,

but the only other resident he interacts with in the novel is his landlady, Mrs. Schexnaydre, who "is quite lonely; she knows no one except
the painters and carpenters and electricians who are forever working on

her house" (76). He never encounters anyone on his afternoon walks,

and when he goes outside in the midst of a sleepless night, the streets
are empty. Furthermore, other characters perceive Gentilly as a remote

location. Jules Cutrer assumes that Binx will be eager to give up his
suburban bond office for a downtown location, and Binx reports that
"[p]eople often ask me ... what I do in Gentilly, and I always try to give

an answer." Yet when Eddie Lovell and Walter Wade ask this question,

Binx's standard reply is "Nothing much" (39). In truth, Binx watches

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114 Southern Literaryjoumal

television, listens to radio programs, and goes to movies, usually alone.
He generally does not spend time with anyone other than Kate and the
secretary he happens to be dating. On the whole, Binx embraces the isolation associated with suburban life, as he is able to develop a solitary and
comforting routine. The relationship he maintains with Mrs. Schexnaydre is very casual, and she is careful not to invade his privacy; his neighborhood acquaintances are not significant enough to even be mentioned
by name; he goes for walks when he is least likely to encounter anyone
else. While living outside New Orleans naturally limits interaction with
his friends and family, Binx also uses this distance as a means of increas-

ing his emotional isolation. He declines Walter Wade's invitation to be

part of the Mardi Gras parade, he does not join his former fraternity
brothers in their monthly hunt in Tigre au Chenier, and he does not visit

Eddie and Nell Lovell despite their repeated invitations, all of which is
made easier simply because he does not see these people very often. As
the novel progresses, it becomes clear that Binx does not go on hunts or
visit friends because he does not want the responsibility of personal connections, and he uses the distance the suburbs provide as a logistical and
emotional obstacle to maintaining relationships.
This attempt to remove himself from connections with others plays
a significant role in Binx's attempt to create a lifestyle so simple that
even the most intricate details do not require much thought or emotional investment. He follows the rules society dictates, buys the products Consumer Reports recommends, and does not litter because a service

announcement by William Holden tells him not to. Though he notices

critically that those around him move through life like automatons, he
works very hard to make his own life equally habitual, referring to himself as "a creature of habit, as regular as a monk, and taking pleasure in
the homeliest repetitions" (108). In fact, Binx has made a conscious decision to manage the Gentilly branch of his uncle's bond brokerage rather
than studying medicine or pure science, as the job does not require much
personal investment or imagination. Living in Gentilly provides a sense
of control; Binx interacts with a limited number of people and carefully
avoids issues that provoke anxiety. In fact, leaving Gentilly is troubling
for Binx because he no longer controls his environment. On his trip to
Chicago, for example, seeing the article on nuclear energy in the newspaper causes Binx to realize that "a week ago, such a phrase as 'hopefully
awaiting the gradual convergence of the physical sciences and the social

sciences' would have provoked no more than an ironic tingle or two at

the back of my neck. Now it howls through the Ponchitoula Swamp, the

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Cold War Culture in Walker Percy's The Moviegoer 115

very sound and soul of despair" (191). Yet when he remains in Gentilly,

Binx avoids anxiety by focusing on the peacefulness and familiarity of

his neighborhood, and the regularity of his routine. He reminds himself
that "It is not a bad thing to settle for the Little Way, not the big search

for the big happiness but the sad little happiness of drinks and kisses, a
good little car and a warm deep thigh" (136, emphasis added).
By minimalizing the complex relationships in his life, Binx has more

time to enjoy the mundane responsibilities that guarantee him a place

in society without requiring much thought or rendering him distinctive

in any way. Early in the novel, he claims: "I am a model tenant and a
model citizen and take pleasure in doing all that is expected of me. . . .
It is a pleasure to carry out the duties of a citizen and to receive in return

a receipt or a neat styrene card with one's name on it certifying, so to

speak, one s right to exist" (7). He enjoys answering polls and giving intel-

ligent answers, and though he is not sure if he believes in God or not, he

does not want to admit this because "Who wants to be dead last among
one hundred and eighty million Americans? For, as everyone knows, the
polls report that 98% of Americans believe in God and the remaining 2%

are atheists and agnostics - which leaves not a single percentage point
for a seeker" (14). Nothing gives him more pleasure than appearing on
the first day to pick up his auto tag and brake sticker, and he is careful

to "pay attention to all spot announcements on the radio about mental

health, the seven signs of cancer, and safe driving" (7).
Besides keeping his identification cards in his wallet and storing his

birth certificate and other important documents in a strong box - to

secure his own identity - Binx also subscribes to Consumer Reports and
"as a consequence [owns] a first-class television set, an all but silent air
conditioner and a very long lasting deodorant" (7). Identifying the 1950s
as a decade that for many represented the pursuit of happiness, Kaledin

claims that consumerism made it "easy to be distracted from the Russian menace," as Americans used their postwar wealth to purchase "hula
hoops, Davy Crockett hats, deodorants, and chlorophyll toothpaste, and

Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. ... [A] world that seemed to cater
to every possible taste emerged to satisfy a great variety of needs" (121,
125). In a word, materialism offered security. Americans bought cars and
refrigerators and television sets and, according to Gary Donaldson, "by
i960 there were some 45 million sets in use, and three national networks
broadcasting everything from variety shows to quiz programs to the news

and sporting events" (130). After taking the job managing the Gentilly
office of his uncle's bond brokerage, Binx buys a car that is appropriate

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''6 Southern Literaryjournal

to his occupation and station in life; realizing that "[t]he car itself is all-

important," Binx decides on "a new Dodge sedan, a Red Ram Six. It
was a comfortable, conservative and economical two-door sedan, just the
thing it seemed to me, for a young Gentilly businessman. When I first
slid under the wheel to drive it, it seemed that everything was in order here was I, a healthy young man, a veteran with all his papers in order, a
U.S. citizen driving a very good car" (121). He and his secretary go "spinning along in perfect comfort and with a perfect view of the scenery like

the American couple in the Dodge ad" (121).

Though Binx does take part in consumer culture and enjoys buying
quality products, the concept of making money - of wealth in and of
itself - provides more satisfaction than any other activity. The idea of
profit distracts him from disappointments, as his transaction with Sartalamaccia diverts his attention from his lack of romantic progress with

Sharon; though he claims to love her, Binx nonetheless admits, "Never

never will I understand men who throw over everything for some woman.

The trick, the joy of it, is to prosper on all fronts, enlist money in the

service of love and love in the service of money. As long as I am getting rich, I feel that all is well" (102). When Harold Graebner cheerfully
informs Binx that he has netted over thirty-five thousand for the year,

Binx understands his excitement and claims, "I know what he means.
Every time American Motors jumps two dollars, I feel the same cheerful

and expanding benevolence" (208). While Bartley connects this desire

for financial success as evidence of an "increasingly competitive society where time was money and traditional forms of leisure were pass
and unremunerative" (266), I argue that Binx enjoys making money for
much the same reason he likes Gentilly - because it is satisfying without
requiring much thought or personal investment. Though he had previously perceived the beauty of the Appalachians as heartbreaking and listened to Mahler and felt a sickness in his soul he has given up such pur-

suits because "Money is a better god than beauty" (52). Making money
comes easily to Binx and produces tangible results. To pursue a career in
medicine or science would require one to be "absolutely unaffected by the
singularities of time and place"; whereas Binx's former research partner is

"like one of those scientists in the movies who don't care about anything
but the problem in their heads," Binx quickly becomes bored with such
work and gives up research to spend his vacation "in quest of the spirit
of summer and in the company of an attractive and confused girl from
Bennington who fancied herself a poet" (52). Years later, Binx's lifestyle
is very similar - he spends much of his time pursuing the spirit of sum-

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Cold War Culture in Walker Percy's The Moviegoer 117

mer, going to movies with his secretary and passing weekends at the Gulf

Coast, searching for momentary pleasures that provide little joys rather
than lasting memories.
At the outset of the novel, Binx claims that "there is much to be said

for giving up such grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life
imaginable, a life without the old longings; selling stocks and bonds and
mutual funds; quitting work at five o'clock like everyone else" (9). Along

with his original ambitions, Binx also gives up strong feelings of any
kind. He explains that he has moved out of the Garden District because

"whenever I try to live there, I find myself in a rage during which I

develop strong opinions on a variety of subjects and write letters to editors, then in a depression during which I lie rigid as a stick for hours star-

ing straight up at the plaster medallion in the ceiling of my bedroom"

(6). His life in Gentilly, however, does not involve strong emotions. Binx
does not know how he stands politically, but reads opposing liberal and
conservative journals to experience rage vicariously, as he is "enlivened
by the hatred which one bears the other" (100). He experiences positive
emotions in much the same way, reading articles from Reader's Digest that

are "cute and heart-warming," and listening to "This I Believe," a radio

program in which listeners state their personal philosophies. This program fills him with a sense of affection for society in general, as he finds

pleasure in listening to other listeners' upstanding ethos without espousing any of his own. In fact, there is no point in the novel at which Binx
truly connects himself to any set of principles. When Emily refers to the

southern order she sees passing away, he claims not to know what she is
talking about, though he decides to agree with her for simplicity. When,
during their final conversation, Emily asks "'What do you love? What do
you live by?'" Binx is unable to answer (225).

What Binx loves and what he lives by, more than anything else, are
movies. Though he enjoys making money and likes buying high-quality
products, both serve as temporary distractions; he never personalizes his
belongings or uses them to make his life in Gentilly more comfortable or
permanent. He does not collect personal mementos of memorable places
or events, nor does he reflect too much on his own past; in fact, the only
moments important enough to commit to memory are scenes from film.
"Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives:

the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise, the summer night one
met a lonely girl in Central Park and achieved with her a sweet and natural relationship," Binx narrates. "I too once met a girl in Central Park, but
it is not much to remember. What I remember is the time John Wayne

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ii8 Southern Literaryjournal

killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in

Stagecoach^ and the time the kitten found Orson Welles in the doorway in The Third Man' (7). Explaining his attraction to movies, Binx
claims that it is the movie stars' "particular reality which astounds me"
(17, emphasis added). When he stes William Holden in the French Quar-

ter, Binx watches him walk down Toulouse, "shedding light as he goes.
An aura of heightened reality moves with him and all who fall within it
feel it" (16). Furthermore, after Holden has disappeared, Binx wonders,
"Am I mistaken or has a fog of uneasiness, a thin gas of malaise, settled
on the street? The businessmen hurry back to their offices, the shoppers

to tourists to their hotels. Ah, William Holden, we already need you

again. Already the fabric is wearing thin without you" (18). Philip Simmons and other critics find in Binx's attention to film a critique of popu-

lar culture. Instead, I argue that the movies lend depth to Binx's world;

Canal Street comes alive when William Holden appears and when he
disappears, Binx's melancholy reappears. Much like the political journals
and heartwarming articles, movies provide a way for Binx to experience
the emotions he has removed from his own life, but without the related

anxiety. Binx not only perceives the world on film as somehow more
authentic and memorable than his own, but also adapts his behavior to
imitate certain actors. While working with Sharon, Binx is careful to
"keep a Gregory Peckish sort of distance" towards her; when he receives
a phone call, he "think[s] it over Gregory-Peckishly," and when he realizes she is dating someone else becomes "Gregory-grim" (68, 70, 71). He
speaks of his sexual encounter with Kate in the form of conversation with

Rory Calhoun, wishing he had done "what you do: tuck Debbie in your
bed and, with a show of virtue so victorious as to be ferocious, grab pillow and blanket and take to the living room sofa, there to lie in the dark,

hands clasped behind head, gaze at the ceiling and talk through the open
door of your hopes and dreams" (199). Yet the level of consciousness Binx
finds in film does not translate into his own life - in fact, he is never able
to truly realize sex with Kate in terms of guilt or enjoyment. Rather, the

flesh that has been "until this moment seen through and canceled, rendered null by the cold and fishy eye of the malaise - flesh poor flesh now

at this moment summoned all at once to be all and everything, end all
and be all, the last and only hope - quails and fails" (200). Musing over
how "Christians talk about the horror of sin," Binx realizes "they have
overlooked something. They keep talking as if everyone were a great sinner, when the truth is that nowadays one is hardly up to it. ... The high-

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Cold War Culture in Walker Percy's The Moviegoer 119

est moment of a malaisian's life can be that moment when he manages
to sin like a proper human" (200). Binx is unable to do this, however,
admitting that he and Kate "did very badly and almost did not do at all"
(200). So removed is he from his own emotions and desires that even the
thrill of sin evades him.

According to Terry Newkirk, the basis of Binx's spiritual dilemma

stems from too much religious faith rather than not enough. Newkirk
argues that Binx's profusion of faith eclipses his intellectual ability to per-

ceive God or any other meaning in life. Binx only

appears consciously to minimize, to level off, anything in himself

or his life which might be judged distinctive. We might almost

call him apathetic . . . except that he always behaves with genuine

compassion toward his half-brother Lonnie, his cousin Kate, and

his Aunt Emily, even to placing their needs before his own. Binx's

alienation is not the proud self-exile of those who hold ordinary

people in disdain, but the bemused isolation of the pilgrim (191,
emphasis added).
Yet the novel contains little textual evidence to support the claim that
Binx only appears apathetic, particularly in terms of Binx's family relations. He feels a tenderness for Emily and admits that she has done a lot
for him, but he ultimately ignores the one request she makes - that he
look after Kate and help prevent her from lapsing into another depressive episode. Binx may find no forbidden pleasure in premarital sex with
Kate, but he conversely feels no guilt for sleeping with her the day after
she has attempted suicide, or for allowing her to accompany him to Chicago without telling Emily, who only finds out her daughter's location
when the police discover Kate's car at the train station. Binx never worries that Kate will commit suicide, though she has attempted twice and
commonly mixes alcohol and Phnobarbital; in fact, he returns her bottle
of sleeping pills the day after she has overdosed. A similar situation arises
with Binx's half-brother Lonnie. Binx knows that Lonnie is ill - perhaps

terminally - but he does not visit or keep in touch; when he and Sharon
visit the Smiths' fish camp, he has not seen the family for six months. He

chides his mother for not calling when Lonnie received extreme unction
during a particularly bad bout with a virus, but when the visit is over,

Binx does not think any more about his brother. On the whole, Binx
does not express a great deal of concern for or interest in his family, nor
does he sacrifice his own needs for theirs.

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I2O Southern Literaryjournal

Just as Binx does not spend much time thinking about his family, he
avoids cultural trends based on the future such as marriage and family.

Considering the sudden increase in marriage and childbirth in postwar

America, May speculates that domesticity provided a "feeling of warmth

and security against the cold forces of disruption and alienation. Children would also be a connection to the future and a means of replenishing a world depleted by war deaths. . . . Marrying young and having
lots of babies were ways for Americans to thumb their noses at doomsday predictions" (17-18). In the first chapter of the novel Binx refers to "a

TV play about a nuclear test explosion. Keenan Wynn played a troubled

physicist who had many a bad moment with his conscience" (8). Wynn s
character particularly struggles with the future of his daughter: "'It's my

four-year-old daughter I'm really thinking of,' he told another colleague

and took out a snapshot. 'What kind of future are we building for her?'"

(8). Though Binx speculates about "perhaps one day settling down and
raising a flock of Mareias and Sandras and Lindas of my own," he has
not considered marriage before Kate brings it up and imagines having "a
rosy young Stephanie perched at [his] typewriter" twenty years down the

road (8-9). When Emily asks if Binx does not feel obligated to make a
contribution to society, he replies that he does not, and when Nell Lovell
explains her commitment to leaving the world a bit better than she found

it, Binx finds "nothing to do but shift around as best one can, take care
not to fart, and watch her in a general sort of way" (101). Binx's only concept of the future is a variation of his present lifestyle - staying with Mrs.

Schexnaydre in Gentilly and opening a gas station (16).

At several points in The Moviegoer, Binx mentions his growing con-

viction that everyone around him is dead: "It happens when I speak to
people," he explains, "[i]n the middle of a sentence it will come over me:

yes, beyond a doubt this is death" (99). When he meets Nell Lovell he
cannot help but wonder "why does she talk as if she were dead? Another

forty years to go and dead, dead, dead" (102). Kate claims that Binx
reminds her "of a prisoner in the death house who takes a wry pleasure
in doing things like registering to vote. . . . [his] gaiety and good spirits
have the same death house quality" (193). Yet Binx willingly accepts this
death-in-life existence by consciously replacing his ambitions and emotions with the most ordinary life imaginable; he chooses the path of least
resistance. The promise of disaster serves as a constant in Binx's life - he
preemptively accepts death rather than suffer the anxiety of the nuclear

threat. In many ways, Binx dreads uncertainty and malaise more than

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Cold War Culture in Walker Percy's The Moviegoer 121

catastrophe - the headline that sets his Geiger counter in motion is the
scientific prediction of a future rather than global annihilation - he is
more afraid of not knowing the outcome of what lies ahead than he is of
death itself. In the final chapter of the novel, Binx admits to the possibil-

ity that he has actually hoped for the end of the world, and reasons that
"what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb
will not fall," because then the fabric really will dissolve (228, emphasis

added). So long as the atomic threat exists, there remains the possibility of giving order to chaos through civil defense measures and finding
distractions through consumerism and popular culture. These measures
provide a sense of control over the present and offer a diversion from the

uncertainty of the future. Just as Kate needs the possibility of suicide to

survive - she claims, "'Whenever everything else fails, all I have to do is
consider suicide and in two seconds I'm as cheerful as a nitwit" - Binx
needs the promise of disaster to lend order to his life. The only way he
can continue to live solely in the present is through the conviction that
there is no future.

Binx's preemptive acceptance of death allows him to escape anxiety

by focusing exclusively on the present, yet it also exempts him from rec-

onciling the widening gap between southern heritage and national prog-

ress; in keeping with the cultural mediocrity Emily denounces in her

final speech, Binx is able to "simply default. Pass. Do as one pleases,
shrug, turn on one's heel and leave" (220). Referencing Daniel Joseph
Singal's consideration of modernist thought in the South, Bartley points
to The Moviegoer as evidence of the realization in southern literature that

"unpredictability and uncertainty were inevitable human conditions. In

the brave new existentialist world of southern thought, people searched
for individual identity amid the ruins of community disintegration and
ethical chaos" (26y).4 Therefore "Percy's treatment of existential alien-

ation . . . was evidence of the maturation of the modernist impulse in

the region's literature" and the end of the Southern Renascence (267).
Though The Moviegoer, along with other mid-century southern fiction,
does represent the fruition of the stylistic and thematic innovation begun
by Faulkner twenty years earlier, regional issues in the novel are not sim-

ply relegated to the background.

Philip Simmons argues that Binx views Emily's ethos sardonically,

arguing that while in Faulkner "the ironic irrelevance of such speeches
as Aunt Emily's is the stuff of tragedy, Percy empties their irrelevance of

their tragic force"; speeches such as these are "undercut and ironized in

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122 Southern Literaryjournal

a way that they could not have been in Faulkner" (618-619). This argument would hold true if conversations with Emily did not affect Binx;
yet after their final confrontation Binx experiences his most intense bout

with anxiety and goes in search of Sharon, explaining, "Whenever I take

leave of my aunt after one of her serious talks, I have to find a girl" (228).

Binx does not automatically dismiss Emily's nostalgia or philosophy, nor

does he simply listen to her speeches out of politeness - his ordinary life-

style would be easier if he did. Rather, Emily's backward gazing proves

dangerous to Binx's tenuous hold on his own way of life, much as the
possibility of escaping nuclear annihilation has caused despair. When
Emily concludes that Binx has ignored her teachings, he contradicts her:
"You say that none of what you said ever meant anything to me. That is
not true. On the contrary. I have never forgotten anything you ever said.

In fact I have pondered over it all my life" (224-225).

Since the publication of The Moviegoer, literary critics have considered

the role of existentialism and Christianity in Binx's search and noted the
influence of outside texts such as War and Peace and All The Kings Men.
Yet they have not considered the issues Binx struggles with as a southerner during the first decades of the Cold War. Though Binx appreciates

being an American, he nonetheless conceives of the South as a distinct

cultural entity; in casual conversation, he hears himself or someone else
say: "'Yes, what you say about the hypocrisy of the North is unquestionably true'" (100). He speculates that "the South has produced more highminded women, women of universal sentiments, than any other section

of the country except possibly New England in the last century" and
when he steps off the train in Chicago, Binx is convinced that "Nobody
but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities in the

North" (108, 202). Furthermore, Emily's speeches make sense to Binx in

and of themselves. "She understands the chaos to come," he recognizes

after their first conversation; "It seems so plain when I see it through her

eyes" (54). This realization is difficult to sustain, however, and it is not

even certain at the end of the novel if Binx has discovered religious faith
and accepted his aunt's idea of noblesse oblige or simply continued along
the path of least resistance by conforming to her and Kate's wishes.5
Yet I am not so concerned with whether - or how - Binx comes

to terms with his anxiety, as I am not sure that his dilemma can even
be solved by renewed religious faith or regional loyalty. To my mind,
Percy's most innovative move lies in the interstitial position Binx occupies throughout the novel, trapped as he is for all intents and purposes
between an increasingly objectionable past and an indeterminate future.

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Cold War Culture in Walker Percy's The Moviegoer 123

In his 1990 study of (post-modern southern fiction, Julius Rowan Raper
speaks to this difficulty; while Percy does not fall prey to what Raper
reads as a southern literary tendency to all but humanize a sense of place,
Binx does nevertheless realize that despite contemporary social and political concerns, "loyalty to the place and its people is required. This mixture
of messages - that the place is destructive but demands loyalty - creates

the impossible double bind" (6). The "stone paralysis" Raper associates
with fealty to place is complicated further by Binx's lack of faith in the
future.
Thus, I would argue, the most significant achievement of The Moviegoer is not Binx's journey and ultimate redemption, but the complex posi-

tion he attempts to negotiate throughout the novel and never positively

overcomes. Though he is aware of the Cold War and does take part in
cultural trends in an attempt to avoid nuclear anxiety, his solid anchoring in the present also prevents him from reconciling the southern past

with the uncertain American future. He realizes that Emily's perspective is colored by nostalgia, that she "transfigures everyone. All the stray

bits and pieces of the past, all that is feckless and gray about people, she
pulls together into an unmistakable visage of the heroic or the craven, the

noble or the ignoble" (49). Yet Binx is ultimately unable to disregard this
perspective any more than he is able to protect himself from the ambiguity of the national future. Furthermore, this double vision ultimately
marks the complexity of his character. While Binx may not find a clear-

cut solution to his anxiety or be able to effectively reconcile past and

future with his present lifestyle, he nonetheless represents the difficulty

of the South 's position at mid-century. Though the region did perceptively move toward a cultural reunion with the nation at large, the South
largely retained its own distinctive problems in terms of race and politics,

specifically in collective memory. In many ways, despite its progress, the

South of the 1950s remained the dark and bloody ground of the past, just
as the America of the future appeared oppressively tenuous.
NOTES

1. Paul Boyer discusses this issue in depth in By The Bomb's Early Light,

tracing the trajectory of the scientific community's original strategy to frig

the public into nuclear responsibility (65-76). Such tactics included detail
descriptions of nuclear attacks; Life magazine's November 1945 issue inclu
fictional scenario of nuclear war with corresponding illustrations. Yet when
campaign of fear did not yield the desired results, producing widespread a
rather than vigilance, the fear campaign was abandoned for a more positiv

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124 Southern Literaryjournal

public view of the atom and the public was urged to enjoy the peacetime benefits
of nuclear energy. Allan Winkler also explores the idea of "the peaceful atom"
in Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom (Champaign: U of
Illinois P, 1999).

2. Margot Henriksen discusses this idea at length in Dr. Strangeloves

America, particularly in conjunction with the Berlin crisis of 1961 and the bomb
shelter craze that resulted from that conflict.

3. As late as 1961, the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. William
Libby, insisted that in the event of a nuclear war 90-95% of the population
could be saved by [bomb] shelters" and civil defense measures (Kaledin 117).
4. See Singal's The War Within: From Victorian to Modernist Thought in the

South, 1919-194$ (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1982).

5. Though Percy states in an interview with John Carr that he did intend

a spiritual awakening for Binx, this moment is often overlooked; according

to Percy, "Most people didn't see it at all. In fact, most people will deny it's
in there" (qtd in Lawson & Kramer Conversations 68).
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