“To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.” Binx Bolling, The Moviegoer

I’m famous for starting out on creative or quasi-intellectual journeys with the best of intentions, only to abandon them to follow a newer, shinier object of intellectual curiosity, and so on and so forth. My interests are wide but shallow, each pulling me into its orbit only to quickly recede and be replaced. There’s no guarantee that’s not going to happen here either. But, like all those other journeys, I head out on this one with sincerity and determination — and a bit of hope too.

I decided to launch this new effort a few weeks ago when I opened the trunk of my car and found my son Emmet’s paperback copy of Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, an odd book for a 21st century college freshman to be reading in the first place (more on that later). He left it behind when he headed back to college at The New School for his spring semester, a sad day for me and my wife Abby and daughter Zoe. Emmet had the book in the first place because my friend Rob, who went to college with me in New Orleans and lives in New York City, gave it to him last fall.

I’ve read and admired a good bit of Percy’s body work, but not in recent years. My first thought in seeing that book sitting in the trunk was: This is a sign that I should re-read this book. I first read it at about the same age Emmet is now because I wanted to be a Southern writer, and so I read all the books that any respectable would-be Southern writer should read. I understood vaguely what the author was trying to do, but can’t say that the book’s message held all that much import for me at the time. My friend Don, a Louisiana-based playwright, thinks you need to be at least 40 to tap into the wisdom of The Moviegoer.

My initial thought that I should re-read one book has morphed into something more grand (or grandiose, as the case may be), a “pilgrimage” of sorts to use a word often associated with the author in question. I’ve decided to read/re-read all of Walker Percy’s books over the course of the next year, and make some notes on this blog about what I learn along the way. As with previous efforts, I am hoping that these posts will offer a way to jumpstart my creative juices and revive the intellectual curiosity and engagement of my yesteryears.

So that’s the plan — to read the following books over the next 12 months, with my tentative deadline for completion being March 1, 2020:

The Moviegoer
The Last Gentleman
Love in the Ruins
Message in the Bottle
Lancelot
The Second Coming
Lost in the Cosmos
The Thanatos Syndrome
Signposts in a Strange Land
The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy

My goal for these notes about my reading adventure is to post to this blog about once a week with thoughts about what I am learning along the way. Emmet got another copy of The Moviegoer at the Strand, and we are reading this first book together. I am hoping that he will provide some commentary here as well.

I started this blog platform more than two years ago with the vague notion of writing about being a Southern exile and about struggling with anxiety and, of course, about food. I wrote two blog posts, and got distracted (see my opening sentence). What better way to revive this false start than to write about renewing my relationship with a Southern author who more than any other addressed what it means to be Southern and to be nervous and to be lost in the cosmos of these crazy times.

Inspired by the understated adventures of Binx Bolling, hero of The Moviegoer, a stock and bond broker who lives in Gentilly and stands at the gate defending those great Western values of faith, wisdom and justice, against the marauding threat of everydayness, here goes nothing….