The Moviegoer, or: Who the F**k is Rory? And also: Hail Hail Rock n' Roll

REMEMBER:
1. I’m not a genius. I just like books.
2. I can be a little off-task at times.
3. I’m not exactly topical.
4. I never claimed to have good taste.

Okay, if I can't maintain order in my freaking life I'm not sure how I expected to be able to blog with some kind of pattern or regularity. I mean, shit, I'm the guy who's never been successfully medicated for his ADD, not because the drugs didn't work but because I couldn't remember to take them in the first place. So here's the deal: I'll blog when I can and you'll like it.

In all fairness it's been a hectic month. I spent ten days of it out of town and I'd like to tell you about that before I get down to the bookishness. Is that okay?

Well, I know you probably don't care, but while I was out of town I lived up to my highest musical aspiration. Since I can't sing, or play any instruments, not even the drums, that can mean only one thing. You guessed it: I was a roadie. I went on tour with a local band called the Antique Curtains and it was probably (no shit) as much fun as I've ever had. If that sounds lame, well, maybe it is, but I don't care. It's the fucking truth.

We swung northeast from Memphis, playing in Asheville, Chapel Hill, Baltimore, Philadelphia and NYC. With the exception of Asheville I'd never been to any of these places before. I loved New York, and I wanted New York to love me, but the Gods intervened. As soon as I entered the city it seemed like what little coolness I can lay claim to changed its name and moved to France. I tripped, I spilled drinks on myself, I got caught in subway doors and turnstiles. In short, if it was uncool, if it was clumsy, if it was painfully bumpkinish, I did it.

Ah well, that's what I get for trying to impress people. To my credit I developed a whole new profession while on the tour; I'm calling it Rock n' Roll Road Sherpa. It all came about as a result of something I saw in Gigantic (a documentary on They Might Be Giants, it's good, check it out) and it was this: at one point John Linnell talks about the way in which, after they've been on the road for a while, he begins to resent the way John Flansberg breathes. That scared the hell out of me.

Now, it really shouldn't have, the Curtains are about the nicest freaking human beings you ever met in your life. But this was, after all, my vacation, and I didn't want any Bad Times. I wasn't going to risk it (I like breathing, you see, and do it often). I decided the best way to defeat any potential on-tour bad feelings was to ensure that everything went as smoothly as was humanly possible. To bring this about I had to transcend mere manager-dom, I had to become the Road Sherpa. A roadie, you see, is a drunk guy in a sleeveless teeshirt who moves amps from one place to another, a manager (at least at the Curtains-scale) is usually more or less the same but has sleeves and a map and might think he's too good to move amps. The Road Sherpa, however, is a guy with sleeves and only a mild buzz on, who has cough drops, mapquest printouts, TWO flashlights, internet access, a pen and paper (just in case anyone ever says "Britton, could you take a note?") earplugs, change for the meter, TP, Aleve, and a camera always at the ready. I was the all-purpose, go-to, swiss army human and it felt good. The Sherpa moves amps as well.

We all had a fucking awesome time, but I won't go into it. This isn't a music blog, after all. I want to talk about Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, to the best of my feeble ability.

I would really like to tell you what The Moviegoer was about but I'm afraid I can't really say. This is a problem I frequently have after reading one of the Great Literary Novels; a feeling that I failed to interact with the book at its deepest level of meaning.

The Brothers Karamazov was the first, and still the ultimate, book to cause that feeling inside me. I've tried, and failed, to read this book probably five times. It's my Everest. Maybe you know the feeling that causes me to always throw up my hands in despair: it comes on as you're reading, and enjoying, a novel. You can be moved by its beauty, and challenged by its ideas. You can love its characters like family. But eventually you become vaguely aware of all the ideas that are flying right over your head, and all the currents of meaning that flow beneath the surface, undeniably there but beyond your reach, and you understand that these ideas, the ones you're failing to grasp, are what make the book what it is. You understand that really all you're grasping is the plot, and with a book like Karamazov that's kind of like going to the beach and doing no more than standing around in water wings, letting the surf wet your feet. And you give up, pretty disgusted with yourself for being such a clod.

Well The Moviegoer held a similar struggle for me. It follows some events in the life of Binx Bolling, a seller of mutual funds, an attender of movies, a perpetually distracted observer of life and also, ESPECIALLY, of his own feelings. He constantly dissects his social interactions, and the random march of his own thoughts. He theorizes on where "malaise" comes from, and adopts strategies for dealing with it; a mild car wreck, for instance, proves a useful means of shooing off malaise.

He's weird.

Towards the beginning of the novel, he declares himself to be on a search for...well, I never was quite clear on that point. He refers to this Search throughout the whole rest of the novel. He Searches as he chases his secretary, as he conducts his business, as he visits his family members, as he reflects and reflects and reflects and REFLECTS on the events of his life.

In the end, this book was about an oddball pondering his own oddness, and I felt rather shut out of the whole thing. I managed to find some liking for Binx, and I took some interest in the concrete actions he took in his life, such as when he defies his overbearing matriarch of an aunt, and runs off with his step-cousin Kate. She's a maladjusted weirdo no less than Binx, and I was glad they found each other. But their constant introspection was, I thought, fairly ho-hum.

With the The Moviegoer I suspect that you either get it or you don't. I didn't. This is probably my failing more than Walker Percy's. If you're like me, and you don't have the ability to connect with Binx's personal philosophy, and statements like "How could I deal with ten thousand people's personal rays" leave you going "hmm?", here's what you'll carry away from a reading of this novel: a little good dialogue, some moments of real pathos (such as Binx's beautiful connection with his crippled half-brother), and a bunch of really good descriptions of New Orleans in its glory days.

Also (and this is a moment in which I know full well I'm leaving myself wide open to a devastating broadside from anyone who loves this book, and who might have given it a more careful reading than I did) who the fuck is Rory? About two thirds of the way into the book, Binx (who has been narrating in a fairly straightforward first person voice) suddenly starts talking to this guy named Rory. "I tell you what, Rory, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I wouldn't have believed it", stuff like that. What? Calling all nerds, someone make this make sense to me.