More than fifty years after its publication, Walker Percy's National Book Award Winner, The Moviegoer, still confronts, comforts, and enlightens generations of readers. This collection of twelve new essays, edited and introduced by Jennifer Levasseur and Mary A. McCay, emphasize the evolving significance of this seminal, New Orleans novel. Authors' consider the text with diverse perspectives, drawing from philosophy, theology, disability theory, contemporary music and literature, social media, and film studies.
Jay Tolson opens the volume with reflections on rereading the novel on a Kindle decades after writing his important biography of Percy. H. Collin Messer, Montserrat Gin�s, Jessica Hooten Wilson, and Brian Jobe follow with illuminating essays analyzing Percy's influences, from St. Augustine and Cervantes to Heidegger and Dostoevsky. Jonathan Potter and Read Mercer Schuchardt, Mary A. McCay, Matthew Luter, and Dorian Speed delve into the novel's significance to cinema, including an exhaustive guide to its film references, a meditation on Binx Bolling as a director of his existence, and the semiotics of celebrity. Brent Walter Cline and Robert Bolton, Michael Kobre, and L. Lamar Nisly present a roadmap for Bolling's inward journey, exploring a variety of elements from the role of the broken body to the spiritual connection to Bruce Springsteen lyrics.
Walker Percy's The Moviegoer at Fifty is the first critical work devoted solely to the author's debut novel. Coinciding with the centenary of Percy's birth, this collection invites both new and veteran readers to enjoy The Moviegoer with fresh perspectives that underscore its lasting relevance.

Author: Jennifer Levasseur
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 04/11/2016
Pages: 200
Weight: 0.88lbs
Size: 8.83h x 5.54w x 0.86d
ISBN: 9780807162736

About the Author

Mary A. McCay, Professor Emerita of English, Loyola University, was awarded a Fulbright Professorship to the U. K. and one to Japan. She has published several books and scholarly articles, and her creative work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Providence Journal, New Orleans Review, and Xavier Review, among other publications.

Louisianan Jennifer Levasseur received her PhD from University of Wollongong and now resides in Australia. A Voting Member of the National Book Critics Circle, she is editor of Conversations with James Salter and Novel Voices and has published in Tin House, Glimmer Train, Brick, The Kenyon Review, and newspapers in the United States and Australia.