The Moviegoer

By Walker Percy

1961

Literary fiction

Walker Percy's debut novel, set in 1950s New Orleans during the week before Mardi Gras. Binx Bolling, a wealthy young stockbroker drifting through a malaise of secretaries, movies, and Sunbelt comforts, embarks on what he calls "the search" — a half-articulated quest to escape "the everydayness" and locate meaning in a life that looks, from the outside, suspiciously complete. A foundational text of American existentialist fiction, deeply marked by Percy's reading of Kierkegaard, the novel won the 1962 National Book Award in a famously upset decision.