Words and Fragments

I just finished reading The Moveigoer by Walker Percy, and yesterday I wrote that relationships are strange, fragile beasts. There is great deal of fragility in Percy’s book. He writes about fragile people and tenuous relationships, but they are offset by characters who know their own mind and who are determined to steer relationships towards the desired end. Perhaps at its core, though, The Moviegoer is about searching for meaning. Some of the characters recognize the search, one or two are overwhelmed by it, the rest simply can’t be bothered. Those are the ones who are sincere in their niceness.

Percy’s writing is a strange blend, too. At times matter-of-fact and almost crude, it rises like a vine to gorgeous descriptions and succinct sentences that impart more information than many authors can manage in a paragraph.

“I’m going to sit next to the window on the Lake side and put the cape jasmine in my lap?”

“That’s right.”

“And you’ll be thinking of me just that way?”

“That’s right.”

—Walker Percy

The book leaves me with plenty of questions (as a book should), and I’ve even managed to formulate a few answers.