Books with author Walker Percy

Winner of the 1962 National Book Award and one of Time magazine’s 100 Best English-Language Novels, Walker Percy’s debut The Moviegoer is an American masterpiece and a classic of Southern literature. Insightful, romantic, and humorous, it is the story of a young man’s search for meaning amid a shallow consumerist landscape. Binx Bolling, a young New Orleans stockbroker, fills his days with movies and casual sex. His life offers him nothing worth retaining; what he treasures are scenes from The Third Man or Stagecoach, not the personal experiences he knows other people hold dear. On the cusp of turning thirty, however, something changes: At Mardi Gras, he embarks on a quest for some form of authentic experience. The consequences of Binx’s quest, on both himself and his unstable cousin Kate, prove outrageous, absurd, moving, and indelible.Featuring an afterword by Paul Elie, this new edition of The Moviegoer cements Walker Percy’s place as a giant of American literature.

National Book Award Finalist: A lonely Southerner forges a surprising bond with a New York family in this “brilliant” novel by the author of The Moviegoer (Time). Will Barrett has never felt at peace. After moving from his native South to New York City, Will’s most meaningful human connections come through the lens of a telescope in Central Park, from which he views the comings and goings of the eccentric Vaught family. But Will’s days as a spectator end when he meets the Vaught patriarch and accepts a job in the Mississippi Delta as caretaker for the family’s ailing son, Jamie. Once there, he is confronted not only by his personal demons, but also his growing love for Jamie’s sister, Kitty, and a deepening relationship with the Vaught family that will teach him the true meaning of home.

Winner of the 1961 National Book AwardThe dazzling novel that established Walker Percy as one of the major voices in Southern literature is now available for the first time in Vintage paperback.The Moviegoer is Binx Bolling, a young New Orleans stockbroker who surveys the world with the detached gaze of a Bourbon Street dandy even as he yearns for a spiritual redemption he cannot bring himself to believe in. On the eve of his thirtieth birthday, he occupies himself dallying with his secretaries and going to movies, which provide him with the "treasurable moments" absent from his real life. But one fateful Mardi Gras, Binx embarks on a hare-brained quest that outrages his family, endangers his fragile cousin Kate, and sends him reeling through the chaos of New Orleans' French Quarter. Wry and wrenching, rich in irony and romance, The Moviegoer is a genuine American classic.

Williston Bibb Barrett is the last gentleman, a twenty-five-year-old wanderer from the South living in New York City with no plans for the future and detached roots from his past. The simple purchase of a telescope one summer day changes his life. For while searching for an elusive peregrine falcon in Central Park, Will accidentally spots a beautiful young woman and falls madly and hopelessly in love. And so begins the last gentleman's quest for home, identity, and the meaning of contemporary life.

Winner of the 1961 National Book AwardThe dazzling novel that established Walker Percy as one of the major voices in Southern literature is now available for the first time in Vintage paperback.The Moviegoer is Binx Bolling, a young New Orleans stockbroker who surveys the world with the detached gaze of a Bourbon Street dandy even as he yearns for a spiritual redemption he cannot bring himself to believe in. On the eve of his thirtieth birthday, he occupies himself dallying with his secretaries and going to movies, which provide him with the "treasurable moments" absent from his real life. But one fateful Mardi Gras, Binx embarks on a hare-brained quest that outrages his family, endangers his fragile cousin Kate, and sends him reeling through the chaos of New Orleans' French Quarter. Wry and wrenching, rich in irony and romance, The Moviegoer is a genuine American classic.

Winner of the 1961 National Book AwardThe dazzling novel that established Walker Percy as one of the major voices in Southern literature is now available for the first time in Vintage paperback.The Moviegoer is Binx Bolling, a young New Orleans stockbroker who surveys the world with the detached gaze of a Bourbon Street dandy even as he yearns for a spiritual redemption he cannot bring himself to believe in. On the eve of his thirtieth birthday, he occupies himself dallying with his secretaries and going to movies, which provide him with the "treasurable moments" absent from his real life. But one fateful Mardi Gras, Binx embarks on a hare-brained quest that outrages his family, endangers his fragile cousin Kate, and sends him reeling through the chaos of New Orleans' French Quarter. Wry and wrenching, rich in irony and romance, The Moviegoer is a genuine American classic.

"A curious, tender book, provocatively and intelligently imagined."SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLEBinx Bolling is s small-time stockbroker who lives quietly in suburban New Orleans, pursuing an interest in the movies, affairs with his secretaries, and living out his days. But soon he finds himself on a "search" for something more important, something that will measure and mark and hold his life forever against the passage of time. And one fateful Mardi Gras week, he finds it in a way, and with a woman, he would never have expected...."A brilliant novel...Percy touches the rim of so many human mysteries."HARPER'SFrom the author of THE THANATOS SYNDROME.

"The Last Gentleman is lovely and brilliant...a highly whimsical kind of picaresque tale that puts one in mind of both Faulkner and Camus," wrote Joyce Carol Oates when Walker Percy's novel was first published in 1966. Williston Bibb Barrett, the last gentleman of the story, is a displaced Southerner who has dropped out of Princeton owing to a nervous condition that his psychoanalyst associates with an inability to fit into groups. While living in New York City, our wayfarer-hero falls in love with a young woman he spies through a telescope...and sets out on a cross-country odyssey in search of home, identity, and the meaning of contemporary life. "The Last Gentleman is a fantastically intuitive report on how America feels to the touch," said Wilfrid Sheed. "Page-for-page and line-for-line this is certainly one of the best-written books in recent memory. As a Southern writer, Percy inherits the remains of a sonorous musical language. But beyond that, his unique point of view forms beautiful sentences like a diamond cutting glass." Alfred Kazin agreed: "Percy is a natural writer, downright, subtle, mischievous . . . a philosopher among novelists." With a new Introduction by Robert Coles.The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with afford-able hardbound editions of impor-tant works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoringas its emblem the running torch-bearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.