Walker Percy's The Moviegoer was the rather unexpected National Book Award winner in 1961. His last gentleman suffers from the same contemporary malaise — a kind of dislocation. He is Bill Barrett, an amiable, anomalous young man from an old Southern family. He had gone North to find himself equally homeless and aimless. Some of this is externalized by the fact that he has "fugue states," amnestic spells, as well as moments of deja vu. They are all just symptomatic of his ambiguity and detachment. Whereas his moviegoer prowled, Bill is a "watcher, a listener and a wanderer." In moments of greater clarity or resolution he thinks about marrying Kitty and settling for the happy, useful life. Meantime he becomes involved, insofar as he can, with Kitty's family, the Vaughts: her predatory sister-in-law Rita; her younger brother, Jaimie, who is dying of leukemia; and Sutter Vaught, Rita's husband, a doctor whose casebook provides some savage soundings on civilization— religion, race, concupiscence, sin, etc. These give a harder satiric edge to the book than was achieved in the earlier one; so does the final scene, the death watch over Jaimie, which is certainly powerful. But there are times when following Walker Percy is a little like trying to catch your shadow. On the other hand he writes about his elusive young man and his elliptical world in such matter of fact prose and with seemingly random details which are actually, intentionally, a commentary on modern life and all its flimsy props. This gives the book much of its contrast and interest.... Attention seems assured if agreement over some of the implications less likely.
Pub Date: June 15, 1966
ISBN: 0312243081
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1966
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
