The Moviegoer (Panther Books) (Paladin Books) (FSG Classics)

by Walker Percy

[jamiereadthis]

I went back to read the chapter I most loved, and… and… oh. Me with my polyamorous (see, I’ve been reading Nabokov too) compulsion of having so many books open at one time had inserted Breece Pancake’s story “In The Dry” right into the narrative line, Ottie for Jack, Sheila for Kate.*

So, can I still thoroughly enjoy a novel where the best part of it wasn’t even a part of it at all? Yes, and for the lines like this that do belong to it: “Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North.”

*In my defense, the characters were strikingly similar, (an accident, an aunt), but really the only way this happened is that— with my habit of marrying each story to the font and size and leading of the lines— the two books were identically typeset. Yipes.