# Walker Percy: The Moviegoer & Other Novels 1961-1971 (Loa #380): The Moviegoer / The Last Gentleman / Love in the Ruins - Hardcover

by **Walker Percy** (Author), **Paul Elie** (Editor)

**In 1 volume, 3 classic early works by the Southern physician-turned-novelist who galvanized American literature with stories of spiritual searching amid modern angst**

Includes the landmark, National Book Award-winning _The Moviegoer_, in a fully annotation edition

A physician-turned-writer and self-described diagnostician of "the malaise," Percy plumbed the depths of modern American angst and alienation as few other writers have. Now he joins the Library of America series with a volume collecting his first 3 books.

_**The Moviegoer**_ (1961), winner of the 1962 National Book Award for Fiction, is the story of John Bickerson "Binx" Bolling, a New Orleans stockbroker who finds in movies a resplendent reality that lifts him, for a time, out of the mire of everydayness. Binx is a modern-day pilgrim whose progress unfolds in what editor Paul Elie calls "the first work of what we call contemporary American fiction, the earliest novel to render a set of circumstances and an outlook that still feel recognizably ours."

In _**The Last Gentleman**_ (1966), Percy portrays another troubled, searching young man, this time a southerner living in New York whose intermitent amnesia and odd moments of déjà vu lead him to imagine that the world catastrophe everyone fears has already occurred.

A satirical work of speculative fiction, _**Love in the Ruins**_ (1971) introduces lapsed-Catholic psychiatrist Dr. Thomas More, inventor of the lapsometer, a devise that measures the spiritual sickness of a near-apocalyptic America torn apart by the forces of the far right and left.

Rounding out the volume are three short nonfiction pieces by Percy: his speech upon accepting the National Book Award, his special message to readers of the Franklin edition of _The Moviegoer_, and his address to the Publicists' Association of the National Book Awards concerning _Love in the Ruins_.

### Author Biography

Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1916, **Walker Percy** was trained as a physician at Columbia University. After a year's internship at Bellevue Hospital in New York, he contracted tuberculosis and abandoned medicine for a literary career. His first novel, _The Moviegoer_, was awarded the 1962 National Book Award for Fiction. His other books include the novels _The Last Gentleman_, _Love in the Ruins_, and _The Thanatos Syndrome_ as well as the collection of essays _The Message in the Bottle_. Percy died in Covington, Louisiana, in 1990.

**Paul Elie** is a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. His first book, _The Life You Save May Be Your Own_, received the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle award finalist in 2003. He is also the author of _Reinventing Bach_, a finalist for National Book Critics Circle award in 2012. He lives in New York City.

**Number of Pages:** 1000

**Dimensions:** 1.5 x 7.9 x 5.2 IN

**Publication Date:** May 07, 2024

## Details

- **Price:** 45.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
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- Walker Percy: The Moviegoer & Other Novels 1961-1971 (Loa #380): The Moviegoer / The Last Gentleman / Love in the Ruins - Hardcover

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