The Moviegoer

It's been over 50 years since Percy's debut novel was the surprise winner of the National Book Award, and—gulp—it's been about 30 years since I first fell in love with its sprightly tale of despair, Gulf Coast drives, and William Holden. Is it only a young person's book (young man's, really)? A little bit, surely, but when I read it again recently after many years, something about its humor, laid so delicately over the yawning pit of possible misery we all navigate, gave it the same power I had felt in it the first time.