The US writer Walker Percy (1916-1990) is best known for his novels, which, influenced by philosophers like Søren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre, often centre on existentialist themes. His debut and best-known work is The Moviegoer (1961), which won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1962. The novel follows a young man named Jack ‘Binx’ Bolling who, in the wake of the Korean War, wanders the streets of New Orleans, trying to derive meaning from the world around him. In these brief animated excerpts from the book, Bolling discusses having an epiphany that reveals what he calls ‘the search’ – the somewhat enigmatic notion that ‘everydayness is the enemy’ of a meaningful life, in which one pursues deeper truths about their existence.
Video by boyinthebadlands
Narrator: Levi Shiach
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Meaning and the good life
Why Orwell urged his readers to celebrate the spring, cynics be damned
11 minutes
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Making
On the Norwegian coast, a tree is transformed into a boat the old-fashioned way
6 minutes
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Animals and humans
One man’s quest to save an orphaned squirrel, as narrated by David Attenborough
14 minutes
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Computing and artificial intelligence
A future in which ‘artificial scientists’ make discoveries may not be far away
9 minutes
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History
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes
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Earth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
Leading 1950s thinkers on the search for happiness in trying times
29 minutes
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Biology
Butterflies become unrecognisable landscapes when viewed under electron microscopes
4 minutes
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War and peace
Two Ukrainian boys’ summer unfolds just miles from the frontlines
22 minutes