Were you to accompany Binx Bolling to a movie, you'd be carted off to some out-of-the-way cinema. Once there, you'd witness his small talk with the cashier or the manager, him asking after their well-being and goings-on, and maybe his inquiring about the film itself. Not the movie: The actual reel of film. In short, you'd get a sort of show before the show. Bolling, protagonist of Walker Percy's 1961 book The Moviegoer, does all this in hopes of guaranteeing his own authenticity. He figures anyone can go see the 7 o'clock show. And being anyone is exactly what he wants to avoid.
Bolling differentiates his experience--and by extension, himself--by growing it from a simple routine act to one enmeshed in a variety of happenings. If he should he go to the 7 o'clock show, Bolling must learn that the reel of celluloid winding away overhead isn't just any old piece of celluloid, that the ticket-taker isn't just any ticket-taker. It seems anonymity is contagious.
This interested me, so I began to think of the result of living such a perspective. He can look back and relate a memory. And what is memory? The result of defining the Then from the Now. Then and Now: A duality fabricated or correctly perceived? At any given time either concept may be privileged: The good old days or Carpe Diem?
But are they really different? Isn't the event still happening? Why must it be happening immediately in front of you to be "happening"?
