In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Not just long, long ago, though. I think of Christina Rossetti’s poem every time Christmas approaches and the temperature tumbles. I even used to think of it when I lived in Florida, when Christmas approached and the temperature plunged to something we’d call “brisk” up here. The snow hasn’t fallen, snow on snow, yet, but the spike has been driven down into the bone.

The liturgical question for times like these is, “Cold enough for ya?” to which the liturgical response is… puzzlement. There’s no good answer to “Cold enough for ya?” If you say “Yes,” it’s lame, and if you say “No,” you’re obviously insane. Most of us twist our mouths up (which hurts, because our lips are paralyzed) and try to figure out some kind of clever response. But there is none. Nobody has ever gotten off a good answer to that question. The guy who asked the question has swept all the points. He may be spouting clichés, but at least he hasn’t been struck dumb like you, you poor sap.

Thus do we torment one another on the frozen steppes.



What follows is not a book review. I am not qualified to review this book.

I re-read Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer out of desperation. It was early Sunday evening, and I’d just finished Koontz’ Brother Odd, and had no new books in the house. So I went to the shelf and pulled out The Moviegoer. I’m not a Percy fanatic, for reasons that shall be made clear, but I approve of him in principle, and I very much enjoyed The Thanatos Syndrome, his last novel, in which he condescended to write a thriller for common folk like me, and did a bang-up job.



The Moviegoer is the kind of book that makes me feel like Bertie Wooster, when he assumed that Jeeves’ pocket Spinoza was a murder mystery. The book exists on a level far above my poor powers of comprehension. I think I understand it a little better now than I did the first time I read it, but that’s not saying a whole lot.

The story, set around 1960, concerns Binx Bolling, the narrator, who is a scion of an old Louisiana family. He makes his living selling stocks and bonds, and everyone agrees he was designed for better things. Binx isn’t sure of that, and a career isn’t really his primary concern. What he worries about is what he calls the “malaise” which dogs him. He’s a veteran of the Korean War, and the only time he can remember when he felt really alive was the time just after he was wounded. He goes to movies regularly, not because he wants life to be a movie or can’t tell the difference between the two, but because they distract him from the malaise.

Love seems to be his best hope, but he’s gone through several girlfriends (all of them his secretaries; they were more tolerant of that sort of thing in those days), and although they excite him we can tell he’s not genuinely engaged with them. More serious are his feelings for his distant cousin, Kate, who’s more messed up than Binx is. She takes pills and is suicidal. Eventually Binx runs off with her to Chicago, which sets off a crisis that finally decides how he will live out the rest of his life.

How we’re supposed to feel about that ending, I haven’t a clue.

But people I admire say it’s a great book, and I trust them.