Certifying the Neighborhood of the Mind
To start off this blog, I'd like to cite the following passage from Walker Percy's brilliant novel, The Moviegoer : Panic in the Streets with Richard Widmark is playing on Tchoupitoulas Street. The movie was filmed in New Orleans. Richard Widmark is a public health inspector who learns that a culture of cholera bacilli has gotten loose in the city. Kate watches, lips parted and dry. She understands my moviegoing but in her own antic fashion. There is a scene which shows the very neighborhood of the theater. Kate gives me a look-it is understood that we do not speak during the movie. Afterwards in the street, she looks around the neighborhood. "Yes, it is certified now." She refers to a phenomenon of moviegoing which I have called certification. Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire nei...