Podcast Summary: Old School with Shilo Brooks Episode: Read This Book Instead of ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ Date: December 4, 2025

Overview

In this episode of Old School, host Shilo Brooks sits down with bestselling author and Daily Stoic founder Ryan Holiday to discuss Walker Percy’s novel The Moviegoer. Together, they explore why this underappreciated, existential Southern novel resonated so deeply with Holiday—and, more broadly, how great books can diagnose and even help remedy the spiritual malaise of modernity. The conversation winds through philosophical themes in Percy’s writing, why old books outlast trends, and what it really means to live a meaningful life in a consumerist age. Throughout, both Brooks and Holiday compare The Moviegoer’s existential themes to more familiar works like Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, while considering how reading itself offers communion with the dead and insight across time.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Painted Porch: A Curated Bookstore (02:01–03:14)

• Ryan Holiday describes his bookstore’s philosophy: only books he and his wife have personally read and loved are sold, making their selection about 1,000 titles (rather than the 10,000 of a typical indie shop).
• Holiday emphasizes the value of older, sometimes underappreciated books that have lasting power:

  “Most bookstores are filled with new books, and most new books come and then go. They don’t have any staying power... I really like books that are old, that are maybe a little less well known. But when you read them, you’re like, how did I not know about this?” [02:45]

Making Time for Reading & The “Superpower” of Books (03:14–06:29)

• Holiday considers reading a kind of job—even before he became a writer—and sees it as a way of “talking with the dead.”
• Holiday:

  “Books are a way to talk to people who are not alive anymore... I tend to think of reading as this, like, superpower, this way of talking to the dead, this way of learning, like, you know, living multiple lives effectively.” [03:49]

• Both dismiss speed reading as a scam; real value comes from thoughtful, deliberate engagement.
• Brooks: “People think it just... if you just say, I’m gonna read more, it’ll just kind of do itself. It doesn’t do itself. You have to figure out a way... There has to be some discipline to this thing.” [05:27]

Summarizing The Moviegoer: Modern Malaise and the Search (06:36–11:07)

• Holiday traces his discovery of The Moviegoer to his early 20s in New Orleans, realizing how deeply it resonated.
• He summarizes the novel:

  “It’s not an action packed novel. It’s a novel about a pilgrimage, but it doesn’t really go anywhere. It’s about this internal search... He’s a young man who has done what everyone has told him his whole life, and he feels very empty. He feels stuck in this life.” [08:00]

• The protagonist Binks is affluent but hollow, medicating with “busyness, with work, with the movies”—a strikingly modern phenomenon.

Everydayness, Existential Dread, and the Search (11:07–15:23)

• Much of the novel’s diagnostic power lies in its meditation on what Binks calls “everydayness”—the deadening routine of modern life.
• Passage from the novel, read by Brooks:

  “When I awake, I awake in the grip of everydayness. Everydayness is the enemy. No search is possible... Only once in my life was the grip of every dayness broken when I lay bleeding in a ditch.” [18:24]

• Holiday ties Percy’s work philosophically to Camus, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard:

  “We credit Camus as being a sort of novelist and philosopher... And I don’t think Walker Percy gets fully enough credit for having done something very similar.” [18:46]

Binks vs. the Older Generation; Alienation and the Unsatisfying “Good Life” (13:27–16:44)

• Binks’s older relatives are sure of purpose—duty, honor, God. The “search” is foreign to them, while Binks is adrift despite having what used to count as a good life.
• Holiday cites a key line:

  “Uncle Jules is the only man I know of whose victory in the world is total and unqualified... It is hard to know why he takes the trouble for the world he lives in.” [14:08]

• Binks distracts himself with fleeting pleasures—jobs, women—but nothing satisfies.

Kate: Parallel Crisis, Gender, and the Limits of Therapy (25:40–29:51)

• Binks’s step-cousin Kate suffers her own version of modern malaise, manifested through dramatic mood swings, trauma, and therapy. After a fatal car crash, she feels more alive, not less; both she and Binks are expected by their parents to “have it all” and be happy, but something’s always missing.
• Holiday:

  “What they both have in common is that they’re sort of letting their parents down. That it’s like, the world is your oyster... Why isn’t this working for you?” [27:10]

• The novel uses car crashes as metaphors for moments of waking, shaking the characters from their stupor.

Religion, Catholicism, and Its Insufficiency (30:18–33:20)

• The story is set during Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday, with Catholic themes throughout.
• Binks is surrounded by religious relatives, but religious or stoic advice doesn’t “land” for him.
• Holiday quotes Binks’s aunt:

  “In this world, goodness is destined to be defeated, but a man must go down fighting. That is the victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man.” [32:14]

The Ending—Submission to Everydayness or Maturity? (33:30–39:41)

• At the end, Binks marries Kate and enters medical school: is this resignation, growth, or settling?
• Holiday:

  “Maybe what he needed to do was get married and be a regular person... maybe that’s kind of the point. There is no grand answer. It’s just this realization that me and this person are both on a similar search and maybe we’re meant to be together.” [34:32]

• Brooks wants “a more profound articulation of the riches of embracing the everydayness... tell me about marriage, tell me about the goodness and fulfillment.” [38:44]
• They note that adult meaning may be less about epiphanies and more about ordinary commitments and acceptance.

Comparing The Moviegoer and The Catcher in the Rye (54:08–56:26)

• Both novels feature anguished male protagonists confronting a sense of emptiness.
• Holiday:

  “The Catcher in the Rye is something you read when you’re a kid and you relate to the fundamental immaturity... The Moviegoer is about an older man... trying to answer, I think, some slightly more substantive questions.” [55:47]

• Holiday recommends The Moviegoer over Salinger for readers ready for the more mature, adult question of meaning.

Why Read Diagnostically? Literature as Mirror and Communion (40:50–44:48)

• The greatest novels may not offer solutions, but by “diagnosing the spiritual malaise” they speak to readers’ real experience.
• For Holiday, that’s the spark that makes someone a lifelong reader:

  “Pick up a novel, especially a novel that’s old, and go, how did it know what I was thinking? How is this nailing an exact experience I have?” [42:07]

The Modern Moviegoer and Social Media (42:32–44:48)

• Brooks and Holiday discuss how the protagonist’s passivity and need to be “the star of the show” parallels today’s Instagram culture, where everyone curates a “movie” of their own life:

  “Living your life as if it is your Instagram grid. It looks exciting and compelling, but it’s profoundly empty and devoid of meaning.” [44:27]

Stoic Perspectives: Accepting Life & Responding to Adversity (45:04–49:08)

• Stoicism’s eaching: focus on your response, not external events; see adversity as opportunity.
• Holiday’s own life:

  “You have to see the things that happen to you in life as an opportunity to practice these virtues. That’s basically what stoic philosophy is.” [46:45]

Rereading as Maturity: The Catcher in the Rye Effect (47:27–49:27)

• Holiday observes that on rereading, books like Catcher in the Rye can feel self-indulgent or overwrought—the angst was universal, the cure is moving into adulthood:

  “What you have to figure out is life... sometimes that inner monologue, that question, the searching almost is itself the problem.” [48:17]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Holiday on reading as communion:

  “Books are a way to talk to people who are not alive anymore... Living multiple lives effectively.” [03:49]

• On the futile search for meaning:

  “He is trying to stave off the existential despair that he feels creeping in.” [09:17]

• On the insidiousness of ‘everydayness’:

  “Everydayness is the enemy. No search is possible... Only once in my life was the grip of every dayness broken when I lay bleeding in a ditch.” (Percy, via Brooks) [18:24]

• Holiday on the inadequacy of stoic or Catholic answers:

  “The prescription was always there, but he thought he was somehow exceptional, or he thought there was something exciting out there. And actually what he needed to do was get married and be a regular person.” [34:32]

• Brooks wanting more from the ending:

  “What I wanted from Percy was a more profound articulation of the riches of embracing the everydayness, which Binks concludes...” [38:44]

• Holiday, on the meaning of adult life:

  “There’s something profound in the pedestrianness of choosing and settling... It’s about him settling into himself and life.” [37:30]

• On literature finding us:

  “Pick up a novel, especially a novel that’s old, and go, how did it know what I was thinking?” [42:07]

• Holiday on Stoicism’s relevance:

  “Stoicism... is the struggling with these things. When you read Meditations, you get the sense that Marcus Aurelius has a temper, that Marcus Aurelius is anxious...” [57:10]

Important Timestamps

• Bookstore philosophy & curation: [02:01–03:14]
• Making time to read & “conversations with the dead”: [03:33–06:29]
• Summarizing The Moviegoer: [08:00–09:52]
• Everydayness & existential malaise: [17:15–20:23]
• Kate’s parallel struggles & car crash motif: [25:40–29:51]
• Catholicism, Stoicism, and meaning: [30:18–33:20]
• The ending—resignation or growth?: [34:32–39:41]
• Comparison: The Moviegoer & Catcher in the Rye: [54:08–56:26]
• What literature offers as a ‘diagnosis’: [41:49–44:27]
• Social media as the new ‘moviegoing’: [42:32–44:27]
• Stoic practical principles: [46:44–47:02]
• Rereading, maturing, and outgrowing angst: [47:27–49:27]

Conclusion & Final Reflections

Shilo Brooks and Ryan Holiday’s conversation reframes The Moviegoer as a crucial, diagnostic novel for contemporary readers—especially men searching for meaning in a world bloated by comfort, distraction, and self-curation. Rather than offering easy answers or climactic epiphanies, Percy’s novel (and the act of reading itself) invites us into deep, ongoing reflection on the shape and substance of a good life. As Holiday argues, books like this aren’t just entertainment or assignments; they are mirrors, companions, and teachers for our own most pressing uncertainties.

Holiday’s parting praise:

“It’s a coming of age novel, but it’s not coming of age from, you know, 15 to 20... It’s coming of age into adulthood... In a world, I think, right now, especially for young men, where something has clearly gone wrong, that’s not happening. And I think Walker Percy is trying to address that.” [53:21]