Conversations with Wright Morris


Book Description

This book is an attempt to approach the work of a leading American novelist from both sides of the looking-glass?from the opposite, but not necessarily opposing, points of view of the writer/creator and the reader/critic. In 1975, while the author was visiting professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, several scholar-critics (among them John W. Aldridge, Wayne C. Booth, and David Madden) were invited to speak about his craft and artistic aims and principles and to record conversations with him about issues growing from their addresses. Since Morris is also an important photographer, facets of his achievement in this field were considered by Peter C. Bunnell. In addition to four conversations, three lectures, and a portfolio of twelve photographs, this volume includes an essay by Wright Morris and a bibliography compiled by Robert L. Boyce.




Wright Morris Territory


Book Description

Best known for his novels, including the National Book Award winners The Field of Vision and Plains Song, Nebraska-born author Wright Morris has long been regarded as one of America's most gifted writers. This volume, culling work from the photo-text books, criticism, and numerous short stories frequently overlooked among his oeuvre, reflects the true breadth of this quintessentially American artist's talents. As such, it offers a fascinating overview of Morris's inspiring accomplishments in multiple genres. While embracing the prose for which Morris is justly famous, this treasury of work also highlights his photography and other literary genres, including hard-to-find stories first published in magazines, some of which were early drafts of future novels. Edited by Morris's long-time friend David Madden, this one-of-a-kind collection captures a man of multifarious genius. Replete with interviews, photography, a biographical sketch, suggestions for further reading, and Morris's inimitable writing, this compendium is an indispensable resource for those who wish to understand and appreciate the brilliance and virtuosity of one of America's true talents.




The Novels of Wright Morris


Book Description

Spans the whole of Morris's career and explores the evolution of his writings, noting his contrasting debts to D.H. Lawrence and Henry James.




Haunted: the Strange and Profound Art of Wright Morris


Book Description

He skipped his senior year at college to go to Europe, where he was befriended by a Countess, was kept a prisoner in a castle by a mad Count, and almost met Mussoliniclose enough to land him in an Italian jail. Wright Morris returned to the States and went on to become probably the most experimental American novelist of the last century. He ended up with almost every award and prize that a novelist can earn, and his work was praised over and over again by many of our most prestigious critics. In addition to publishing thirty-four books, he was also an eminent photographer. He not only had his work shown in numerous museums and galleries around the country, but his photographs were also displayed throughout five photo-text booksa form that he pioneered.




Ceremony in Lone Tree


Book Description

Although Tom Scanlon would just as soon spend it alone, his ninetieth birthday becomes the occasion for a family gathering in the Midwestern town of Lone Tree. The unlikely celebrants take this opportunity to reconceive their visions of past, future, and family in their own grotesque and ultimately liberating ways. Ceremony in Lone Tree is a spare and beautiful work by one of America's great postwar authors.




Plains Song for Female Voices


Book Description

"This narrative, which on its surface is an account of three generations of women (and a few of their men) living on the plains of Nebraska ... only gets more strange and beautiful the more you look at it, like a photograph that slowly reveals its truth under very close inspection."--Introduction, p. [v].




The Field of Vision


Book Description

"Wright Morris seems to me the most important novelist of the American middle generation. Through a large body of work -which, unaccountably, has yet to receive the wide attention it deserves--Mr. Morris has adhered to standards which we have come to identify as those of the most serious literary art. His novel The Field of Vision brilliantly climaxes his most richly creative period. It is a work of permanent significance and relevance to those who cannot be content with less than a full effort to cope with the symbolic possibilities of the human condition at the present time."--John W. Aldridge




Fanny Wright


Book Description

Frances Wright dared to take Thomas Jefferson seriously when he wrote, ' All men are created equal, ' and to assume that 'men' meant 'women' as well. Born in Scotland in 1795, she came to the United States in 1818, and spent half her adult life here, she died in Ohio in 1852, ending a lifetime devoted to promoting equality among the races and the sexes. The Marquis de Lafayette called her his adored Fanny and paid court so openly that he scandalized even his own family. The first woman to act publicly to oppose slavery. The pampered daughter of a highly stratified class society, she cast her lot with the working people, risking her health, her fortune, and her good name to realize the promise of the Declaration of Independence. With a boldness rare in women of her day, she attacked in print and in lecture halls throughout the country an economic system that allowed not only black slavery in the South but what she called wage slavery in the North. With the exception perhaps of Walt Whitman, she wrote more powerfully of sexual experience than any other American the nineteenth century.




Wright Morris Revisited


Book Description