Wright Morris's "Nebraska Trilogy" (1946-49) embodies his attempt to capture and come to terms with his past. According to David Madden, in his study Wright Morris, "In The Inhabitants a picture collection] the emphasis is on the artifacts inhabited and on the land; in The Home Place narrative and pictures], on the inhabitants themselves; and in The World in the Attic, on what the land and the people signify to one man, Clyde Muncy, writer and self-exiled Nebraskan. . . . What was only suggested to Muncy in The Home Place is further developed, although not entirely resolved, in The World in...

"When I was a boy of eight in the Platte Valley of Nebraska, my father made the first of the many moves that would prove to be of interest to a future writer of fiction. They were east to Chicago, the point on the map where all the lines pointed. Almost twenty years would pass before I would seek to recapture the past that I had experienced. The Works of Loveis the first fruit of that effort, and the linchpin in my novels concerned with the plains. The reader who has read The Home Place or The Field of Vision will find in this novel the crux of an experience I frequently return to but never...

"I have read and admired all of Morris's books, and there is no doubt in my mind that he is one of the most truly original of contemporary writers. His originality, his absolutely individual way of seeing and feeling, permeates Man and Boy, giving it its humor and wisdom."--Granville Hicks. "For a long time I have not read a novel that gave me so much pleasure in original talent. Morris] speaks completely in his own voice, a fascinating voice. He conveys the quality of the American gothic as no other writer I know has done."--Mark Schorer. "Mother, Mr. Morris seems to say in Man and Boy],...

Winner of the National Book Award "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...

"A wryly humorous chronicle of an odyssey which The Kid--the unnamed adolescent narrator--and his Uncle Dudley make across the country in an old Marmon touring car with seven men who share expenses. The events occur in the mid-1920s, 'the Homeric phase of the gas buggy era.' . . . In the context of American fictional heritage, the passengers float down the Big Muddy on the raft, refugees from the world of Aunt Sally. Dudley and The Kid, and even the car, are archetypes--the Uncle one had, or wishes on had had; the Huck Finn some were and all would like to have been; and the car one would most...

In this novel, set in 1952 but intermingling the past and present, the protagonist reviews the effects of the Jazz Age on himself and a friend, recalling their exploits in college, in Paris, and in love. The result is the picture of a generation. "A wonderful novel. It has power, meaning, freshness, vitality, and style."--Library Journal. "The execution is brilliant. A master of the comic and deeply sensitive to the most inarticulate of American sorrows, Morris's work is moving as only truly original work can be."--New York Times. "With increasing skill and insight, the serious (not solemn)...

When it first appeared in 1945, this novel disconcerted a good many critics: Agee Ward, "the man who was there" of the title, ostensibly is the man who is not there--a member of the armed forces in World War II, he has been reported missing in action. Yet as we are shown various views of Agee and how he continues to affect the lives of others--among them Grandma Herkimer and Private Reagan, who knew him in boyhood; Peter Spavic and Mrs. Krickbaum, who refuse to believe that he is missing; Miss Gussie Newcomb, his landlady and (to her surprise) his heir--we come to perceive what Agee had in...

"'Judge' Howard Potter, one of the most respected and influential citizens of a suburban town outside of Philadelphia, lies dead after a long and wearying illness. He is survived by the five people who knew him best and whose lives were deeply influenced by him. . . .Through the thoughts and reminiscences of these five very different people Mr. Morris tells his story. . . . His] writing is occasionally obscure but always absorbing. He does not, like so many writers, hover omnisciently over his characters. He prefers to project himself into their innermost and very human thoughts and...

"In the space of one day, Jubal E. Gainer, high school dropout and draft dodger, manages to rack up an impressive array of crimes. . . . He steals a friend's motorcycle, rapes a simple-minded spinster, mugs a pixyish professor, and stabs an obese visionary who runs a surplus store. He then waits out an Indiana twister and goes his way, leaving as much wreckage in his path as the twister itself."--Library Journal. "In Orbit is a short novel, full of action, and the seriousness can mostly be found between the lines. There] one can see against what Jubal Gainer's rebellion, thoughtless and...

Friday, November 22, 1963, in Escondido, California, begins with the discovery of an infant in the adoption basket at the local animal pound. This calculated effort to shock the natives is silenced by the news from Dallas of an event calculated to shock the world. One Day is concerned with the way these two events are related and with the time that begins when conventional time seems to have stopped. The events of this day, both comical and horrifying, make the commonplace seem strange, and the strange familiar. To accommodate the present, the past must be reshuffled, and events accounted for...