Monday, February 18, 2008
North Toward Home by Willie Morris
The Southern Writers will discuss North Toward Home by Willie Morris on Saturday, March 1, 1 p.m. at the Greenwood County Library. Copies of the book are available for borrowing at the Greenwood County Library.
Willie Morris faced created and wrote about controversial issues for more than 40 years. While editor of the Daily Texan, the newspaper for the University of Texas, he faced - and wrote about - censorship. During his two year stint at the helm of the Texas Observer, he covered unpopular topics such as the dangerous and unsanitary conditions in nursing homes, illiteracy, and the dishonesty of some of Texas' leading politicians. When he moved to Harper's Magazine, he was the youngest editor-in-chief in the history of the magazine, and he attracted and encouraged writers like
Robert Penn Warren, William Styron, Ralph Ellison, Arthur Miller, Walker Percy, James Dickey, and Norman Mailer.
When he was 33, he wrote his first book, a memoir called North Toward Home. It was a bestseller, received the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award, and was a Literary Guild selection. Morris tried to explain his feelings about his home state in an interview held a year after the book was published. "The feelings are very complicated, but the older I am the more [the South] means to me, the closer the ties."
Although Morris was one of the South's principal spokespersons, he never considered himself a Southern writer. "I am an American writer who happens to come from the South. I've tried to put the South into the larger American perspective."
Willie Morris faced created and wrote about controversial issues for more than 40 years. While editor of the Daily Texan, the newspaper for the University of Texas, he faced - and wrote about - censorship. During his two year stint at the helm of the Texas Observer, he covered unpopular topics such as the dangerous and unsanitary conditions in nursing homes, illiteracy, and the dishonesty of some of Texas' leading politicians. When he moved to Harper's Magazine, he was the youngest editor-in-chief in the history of the magazine, and he attracted and encouraged writers likeRobert Penn Warren, William Styron, Ralph Ellison, Arthur Miller, Walker Percy, James Dickey, and Norman Mailer.
When he was 33, he wrote his first book, a memoir called North Toward Home. It was a bestseller, received the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award, and was a Literary Guild selection. Morris tried to explain his feelings about his home state in an interview held a year after the book was published. "The feelings are very complicated, but the older I am the more [the South] means to me, the closer the ties."
Although Morris was one of the South's principal spokespersons, he never considered himself a Southern writer. "I am an American writer who happens to come from the South. I've tried to put the South into the larger American perspective."
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