Bild på författaren.

Wright Morris (1910–1998)

Författare till Plains Song: For Female Voices

52+ verk 1,301 medlemmar 13 recensioner 5 favoritmärkta

Om författaren

Early in his career, Wright Morris was called by Mark Schorer "probably the most original young novelist writing in the United States." In 1968 Leon Howard wrote: "Wright Morris has been the most consistently original of American novelists for a quarter of a century." Since then, the University of visa mer Nebraska Press has brought out new editions of his first 17 novels. Although both critical and popular appreciation of his work continues to grow slowly, there is a general consensus that he ranks high among contemporary American novelists. Born in Central City, Nebraska, the Lone Tree of his fiction, Morris attended Pomona College in California and had an academic career chiefly at San Francisco State University until his retirement in 1975. Nebraska and California have provided the main settings for his work, but he has traveled widely here and abroad, and some of his best novels relate the picaresque odysseys made by engaging characters. For instance, his first novel, My Uncle Dudley (1942), is a fictionalized account of a trip to California with his father that motherless Morris made as a youth. When almost 30 years later Morris wrote about another east-to-west journey in Fire Sermon (1971), in which an old man and a boy encounter three young hippies, Granville Hicks called the book "simon-pure, dyed-in-the-wool honest-to-God Wright Morris of the very highest grade" (N.Y. Times). The Field of Vision (1956), which deals with "innocents abroad in Mexico," won the National Book Award for fiction in 1957 and ranks behind only Ceremony in Lone Tree (1960) as his most successful novel.Ceremony involves four generations at a family reunion as Morris ingeniously reconciles the past, present, and future in a story that avoids both nostalgia and the disillusionment of the you-can't-go-home-again theme that appears quite often in his other fiction. Critics attempting to define Morris's originality have emphasized his distinctive style---a Faulkner-like ability to draw characters that come alive as individuals, his cross-country Americanness, and a strong sense of place that may owe something to Morris's considerable gifts as a photographer. Morris's fine feeling for the conjunction of time and place is evident in his several books of photographs with text: The Inhabitants (1946), The Home Place (1948), God's Country and My People (1968), Photographs and Words, and Picture America (1982). Other nonfiction includes a collection of essays on contemporary social and political problems---A Bill of Rites, a Bill of Wrongs, a Bill of Goods (1967)---and two widely praised volumes of criticism---The Territory Ahead: Critical Iinterpretations in American Literature (1958) and Earthly Delights, Unearthly Adornments: American Writers as Image Makers. Two volumes of personal memoirs are Will's Boy (1981) and Solo: An American Dreamer in Europe, 1933--1934 (1983). (Bowker Author Biography) Writer and photographer Wright Morris was born in Central City, Nebraska on January 6, 1910. He was an English professor at San Francisco State College from 1963 - 1975. He wrote novels and photo-text books, which juxtapose photographs with fictional text. He won numerous awards including the 1956 National Book Award for The Field of Vision and the 1981 American Book Award for Fiction for Plains Song: For Female Voices. He died on April 25, 1998. (Bowker Author Biography) visa färre

Inkluderar namnet: Wright Morris

Verk av Wright Morris

Plains Song: For Female Voices (1980) 215 exemplar
The Home Place (1948) 102 exemplar
The Field of Vision (1956) 92 exemplar
Ceremony in Lone Tree (1960) 66 exemplar
Love Among the Cannibals (1957) 52 exemplar
Will's Boy: A Memoir (1981) 39 exemplar
Fire Sermon (1971) 33 exemplar
God's Country and My People (1968) 32 exemplar
The Inhabitants (1656) 31 exemplar
The works of love (1605) 28 exemplar
In Orbit (1968) 26 exemplar
The Fork River Space Project (1977) 25 exemplar
The Huge Season (1954) 24 exemplar
A Life (1973) 21 exemplar
The Territory Ahead (1963) 15 exemplar
Three Easy Pieces (1993) 15 exemplar
Two for the Road (1994) 15 exemplar
Man and Boy (1951) 14 exemplar
Cause for Wonder (1978) 14 exemplar
What a way to go (1979) 13 exemplar
Real Losses, Imaginary Gains (1976) 13 exemplar
My Uncle Dudley (1942) 13 exemplar
The Deep Sleep (1954) 10 exemplar
Wright Morris: A Reader (1970) 10 exemplar
War games (1972) 8 exemplar
One Day (1976) 7 exemplar
Here is Einbaum (1973) 6 exemplar
The Man Who was There (1977) 4 exemplar
Wright Morris - L'essence du visible (2019) — Fotograf — 2 exemplar
The origin of sadness (1984) 1 exemplar

Associerade verk

Två år för om masten (1840) — Efterord, vissa utgåvor3,369 exemplar
En droppe negerblod (1894) — Förord, vissa utgåvor3,083 exemplar
Modern American Memoirs (1995) — Bidragsgivare — 189 exemplar
The Best American Short Stories of the 80s (1990) — Bidragsgivare — 160 exemplar
The Best American Short Stories 1984 (1984) — Bidragsgivare — 104 exemplar
The Best American Short Stories 1983 (1983) — Bidragsgivare — 73 exemplar
The Best American Short Stories 1985 (1985) — Bidragsgivare — 61 exemplar
The Experience of the American Woman (1978) — Bidragsgivare — 46 exemplar
The Best American Short Stories 1970 (1970) — Bidragsgivare — 23 exemplar
The Best American Short Stories 1971 (1971) — Bidragsgivare — 21 exemplar
The Complete Roadside Guide to Nebraska (1989) — Preface, vissa utgåvor19 exemplar
New World Writing: First Mentor Selection (1952) — Bidragsgivare — 11 exemplar
The Modern Short Novel (1965) — Bidragsgivare — 11 exemplar
American Short Fiction, Number 3, Fall 1991 (1991) — Bidragsgivare — 6 exemplar
New World Writing #13: Stories, Poetry, Essays, Drama (1958) — Bidragsgivare — 4 exemplar
The Massachusetts review. Vol. VII, no. 1, Winter, 1966 (1966) — Bidragsgivare — 2 exemplar
Enjoying Stories (1987) — Bidragsgivare — 2 exemplar

Taggad

Allmänna fakta

Medlemmar

Recensioner

My latest plunge into the archives of books published in 1951 has come up with Man and Boy by Wright Morris. It is perhaps the strangest novel from that year that I have read. Not because of its content or its flirtation with experimental writing, but just because of its feeling of oddball people and oddball behaviour. One wonders if readers were expected to believe that such characters were the norm in America at that time.

The book is really of novella length and alternate chapters carry the point of view of Mr Ormsby and Mother. They are retired and Mr Ormsby is starting his day as usual at the bec and call of Mother, who is actually his wife. They had a son Virgil referred to as the boy, but he was killed in the second world war at Guadalcanal. Mother no longer finds it necessary to speak to Mr Ormsby apart from calling for him and writes a series of notes that amount to tasks for the day. Mother is an expert on wild birds and from time to time lectures to interested groups. Mr Ormsby does not go out much spending his time catering to Mother. Mother has received a notification from the American Navy that they are about to name a boat after their son for his heroic service in the war. Mr Ormsby must find his old travelling bag which has been mouldering in the loft for many years. They take the train and Mr Ormsby sits apart from his wife, next to a service man; private Lupido. A strange conversation about the candling of eggs ensues. Lupido is described as having an overlarge head and a boyish face and easily takes offence. Mr Ormsby invites him to come along with them to the commemoration service at the Brooklyn naval yard. The novel features strong female characters whose command and energy contrasts with the rather foolish men in their life.

Wright Morris was an American novelist, photographer and essayist and according to Wikipedia was known for his portrayals of people and artifacts of the Great Plains. His most read novels were [The field of Vision ]1956 and [Plains Song: for female voices] 1980. Man and boy with its rather curious perspective of the dominant female and its sense of characters isolated from the rest of the world, holds the readers attention. We are immediately immersed in the odd, ironic, humorous world created by Wright Morris to the extant that we don't question its existence. It is a rather slight novel, but I enjoyed it well enough 3 stars.
… (mer)
1 rösta
Flaggad
baswood | Feb 13, 2024 |
An enjoyable book with some lovely imagery and a few interesting insights into how we are shaped by and push against the spoken and unspoken expectations of society and family.
 
Flaggad
lschiff | 4 andra recensioner | Sep 24, 2023 |
While I grew up in the southern US, I have spent much of my life in the western states. I have met and grown to know well many people who grew up in this part of the country. Perhaps as a result, I have developed a real affection for stories of the West, everything from Steinbeck to Stegner to McMurtry and Haruf. Wright Morris has always been on my list, but this is the first I have read by him. I will say that there is nothing romanticized about Morris' take on pioneering of the West. Cora, the heroine, seems to be made from or made for the time and place, tough and she expects to work from pre-dawn to dark, but she also is always looking to improve life for herself and her family. Plains Song rings true for me in its depiction of Cora and of time and place.… (mer)
 
Flaggad
afkendrick | 4 andra recensioner | Oct 24, 2020 |
A slow paced and well written story of a family dominated by women atthe turn of the 20th century to the 1980's. Post-frontier farming in Nebraska was the setting for the lives of the Atkins family. The ties to the east, the immigrants,

The connection to the land were all part of their life's tapestry. Even the simpliest of lives told well is a good story.
 
Flaggad
JBreedlove | 4 andra recensioner | Dec 27, 2019 |

Listor

Priser

Du skulle kanske också gilla

Associerade författare

Statistik

Verk
52
Även av
17
Medlemmar
1,301
Popularitet
#19,740
Betyg
3.8
Recensioner
13
ISBN
124
Språk
4
Favoritmärkt
5

Tabeller & diagram