Morris, Wright - Benjamin DeMott (essay date 1960)

Benjamin DeMott (essay date 1960)

SOURCE: “Fiction Chronicle: Wright Morris,” in Partisan Review, Vol. XXVII, No. 4, Fall, 1960, pp. 754-59.

[In the following excerpt, DeMott praises Morris for showing the “quality of life” of mid-twentieth-century mid-western America.]

The Nebraska plains and towns where much of his [Morris's] fiction is situated have little on the capacity of metropolis for suggesting the uncontrollable. On those occasions (The Deep Sleep or Man and Boy are examples) when Morris approaches the city, he does so only to concentrate on middle figures whose awareness of crisis ranges from minimal to non-existent. And as for his voice: it is invariably relaxed, wry, patient. “Come to the window,” his new book says quietly as it opens:

The one at the rear of the Lone Tree Hotel. The view is to the west. There is no obstruction but the sky. Although there is no one outside to look...

[The entire page is 1287 words long]

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