Morris, Wright - Paul Levine (essay date 1962-63)

Paul Levine (essay date 1962-63)

SOURCE: A review of What a Way to Go, in The Hudson Review, Vol. XV, No. 4, Winter, 1962-63, pp. 601-02.

[In the following excerpt, Levine praises Morris's novel What A Way to Go as “shrewd, funny, and beautifully written.”]

Twenty years separates Wright Morris' first novel, Man and Boy, from his eleventh, What a Way to Go. Why in those two decades Morris' distinctive talents have been enjoyed by only a small coterie remains a mystery to me. Perhaps the secret lies in his great versatility which allows him the freedom continually to change his focus but denies us the liberty of ever pinning him down. More likely it has something to do with that slightly cock-eyed world of his, a world definitely mad but with a special madness that may be as difficult to appreciate as it is to depict.

A novel of innocents abroad, What a Way to Go describes the reluctant wooing...

[The entire page is 666 words long]

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