Willie Morris

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Willie Morris
Willie Morris

William Weaks "Willie" Morris (November 29, 1934 — August 2, 1999), was an American writer and editor born in Jackson, Mississippi, though his family later moved to Yazoo City, Mississippi, which he immortalized in his works of prose. Morris' trademark was his lyrical prose style and reflections on the American South, particularly the Mississippi Delta. In 1967 he became the youngest editor of Harper's Magazine. He wrote several works of fiction and non-fiction, including his seminal book North Toward Home.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early years

Morris' parents moved to Yazoo City, Mississippi when he was just six months old. Yazoo City figures prominently in much of Morris' writing. After graduating as valedictorian of his high school class, Morris traveled to Austin to attend the University of Texas. He became a member of Delta Tau Delta international fraternity, where he has a room named after him in the chapter house.

His senior year in college, Morris was elected editor of the university's student newspaper, the award-winning The Daily Texan. His scathing editorials against segregation, censorship and state officials' collusion with oil and gas interests soon earned him the enmity of university administrators, particularly from the university's Board of Regents. As an example of the animosity, Morris wrote in North Toward Home that the university did not acknowledge his award of a Rhodes Scholarship with even as much as a letter of congratulation. His contribution to the university continues to go unrecognized.

Morris graduated in 1956 and began studying history at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He returned to the United States to be the editor of The Texas Observer, a liberal weekly magazine.

[edit] Harper's Magazine

Morris joined the staff of Harper's in 1963 as an associate editor, becoming editor-in-chief four years later, shortly before North Toward Home was published. North Toward Home, which became a bestseller and received the prestigious Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award for nonfiction, is an autobiographical account of Morris' childhood in Yazoo City, Mississippi, his early adulthood in Austin, Texas, and his eventual flight from the South to New York City. It has become revered for its tender reflections on Southern culture, particularly by other alienated expatriate Southerners who moved north but still feel drawn to their home states.

As the youngest ever editor-in-chief of the influential literary magazine, Morris helped to sustain the careers of several notable American writers including William Styron and Norman Mailer.[1] However, the Cowles family, who owned the magazine, were uneasy with the content Morris chose, which included longer articles and overtly liberal sentiments that alienated advertisers. In the midst of falling revenues, the Cowles family expressed its discontent with Morris in clear terms, causing him to resign in 1971.

[edit] Morris returns home

In 1980, Morris moved back to his native state to be a writer-in-residence at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi where he encouraged a new generation of Mississippi writers including John Grisham. One of his books, My Dog Skip, was made into a 2000 movie starring Frankie Muniz, Diane Lane, Luke Wilson and Kevin Bacon. (Morris had previously written for Reader's Digest a profile of his dog 'Pete,' whom he had adopted while living in Bridgehampton, Long Island, New York.) Morris died of a heart attack just before the movie debuted, after seeing an advance screening of the film and praising it.

He is buried in Glenwood Cemetery in Yazoo City, exactly 13 steps (the unlucky number) from the "grave" of the fictitious Witch of Yazoo, a character from one of Morris' books, Good Old Boy: A Delta Boyhood.

[edit] Books by Willie Morris

  • My Dog Skip
  • My Cat Spit McGee
  • Faulkner's Mississippi
  • Good Old Boy: A Delta Boyhood
  • The Courting of Marcus Dupree
  • New York Days
  • The Last of the Southern Girls
  • My Mississippi
  • Terrains of the Heart and Other Essays on Home
  • Ghosts of Medgar Evers
  • Homecomings
  • South Today
  • Always Stand in Against the Curve, and Other Sports Stories
  • Yazoo: Integration in a Deep-Southern Town
  • North Toward Home
  • After All, It's Only a Game
  • Prayer for the Opening of the Little League Season
  • James Jones: A Friendship
  • Taps

[edit] References

  1. ^ Mississippi Writers Page

[edit] External links and Resources