A Life (Paperback, 2 Rev Ed)

In Fire Sermon (1971) 83-year-old Warner - after the immolation of his sister Viola's house following her death, and after his eleven-year-old charge is taken off by two alien hippies - circles away like a wounded hawk; this book follows the long dying. As he drives from Nebraska and Viola's grave in his ancient Maxwell, sometimes sleeping at the wheel, the past acquires a new coherence and reality "like wallpaper he had lived with, soiled with his habits, but never really looked at." As for the present, things that happen - a prayer circle of old ladies, the rescue of a kitten from the filth of a privy, the discovery of a young man's old grave, and above all meeting the sinister Indian Blackbird - all seem to be just points on a line leading to where he was, nowhere else. The past of his locked-in life tosses up memories of dust and land and howling winds, some good women and even the boy he lost to the hippies - who held him off for a while from a really dead end. At the close he dies quietly and ceremonially, at the hands of Blackbird, a bitter product of Vietnam and a now arid heritage. But the feverish mind of the old man recognizes a life as isolated, and bleakly independent as his own. Again Wright Morris' unique talent produces a mix of didactic symbolism, cranky intensity and scenes of such mastery - (particularly the lunch counter entrance of Blackbird) that it is obvious why his works evade classification and assimilation into the critical mainstream. For those ornery and equally unassimilated Morris readers, more of the arresting same. (Kirkus Reviews)

Floyd Warner, eighty-two, has driven from California to his childhood home in Nebraska in his antique Maxwell coupe. There he confronts the smoldering remains of this late sister's house and the realization that he is now completely alone. As though in a trance, he sets out once again, this time to find his first adult home, a dusty sheep farm in the southwest, preparing to meet the fate that ultimately awaits him. Of such deceptively simple ingredients is this brilliant portrait of the last hours of an old man's life composed. Floyd Warner, who first appeared in Fire Sermon, is perhaps the ultimate characterization in the career of a writer who has been called quite simply the best novelist now writing in America (John W. Aldridge). One of the most distinguished American authors, Wright Morris (1910-1988) wrote thirty-three books including The Field of Vision, which won the National Book Award.

General

Imprint:	University of Nebraska Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	June 1980
First published:	June 1980
Authors:	Wright Morris
Dimensions:	203 x 133 x 9mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - Trade
Pages:	152
Edition:	2 Rev Ed
ISBN-13:	978-0-8032-8106-6
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	0-8032-8106-4
Barcode:	9780803281066

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