In Orbit (Paperback)

"This boy comes riding with his arms high and wide, his head dipped low, his ass light in the saddle, as if about to be shot into orbit from a forked sling... The line down the center of the road is the zipper, and he is the zip." This is another of Mr. Morris' hit and run horror stories with lots of oblique philosophy and not-so-abstract symbolism. The boy, Jubal is a mindless creature, "supernatural" in his primitive instinctiveness. He cycles into Pickett, Indiana and proceeds to devastate the local natives who respond with "pleasurable apprehension" after he rapes a simple minded old woman, bops the town "A-C" on the head, and knifes the hardware store man who is all too eager to hear the details of the rape. The various thrilled-fascinated reactions to his presence are summed up in one character's statement: "Bit of the mad dog in us all." That is what Mr. Morris sees and in effect communicates. He works with the moment, allowing instinct to override motivation, a convenient technique but the effect is hardly lasting. Particularly when he throws in such doggerel as "who gives the twist to the wind?"... "One man's twister is another man's vacuum." Which nature abhors. So might the reader.?? (Kirkus Reviews)

"In the space of one day, Jubal E. Gainer, high school dropout and draft dodger, manages to rack up an impressive array of crimes...He steals a friend's motorcycle, rapes a simple-minded spinster, mugs a pixyish professor, and stabs an obese visionary who runs a surplus store. He then waits out an Indiana twister and goes his way, leaving as much wreckage in his path as the twister itself."--Library Journal. "In Orbit is a short novel, full of action, and the seriousness can mostly be found between the lines. [There] one can see against what Jubal Gainer's rebellion, thoughtless and aimless as it seems, is directed. One might say that he is, like millions of his contemporaries, a Huck Finn without a Mississippi."-- Granville Hicks, Saturday Review. "Here is another of Wright Morris's craftsmanly novels--terse, colloquial, restrained, fragmented, deliberately shadowy. Above all, small; not slight, not inconsequential, but a miniature...All readers will surely appreciate the quality of the prose style one has come to expect in a Wright Morris novel...There is also a muscular quality to Mr. Morris's writing that makes it a suitable instrument for conveying harsher things; and there is his sense of the comic, which springs up constantly. In all, this is a quiet but rich performance."--New York Times Book Review. 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:	September 1976
First published:	September 1976
Authors:	Wright Morris
Dimensions:	203 x 133 x 8mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - Trade / Trade
Pages:	153
ISBN-13:	978-0-8032-5830-3
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction Promotions
LSN:	0-8032-5830-5
Barcode:	9780803258303

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