What a Way to Go (Paperback)

What A Way To Go is a light and delightful novel. For twenty years now Morris has been writing original and often very funny books for a small, enthusiastic audience. There is no one else like him and this book is a very Wright Morris kind of love story cum travelogue. Arnold Soby, 47 ("he did not age so much as he dated"), a teacher at an eastern girls' college, takes a trip to Europe. On ship board he meets two school teachers, Miss Throop and Miss Kollwitz, who are going to meet Miss Throop's 17-year-old niece in Italy and go on to Greece with her. According to plan, Soby meets them in Venice and his fate is determined. The girl is a mixture of American teenager, will of the wisp and White Goddess to Soby, but to one or another of the "mature" men who also admire her she is Ulysses' Nausicaa, Primavera and Miss Liebfraumilch. He goes along with the Throop group to Corfu, Athens and Rhodes. From the swarm of travelers that surrounds the four eccentric Americans there emerges a wonderfully drawn set of oddities, German, Italian and Swiss. There are several levels on which this book may be read, but the most obvious thing about the book is its aura of rather surprised joy- a quality which sets this novel off from the rest of Morris' work. Coming, as it does, as the first novel since Ceremony at Lone Tree, mellow and ironic, this may be Morris' break-through novel reaching the large public that it (and he) deserves. (Kirkus Reviews)

The reader of this rollicking novel, first published in 1962, accompanies forty-seven-year-old Professor Arnold Soby (regarded by his girl students as safe and acceptable, but also good fun) on a sabbatical voyage to Italy and Greece. Among Soby's shipboard companions are Miss Winifred Throop, retired head mistress of the Winnetka Country Day School; her companion and colleague, Miss Mathilde Kollwitz, teacher of French and German; and Miss Thropp's seventeen-year-old niece, Cynthia Pomeroy, beautiful, scatterbrained, and studiously vulgar. Standing off the challenges of Italian and Swiss rivals, Soby pursues Cynthia through the waterways and plazas of Venice, the hills of Corfu, the ruins of Athens, and aboard the tiny, rolling, pitching tub "Hephaistos" in Greek waters. As is characteristic of Wright Morris's fiction, the real story develops beneath the surface of the brilliantly entertaining narrative.

General

Imprint:	University of Nebraska Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	September 1979
First published:	September 1979
Authors:	Wright Morris
Dimensions:	203 x 133 x 18mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - Trade
Pages:	311
ISBN-13:	978-0-8032-5862-4
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	0-8032-5862-3
Barcode:	9780803258624

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