Book of the Week (March 26, 2007)

On the New Book Shelf
Call Number: PS 3563 .O8745 Z75 2006

In Search of Willie Morris

By Larry L. King

Publisher's Description: The intimate biography of the charismatic, hugely talented, influential, and troubled Willie Morris-star editor of Harper's in the 1960s and author of North Toward Home and My Dog Skip. Willie Morris, the famously talented-and complex-writer and editor, helped to remake American journalism and wrote more than a dozen books, with several classics among them. His time at the head of Harper's magazine, where he was made editor at age thirty-two, is legendary. With writers like David Halberstam, Norman Mailer, and author of this book, Larry L. King, Harper's became the magazine to read and the place to be in print. Morris was friend, colleague, or mentor to a remarkable cast of writers-William Styron, James Jones, Truman Capote, George Plimpton, Gay Talese, and later in life, Barry Hannah, Donna Tartt, John Grisham, and Winston Groom. In Search of Willie Morris is a wise, sometimes raucous, and moving look at Morris that conveys the energy and activity of the years at the top and the troubles, talents, late rallies, and mysteries of his later life. Written with the affection of a close friend and the critical insight of a fellow writer, it is an absorbing biography of an extraordinarily gifted literary man and raconteur who inspired both wonder and frustration, and who left behind a legacy and a body of work that endures.