Red’s Book Reviews: North Toward Home by Willie Morris

This is the autobiography of former writer and editor, Willie Morris. Born in the Deep South (Yazoo City, Mississippi), Morris became a voice of the progressive south during the 1950s and 1960s. As editor of the student newspaper, he took on the University of Texas and its administration on a bevy of topics including civil rights and integration. The book is divided into three parts. His boyhood in Mississippi, his time spent in Texas, and then his time as an editor for Harper Collins in New York. As a reader, the first two parts were riper with anecdotes and color, making for an easy read. The final part was a discussion on a southern boy in the northern city. His shortcomings, and the shortcomings of the Eastern intellectual elite. This was denser material and more abrasive to a casual reader.

What struck me is the bevy of statements made in the book that are applicable to today, despite being directed toward the social scenarios of the 1950s and 1960s.

The clearest themes were the divide between North and South that persisted in America nearly a hundred years after the Civil War. The realty being that the two sides still understood very little about each other, and on one side, you had a the southerner with a bitter inferiority complex that was exorcised in part with increased hatred of African Americans, and on the other, a snotty intellectual class that placed the big label of hick to everything and everyone not on the east coast. Considering our current national climate, it’s clear that little of this has changed.

Racial tensions, integration, civil rights and reconciling our brief yet brutal history of conquering and controlling rather than welcoming and cooperating. The ruling class in this country still behaves as if granting rights to all is a privilege they have to dole out at their leisure.

It even comments (remember this was wrote decades ago before school shooting were common) on the threat of mass shootings, and the helpless nature of our society to prevent disturbed individuals from inflicting massive damage.

Political corruption. Boy, was the Texas legislature a mess.

I’d recommend this one to those interested in society, American history, journalism, politics, and so much more.

Up next: Pontoon by Garrison Keillor