Wright Morris
Wright Marion Morris ( born January 6, 1910 in Central City, Nebraska, † April 25, 1998 in Mill Valley, California ) was an American photographer and author of novels, short stories and essays.
Life
Wright Morris was born on January 6, 1910, son of William Henry and Grace Osborn Morris. She died a few days after the birth of her son. With his father, he often moved to and lived in towns like Schuyler and Kearney. Often in the care of neighbors or nanny, Morris moved in 1919 with his father and stepmother Gertrude to Omaha, where they lived until 1924. During this time he spent two summers with his uncle and aunt on their farm in Norfolk. Photographs of the farm and the characters that correspond to the real existing relatives are to rediscover in his later works, The Home Place (1948 ) and The World in the Attic (1949 ). In 1924 he moved with his family to Chicago. Later, should a short stay in California, he spent with his father, his work My Uncle Dudley (1942 ) inspired. After he briefly led by the Adventist Pacific Union College visited, he went to Texas on the farm of his uncle Dwight Osborn to work. Again in California, he attended until 1933, the Pomona College. This study, however, he broke off without a degree. 1934, after his return from a stay in Europe, in which he stole his money in Paris and he had been arrested in Italy, he married his first wife, Mary Ellen Finfrock, with whom he was married until 1961. His second marriage with Josephine Kantor (1927-2002) held until his death. Wright Morris died on 25 April 1998 at the age of 88 years.
Career
Mid-1930s, Morris began a serious interest in photography and writing. 1936 emerged the first time so-called photo- texts, ie a combination of photographs with brief accompanying prose. Traveling across the United States and his stay overseas inspired these works. His first exhibition at the New School for Social Research, he took over in 1941 and the first published photo- text The Inhabitants appeared in 1946. During the same year Wright Morris received after 1942 for the second Guggenheim Fellowship for Photography, whose financial support made it possible for him continue to travel around the country. Between 1944 and 1954 he lived in Pennsylvania, then returned to California and overseas, especially in Mexico, Greece and Venice. Between 1963 and 1975 he took a teaching position at San Francisco State University. During this time, took to his literary activity and it caused a lot of novels that are among his major works.
Criticism of his works
In the United States it is mainly his works, which describe the life in the Midwest, for which he is known. Trips of more than 15,000 miles across the United States formed its source of inspiration. He himself said: " I am not a regional writer, but the characteristics of this region have conditioned what I see, what I look for, and what I find in the world to write about. ". Scientific literature reviews are, in spite of his extensive list of publications and his awards, rather scarce. John W. Aldridge suspected in his book Devil in the Fire, that it was just the theme of the Mittlerern West, who was out of time to attract a lot of attention. Or, as the journalist HL Mencken is referring to the work of Willa Cather, who used a similar theme as Morris put it: " I do not care how well she writes, I do not give a damn what happens in Nebraska " ( on German about: I do not care how well she writes, I'm interested in it give a damn what happens in Nebraska). . However, Morris's works represent not merely a description of life in the Great Plains dar. Rather, he demonstrates in his works, that he has a good eye for the American culture itself. The Midwest is the focal point of his self-created microcosm '. The "center " of the United States, under the influence of East and West, are the Great Plains, small towns as well as cities such as Omaha or Chicago the ideal Handlungsort for his literary works dar. In this - in the figurative sense - the middle act, the ' Midwesterners ' as average Americans and their families " to the type of the American family par excellence ". Morris uses existing "raw material" - a key term in the criticism of his work, he has also happy even used - finished it, " but leaves it raw enough to look real ." Under this premise, can the statements that are made about the action location, on the larger context, the United States transferred. Even the works whose actions are not located directly in the Midwest, have about certain characters and plot strands connect to that (cf. Circle, 1977, p 36 ff.) Gail Bruce Crump also recognizes a close interdependence between the characters, the plot and it is this cultural observation. But, he argued, was the focus of Morris ' work partially faces to fine details of human consciousness, so that this would be too hard to put into words. This is a further possible reason for the below average reception of his works. But it is precisely this preoccupation with themes such as time, awareness, stereotype and myth, which confers Wright Morris ' literary creation an overarching cohesion.
Here are some of strong autobiographical elements evident. The older works play in the past and deal with traditional habits, but these are anachronistic and thus in the " present " time can only exist as a cliché. Plays a role here also the " mythical " approach of the Midwest. The heroic past at the time of acquisition of land and the development of the continent in the second half of the 19th century is the uneventful lives of the people ( and, indeed, the figures in Morris ' novels ) on the farms and small towns over. These different trends are superimposed and the "time is spatially experienced by the characters " ( Circle, 1977, p 151). The cliché is created for Morris fact that these outmoded ideas including the associated values are transmitted without reflection and without any change in the present. He argues thus for a change of a static concept of life towards a dynamic.
The fact that Morris has not attained the recognition should be given to him in the American literary history, says UK Crump wiefolgt:
"That thesis and other unusual gifts have quietly not won for Morris the wide audience he deserves is finally able to attribute the factthat he does not fit into any convenient category. He is Both traditional and original, a chronicler of the commonplace and the bizarre, the material and the immaterial. He is a local colorist at home in a meta, physical landscape of ideas, a realist fascinated by the fictive and by characters who live a dream, a poet of the American backwaters immersed in the main currents of contemporary consciousness. "
Works (selection)
Novels
Photo- texts
Autobiographies
Short story volumes
Collections of essays