What do you think?
Rate this book
The Home Place
Reproduced from the 1948 edition of The Home Place , the Bison Book edition brings back into print an important early work by one of the most highly regarded of contemporary American Writers. This account in first-person narrative and photographs of the one-day visit of Clyde Muncy to "the home place" at Lone Tree, Nebraska, has been called "as near to a new fiction form as you could get." Both prose and pictures are worn linoleum, an old man’s shoes, well-used kitchen utensils, and weathered siding. Muncy’s journey of discovery takes the measure of the man he has become and of what he has left behind.
178 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1968
10 people are currently reading
159 people want to read
About the author
Wright Morris
136 books34 followersWright Marion Morris was an American novelist, photographer, and essayist. He is known for his portrayals of the people and artifacts of the Great Plains in words and pictures, as well as for experimenting with narrative forms.
Morris won the National Book Award for The Field of Vision in 1956. His final novel, Plains Song won the American Book Award in 1981.
Morris won the National Book Award for The Field of Vision in 1956. His final novel, Plains Song won the American Book Award in 1981.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 25, 2025
My first foray into Wright’s work was through an exhibition at FOAM in Amsterdam, which I stumbled upon about 4–5 years ago. The mundane photographs evoked the old Americana country way of life. I loved it and knew I had to read Wright’s novels and photo-texts. I picked up The Home Place out of sheer nostalgia, unable to shake the memory of the exhibition. Wright’s images and writings are produced with great stillness and an unsentimental, yet fine care for his “home place.” The old dilapidated things in it, the memories inside the walls, the creaky floors and bones indicating a long life, past its prime. There is respect here.
The protagonist is clearly a stand-in for Wright himself, finding his way (with his wife and children) back home after a career in NYC. The arrested quality of a small town, its apathy toward the modern obsession with progress, is fascinating, especially considering this was written in the 1940s, when the modern technological world was emerging ostentatiously. Of course, this is not the first time this theme has appeared in literature, but Wright’s version seems distinctive; his personal story, paired with distant, quotidian photographs, transfixed me.
“For thirty years I’ve had a clear idea what the home place lacked, and why the old man pained me, but I’ve never really known what they had. I know now. But I haven’t the word for it. The word beauty is not a Protestant thing. It doesn’t describe what there is about an old man’s shoes. The Protestant word for that is character. Character is supposed to cover what I feel about a cane-seated chair, and the faded bib, with the ironed-in stitches of an old man’s overalls. Character is the word but it doesn’t cover the ground. It doesn’t cover what there is moving about it, that is. I say these things are beautiful but I do so with the understanding that mighty few people anywhere will follow what I mean. That’s too bad. For this character is beautiful.”
“There was not a thing of beauty, a manmade loveliness, anywhere. A strange thing, for whatever it was I was feeling, at that moment, was what I expect a thing of beauty to make me feel. To put me out of my self, into the selves of other things.”
“Out here you wear out, men and women wear out, the sheds and the houses, the machines wear out, and every ten years you put a new seat in the cane-bottomed chair. Every day it wears out, the nap wears off the top of the Axminster. The carpet wears out, but the life of the carpet, the Figure, wears in. The holy thing, that is, comes naturally. Under the carpet, out here, is the floor. After you have lived your own life, worn it out, you will die your own death and it won’t matter. It will be all right. It will be ripe, like the old man. Nothing happens to a man overnight but sometimes what has been happening for years, every day of his life, happens suddenly. You open a door, or maybe you close it, and the thing is done. It happens.”
The protagonist is clearly a stand-in for Wright himself, finding his way (with his wife and children) back home after a career in NYC. The arrested quality of a small town, its apathy toward the modern obsession with progress, is fascinating, especially considering this was written in the 1940s, when the modern technological world was emerging ostentatiously. Of course, this is not the first time this theme has appeared in literature, but Wright’s version seems distinctive; his personal story, paired with distant, quotidian photographs, transfixed me.
“For thirty years I’ve had a clear idea what the home place lacked, and why the old man pained me, but I’ve never really known what they had. I know now. But I haven’t the word for it. The word beauty is not a Protestant thing. It doesn’t describe what there is about an old man’s shoes. The Protestant word for that is character. Character is supposed to cover what I feel about a cane-seated chair, and the faded bib, with the ironed-in stitches of an old man’s overalls. Character is the word but it doesn’t cover the ground. It doesn’t cover what there is moving about it, that is. I say these things are beautiful but I do so with the understanding that mighty few people anywhere will follow what I mean. That’s too bad. For this character is beautiful.”
“There was not a thing of beauty, a manmade loveliness, anywhere. A strange thing, for whatever it was I was feeling, at that moment, was what I expect a thing of beauty to make me feel. To put me out of my self, into the selves of other things.”
“Out here you wear out, men and women wear out, the sheds and the houses, the machines wear out, and every ten years you put a new seat in the cane-bottomed chair. Every day it wears out, the nap wears off the top of the Axminster. The carpet wears out, but the life of the carpet, the Figure, wears in. The holy thing, that is, comes naturally. Under the carpet, out here, is the floor. After you have lived your own life, worn it out, you will die your own death and it won’t matter. It will be all right. It will be ripe, like the old man. Nothing happens to a man overnight but sometimes what has been happening for years, every day of his life, happens suddenly. You open a door, or maybe you close it, and the thing is done. It happens.”
May 9, 2013
This is an American regionalist novel about a family in rural Nebraska. It's unusual because every double-page spread is a page of text facing a photograph. It's a curious book, a mixture of some very dated-sounding mid-twentieth century rural Plains dialogue and simple photographs of chairs, tables, the ground, farm implements, and parts of buildings. I'll just note four things in particular:
1. The relation of the images to the text varies, so that it seems Morris was working out how images related to text throughout his novel. Photographs vary widely in the way they are attached to the text. Here is an incomplete catalog:
(A) The person in the photograph is referred to in the text (p. 1).
(B) At several points the text might be referring to the photograph, and the reader may check that, but find there's no connection (p. 3).
(C) The picture is an emblem of something in the text. Old people, the narrator says at one point, "were like the single plow below my window" because "you couldn't show them, or give them anything"; this is accompanied by a photo of a plow. (p. 25).
(D) The image is an example of things listed in the text (p. 109).
(E) The image is a study of something that is only mentioned briefly, in passing, in the text (p. 130).
(F) The image doesn't fit the narrative, or contradicts it. (P. 132, a photo of coats, opposite a description of an empty house; but the next page is of a bed that perfectly matches the narrative description.)
(G) Images that might, or might not, illustrate something in the text, making the reader cross back and forth from image to text (pp. 145, 146).
(H) An image described in the text is illustrated, but not on the facing page (pp. 141-2).
This list could be made about twice as long; for me, it's a sign that the book was an ongoing experiment, never resolved during the writing. Hollander makes a point of one image that shows newspaper clippings that are quoted by the narrator; but it's an anomaly, and it's text-based (the image as such doesn't play a part in Hollander's description).
2. In terms of layout, the book has full-page images all the way up to p. 154, when the reader is surprised by a single photograph, printed across the gutter, with just seven lines of text on each page beneath. It's significant that this double-lage spread is a family photo: more on that below.
From that point to the end of the book, the layout changes: the images are again full page, on the right, but the text on the left pages doesn't reach to the bottom of the page. The only conclusion it's possible to draw is that Morris decided to write just as much as would respond to the image on the facing page, and then go on to the next pair. That makes for a much closer relation between image and text, because a reader knows that the paragraphs on each page were probably written with that particular photo in mind; it also makes the pages into prose poems or independent sections of prose, producing an entirely different effect than the one in most of the book, where the reader turns pages at the speed of the narrative. (When the text is continuous, you're not obligated to stop a moment and look at each picture before you turn the page. When the text stops halfway down the page, it's a signal that only that amount of text responds to the picture.)
3. There are few photographs of people. This is a common theme, I've found, in novels with captionless images. The immediate reason is that if a character in the novel is shown in a photograph, it disrupts reading, and suspends disbelief, in a particular way, which is different from the way that a photograph of a house or a street might disrupt reading. There's a lot to be said about this! In "The Home Place," faces are presented in three ways: (A) In this family photograph, where people are small in the distance, so the reader's imagination is still fairly free; (B) in photographs of portrait photographs hanging on walls (p. 20), so the reader is insulated by a representation of a representation; and (C) by throwing the face into shadow, as in the very first photograph in the book, which is of an old man and an inner tube, standing in front of a barn: we see the kind of place and person, but not the expression itself. (See also p. 127, where a face is in shadow, and p. 50, where we see the old man's wrinkled neck from behind, but not his face.)
4. There is a theory of images in the book. On p. 141, the narrator explains using ideas of Protestant imagery:
"The word beauty is not a Protestant thing. It doesn't describe what there is about an old man's shoes. The Protestant word for that is character. Character is supposed to cover what I feel..."
It would be interesting to pursue this reading: the images aren't beautiful, in the way other authors (like Walker Evans?) had taken them to be; they have something to do with a non-aesthetic property called, inadequately, "character."
5. Precedents for the book. The history of novels with captionless images is not continuous. From "Bruges-la-Morte" to Sebald, it seems to have been reinvented several times. The introduction by John Hollander names some precedents for "The Home Place" (1968), including books in the 1930s that used photographs from the Farm Security Administration, and "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" (1941). Buy Hollander also notes that this book is "almost a unique sort of novel" because it is a novel "with" photographs, rather than "in" photographs. It's possible Morris imagined himself as the inventor of this way of writing.
For all these and other reasons, this is a very engaging book. The prose itself is accomplished and sharp, but it wouldn't be the thing that would lead me to re-read the book.
1. The relation of the images to the text varies, so that it seems Morris was working out how images related to text throughout his novel. Photographs vary widely in the way they are attached to the text. Here is an incomplete catalog:
(A) The person in the photograph is referred to in the text (p. 1).
(B) At several points the text might be referring to the photograph, and the reader may check that, but find there's no connection (p. 3).
(C) The picture is an emblem of something in the text. Old people, the narrator says at one point, "were like the single plow below my window" because "you couldn't show them, or give them anything"; this is accompanied by a photo of a plow. (p. 25).
(D) The image is an example of things listed in the text (p. 109).
(E) The image is a study of something that is only mentioned briefly, in passing, in the text (p. 130).
(F) The image doesn't fit the narrative, or contradicts it. (P. 132, a photo of coats, opposite a description of an empty house; but the next page is of a bed that perfectly matches the narrative description.)
(G) Images that might, or might not, illustrate something in the text, making the reader cross back and forth from image to text (pp. 145, 146).
(H) An image described in the text is illustrated, but not on the facing page (pp. 141-2).
This list could be made about twice as long; for me, it's a sign that the book was an ongoing experiment, never resolved during the writing. Hollander makes a point of one image that shows newspaper clippings that are quoted by the narrator; but it's an anomaly, and it's text-based (the image as such doesn't play a part in Hollander's description).
2. In terms of layout, the book has full-page images all the way up to p. 154, when the reader is surprised by a single photograph, printed across the gutter, with just seven lines of text on each page beneath. It's significant that this double-lage spread is a family photo: more on that below.
From that point to the end of the book, the layout changes: the images are again full page, on the right, but the text on the left pages doesn't reach to the bottom of the page. The only conclusion it's possible to draw is that Morris decided to write just as much as would respond to the image on the facing page, and then go on to the next pair. That makes for a much closer relation between image and text, because a reader knows that the paragraphs on each page were probably written with that particular photo in mind; it also makes the pages into prose poems or independent sections of prose, producing an entirely different effect than the one in most of the book, where the reader turns pages at the speed of the narrative. (When the text is continuous, you're not obligated to stop a moment and look at each picture before you turn the page. When the text stops halfway down the page, it's a signal that only that amount of text responds to the picture.)
3. There are few photographs of people. This is a common theme, I've found, in novels with captionless images. The immediate reason is that if a character in the novel is shown in a photograph, it disrupts reading, and suspends disbelief, in a particular way, which is different from the way that a photograph of a house or a street might disrupt reading. There's a lot to be said about this! In "The Home Place," faces are presented in three ways: (A) In this family photograph, where people are small in the distance, so the reader's imagination is still fairly free; (B) in photographs of portrait photographs hanging on walls (p. 20), so the reader is insulated by a representation of a representation; and (C) by throwing the face into shadow, as in the very first photograph in the book, which is of an old man and an inner tube, standing in front of a barn: we see the kind of place and person, but not the expression itself. (See also p. 127, where a face is in shadow, and p. 50, where we see the old man's wrinkled neck from behind, but not his face.)
4. There is a theory of images in the book. On p. 141, the narrator explains using ideas of Protestant imagery:
"The word beauty is not a Protestant thing. It doesn't describe what there is about an old man's shoes. The Protestant word for that is character. Character is supposed to cover what I feel..."
It would be interesting to pursue this reading: the images aren't beautiful, in the way other authors (like Walker Evans?) had taken them to be; they have something to do with a non-aesthetic property called, inadequately, "character."
5. Precedents for the book. The history of novels with captionless images is not continuous. From "Bruges-la-Morte" to Sebald, it seems to have been reinvented several times. The introduction by John Hollander names some precedents for "The Home Place" (1968), including books in the 1930s that used photographs from the Farm Security Administration, and "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" (1941). Buy Hollander also notes that this book is "almost a unique sort of novel" because it is a novel "with" photographs, rather than "in" photographs. It's possible Morris imagined himself as the inventor of this way of writing.
For all these and other reasons, this is a very engaging book. The prose itself is accomplished and sharp, but it wouldn't be the thing that would lead me to re-read the book.
September 4, 2007
I read this a few years ago for a Midwest in Film and Lit class. The description paired with photos gives an amazing sense of place. This is quintessentially rural Midwestern.
February 14, 2017
A quick read. Half the book is photographs from the authors own family farm. His own uncle? Father? used for the pictures of the old man.
This book may be quick to read and a storyline you can understand but there is much missing. Why is the family visiting from New York? Did they leave New York? Why? Many things are not explained. It wasn't a bad book I just wanted to know more about what was happening with the characters, it's always difficult to jump into their lives.
I really like that the author did something different from other fiction by placing black and white photos in to augment his book.
"'That was a mighty nice rug,' said the old man, 'Axminister.' He pushed his glasses up and said, 'You know, I don't think I ever looked at it. I never saw it, and here it is too late.' He turned from the rug to look through the screen at the glare over the road. His eyes were the soft faded blue of his denim bib. 'No, come to think I did look at it,' he said. 'It was nice.'"(61).
"It's a problem of being. Of knowing you are there. On a good day, with a slanting sun, a man can walk to the edge of his town and see the light on the next town, ten miles away. In the sea of corn, that flash of light is like a sail. It reminds a man the place is still inhabited. I know what it is Ishmael felt, or Ahab, for that matter-these are the whales of the great sea of grass." (76).
This book may be quick to read and a storyline you can understand but there is much missing. Why is the family visiting from New York? Did they leave New York? Why? Many things are not explained. It wasn't a bad book I just wanted to know more about what was happening with the characters, it's always difficult to jump into their lives.
I really like that the author did something different from other fiction by placing black and white photos in to augment his book.
"'That was a mighty nice rug,' said the old man, 'Axminister.' He pushed his glasses up and said, 'You know, I don't think I ever looked at it. I never saw it, and here it is too late.' He turned from the rug to look through the screen at the glare over the road. His eyes were the soft faded blue of his denim bib. 'No, come to think I did look at it,' he said. 'It was nice.'"(61).
"It's a problem of being. Of knowing you are there. On a good day, with a slanting sun, a man can walk to the edge of his town and see the light on the next town, ten miles away. In the sea of corn, that flash of light is like a sail. It reminds a man the place is still inhabited. I know what it is Ishmael felt, or Ahab, for that matter-these are the whales of the great sea of grass." (76).
November 5, 2016
This book describes the fictive day of a man visiting the home place with his wife and two kids after having been away and living in New York for almost 30 years. Every other page consists of a black and white photograph, not always relating directly to the story, but nevertheless fitting with the overall rural area depicted. It’s thought-provoking when the narrator talks about the deeper meaning of family ties and sometimes flat out funny when he describes the old man of the homestead taking the narrator and his kids to town in his Model T or when said kids, who grew up in the city, make their first acquaintance with fly paper. Definitely worth reading!
April 12, 2019
This is a photographic/narrative book used as the 2010 One Book One Nebraska. It was like stepping back to my growing up years living on the farm and visiting my relatives in Nebraska! This is about a Nebraska boy who now lives in New York with his wife and two children who now wants a change of life, meaning a move back to the Home Place.
May 6, 2009
It's got lots of pictures, but that's about all I remember. I don't even remember for which class I read it. Maybe it was that photography literature class with Gloria?
April 25, 2010
Black and white (okay, sepia tones) photos by the author facing every page of text. . . .intriguing so far.
July 20, 2010
the "One Nebraska Book" and a "pictology" or some such - not what I would chose to visit again -tho some of the memories of life in old time farm living rang pretty true for sure.
November 26, 2010
great pictures, crazy story
August 11, 2014
I admire this book. Five stars for concept.
But it's boring. One star for execution. The photos and text are equally dry. Meditative. Dead.
Sorry.
But it's boring. One star for execution. The photos and text are equally dry. Meditative. Dead.
Sorry.
April 20, 2016
Classic images from one of the great American photographers and writers.
January 3, 2024
This was a puzzling book. It was recommended to my by a friend, and older guy who grew up in Iowa, and I think it reminded him of home. I can see why he liked it, I think: it has what I guess I would describe as a down-to-earth, unpretentious practicality (although the opaque storyline and avante-garde inclusion of all of the photographs might argue against the "unpretentious" part...). It isn't a "story" per se, everything happens within a single day (where nothing really "happens" except the kids getting a haircut in town) and we're not given any context or explanation of who these people are, just given some things to infer from what they say. It's more of an atmospheric, introspective book. It does have some interesting observations about growing up in the country, leaving it behind for life in the city, and what is felt to be missing after a couple of decades. Maybe it's a reflection on what our urban society is leaving behind, for better or for worse.
August 10, 2023
This unusual little book takes you into a small town in the dry flat Nebraska plains where Morris grew up with a combination of text and photos. Morris's humor is as dry as the plains he writes about and while there isn't so much as a whiff of sentimentality in the entire book, it is infused throughout with Morris's deep and abiding love for the place, the time, and the people that he so vividly writes about.
February 14, 2026
This book spans one day in the life of a couple and their two children, visiting the farm home of the husband's aging aunt and uncle. Everything we learn about the characters is conveyed through their conversations. The text is accompanied on each page by photographs of farm objects or landscape. I confess I was glad it was fairly short, yet it had some very clever prose and conveyed its subjects extremely well without actually describing them.
January 3, 2026
I know nothing about Wright Morris outside of this books
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews