Fire Sermon

by Wright Morris

"A radiant expression of the art [Wright Morris] has developed through thirty years and fourteen earlier novels. Although it is anything but preachy it will stick in the minds of the congregation for a long time. . . . On the one hand, this is a novel of alienation and on the other, a novel about the discovery of identity. The author's overall concern . . . is the destiny of man. In this novel—perhaps more clearly and movingly than ever before—he carries the reader with him, until astonishment, awe, compassion, laughter, and exultation mingle in a tragic sense of life."—Granville Hicks, New York Times Book Review The ceremony of the old giving way to the new, the young breaking away from what is old, may well be the one constant in the ceaseless flux of American life. Fire Sermon reenacts this ceremony in the entangled lives of three young people and one old man. A chance meeting on the highway links a hippie couple to the eastward journey of an old man and a boy. For the boy it is a daily drama testing and questioning his allegiance. To which world does he belong? To the familiar ties and affections of the old or the disturbing and alluring charms of the new? One of the most distinguished American authors, Wright Morris (1910-1988) wrote thirty-three books including The Field of Vision , which won the National Book Award.

Genres: Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1971

About the author

Wright 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.

Reviews

[Cody · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn’t a great book, but it’s got a helluva lot of heart. Wright Morris, a man not of the times, extends an olive branch sized doob’ to the Hippie kids in this generation-out-of-water road novel. I respect the hell out of the gesture; it shows a suspension of both judgment and moral fixity in the comforts of the familiar.

If not a great book, it does remind me a bit of something early Ashby would’ve made and made well (unlike Being There) c. 1970, and Wes Anderson makes fucking horribly with the per annum/seasonal regularity of the Lunar New Year.

Let there be Bottle Rocket(s) or none at all.

[Adrian Alvarez · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a crime that Wright Morris isn't read more widely. There is so much wisdom in this novel about a boy coming of age as an older generation gives way to a new one. It is infused with a gentle optimism about that passage I find hard to conceive of in 2020. There has been no grace in our current transition.

Not only does Morris have something to say about the dynamics of aging and growing up, he has plenty to teach about writing. The prose in this novel may be unassuming but it is so well crafted that the mechanisms of his narrative are practically invisible. Morris was a prolific and outstanding American writer.

[Joelb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kermit Oelsligle. What a name for a kid. Worse, what a name for a kid whose parents have been killed in an auto accident and whose next of kin is a cantankerous, 81 year old crossing guard in a small California beach town recently invaded by free-love practicing hippies. Floyd Warner, the uncle, simply calls Kermit "the boy." After 14 months they've grown used to each other, but if either of the two is going to have to adapt to the other, it's Kermit. Still, Floyd took Kermit in to his trailer home where he's also de-facto caretaker of the small trailer park, and Kermit has learned how to make himself useful.

If this seems like a slight premise for a novel, it is. If a reader is looking for action, or even for great insight into the mysteries of life, look elsewhere. If, on the other hand, a reader is willing to consider another purpose for a novel - to live for a time in a fictional reality where the author deftly explores the life lived there, come on in.

The title might seem like an odd one. There are no sermons here, and no great moments of realization. There is a moment when everything turns, though. Floyd's sister, who lives in rural Nebraska and writes faithfully every week, hoping to convince Floyd to repent of his cantankerousness before he faces his maker, dies. It had been Kermit's job to answer Aunt Viola's weekly letters, and it was Viola who convinced Floyd to take the boy in, so Kermit in his own way is affected by her death as well.

Floyd decides to take the trailer off blocks, hitch it to the ancient Maxwell sedan, and drive to the family homestead, the final survivors and sole owners. The novel becomes a road story, complete with a pair of hippie hitchhikers, lovers who counteract Floyd's acerbic outlook with their irrepressibly flaky optimism. Various road challenges ensue, but the quartet finally arrives at Viola's farmhouse. It's crammed with the detritus of generations, as it became the repository for family possessions when other family members died. Now, they're all in the family plot; Kermit and Floyd are left to contemplate these shards of the family's life. There is a rather dramatic conclusion; no spoilers here, but considering the setting and the circumstances, a reader might be able to guess.

The novel has a vaguely archetypal quality about it, a quality encouraged by the title. Other reviewers, the few that there are, have characterized this as a coming-of-age story. I agree that Kermit is the key character; Floyd and the hippies are important influences, but primarily serve as foils. What the lessons are, though, is hard to discern. But must there be lessons? I admire Wright Morris's courage in creating this world, conveying how if would be both comforting and bewildering for the boy, not flinching at showing some of the absurdities of life that make it stranger than fiction, and resisting the temptation to tie it all neatly together in the end.

[Dave Hirsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, interesting book. Took me a little while to sort out what it was actually about, but I liked that about it.

[Warren Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Wright Morris’ “Fire Sermon”, Floyd Warner appears to be a loving, if cantankerous, father figure for Kermit, a young boy whose parents have been killed in an accident. Floyd is “kin”, and the only one really available to raise the boy. Theirs is a relationship built on obligation and necessity. It seems that the only “love” Kermit really feels is for and from his Great Aunt Viola. When she dies, the setting of the story changes to “the road”, a seriocomic stretch taking them from Santa Cruz, California to Nebraska.

I really liked this book, and it reminded me some of Tony Earley's “Jim the Boy” (and even a little of Faulkner's “As I Lay Dying”) with its necessary journey wrapped around the death of a beloved matriarch, and the warm yet complicated relationship between a young boy and an old man.

[AJ Nolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think both of these books I could probably rate 4 stars, but I feel like I'm being a bit indulgent with stars. I also borrowed this from Janet Peery.