A Life

by Wright Morris

Floyd Warner, eighty-two, has driven from California to his childhood home in Nebraska in his antique Maxwell coupe. There he confronts the smoldering remains of this late sister's house and the realization that he is now completely alone. As though in a trance, he sets out once again, this time to find his first adult home, a dusty sheep farm in the southwest, preparing to meet the fate that ultimately awaits him. Of such deceptively simple ingredients is this brilliant portrait of the last hours of an old man's life composed. Floyd Warner, who first appeared in Fire Sermon , is perhaps the ultimate characterization in the career of a writer who has been called "quite simply the best novelist now writing in America" (John W. Aldridge).

Genres: Fiction

152 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 1973

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 5 out of 5]

Do not proceed unless you have first read Fire Sermon. There’s no way this could track as anything other than solipsistic otherwise, the actuality being it is any but; Wright-Morris (I’m treating it all as a surname) earns the hell out of this slow hurt out of life. Written in a malleable third that ebbs in and out of omniscience, the protagonist from Sermon, drained of piss and vinegar, beers off into his final, unexpected anti-adventure.

Turns out that the failures of Fire Sermon functioned as the necessary prologue for A Life’s quixotic successes. All that annoys there does so to substantiate what’s ever-gladdening here, a neat literary feint you’ll just have to trust me on. If only all termini were granted such grace, however fictional they may be, I might dream today of better tomorrows.

[Rachel Cheeseman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a quick and melancholic read about the twilight of life. I liked it but wouldn't recommend it. The storyline is lost in meandering and distracting prose, and I cannot seem to decipher an intention of feeling in the story until the last sentence. It's pretty though.

[AJ Nolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Borrowed from Janet Peery. A really great novella. A powerful, contained story that takes place in 1-2 days. Read in one day (like I did its predecessor, Fire Sermon).