In Orbit

by Wright Morris

"In the space of one day, Jubal E. Gainer, high school dropout and draft dodger, manages to rack up an impressive array of crimes. . . . He steals a friend's motorcycle, rapes a simple-minded spinster, mugs a pixyish professor, and stabs an obese visionary who runs a surplus store. He then waits out an Indiana twister and goes his way, leaving as much wreckage in his path as the twister itself."--Library Journal. "In Orbit is a short novel, full of action, and the seriousness can mostly be found between the lines. [There] one can see against what Jubal Gainer's rebellion, thoughtless and aimless as it seems, is directed. One might say that he is, like millions of his contemporaries, a Huck Finn without a Mississippi."-- Granville Hicks, Saturday Review. "Here is another of Wright Morris's craftsmanly novels--terse, colloquial, restrained, fragmented, deliberately shadowy. Above all, small; not slight, not inconsequential, but a miniature. . . . All readers will surely appreciate the quality of the prose style one has come to expect in a Wright Morris novel. . . . There is also a muscular quality to Mr. Morris's writing that makes it a suitable instrument for conveying harsher things; and there is his sense of the comic, which springs up constantly. In all, this is a quiet but rich performance."--New York Times Book Review. 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

152 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1967

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

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a trip. A juvenile delinquent rolls through a small town in Nebraska wreaking havoc in a single day and then leaves shortly after the advent of a destructive twister.

His victims, however, seem complicit and almost buoyant in their role. They seem to expect and even maybe want the experience of being attacked. And the twister could very well be a metaphor for our fear and fascination with the destructive beauty of such natural disasters.

Out of coincidence, a couple of weeks ago, I finished Muriel Sparks' The Driver's Seat, which also explores this theme. I was so tripped ("trippy" is the best word for this 1967 novel) by Morris' tale and writing that I began digging for information on his life. Come to find out, he and Sparks were close friends and corresponded frequently about their work.

I came across a shiny first edition of In Orbit in a used bookstore and was immediately lured by the first line,

"The boy comes riding with his arms high and wide, his head dipped low, his ass light in the saddle, as if about to be shot into orbit from a forked sling."

What a awe-inspiring first sentence, for which I'm always a sucker for.

This is not a perfect novel. There are moments of choppy prose and patches of reader-bewilderment, and I often wondered if the psychedelic late 60's showed their teeth in this.

But what I loved was Morris' singular voice and sense of freedom with his characters and the story. If there are rules for the novel, Morris seems to break them here. He writes playfully, as if for himself, and the novel clips along as if not plotted and overly edited, but raw and real.

I'm definitely going to seek out more Wright Morris. Though he doesn't seem to be as widely-read today, he was one of the major writers in 60's and 70's, winning several awards, including the National Book Award.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nebraska goes Southern Gothic, witnessed through the goggle-eyed countercultural 1960s. The tableau's atmosphere is rendered here as 'hillbilly head fulla acid'/'Pammy's on a bummer'/"Carol thinks long hair is groovy, digs now sounds, wears bell bottoms...and has syphilis." Wright Morris was no prude, but his wondrously morbid, drole, and chronologically older observer status made his a keener insight to the American fucked than most participants.

The book is basically Malick's Badlands minus Sissy's character. Or, in an interesting twist, Springsteen's "Nebraska," the Boss' setting of Badlands (Malick) to the ballad form. This is interesting only in that the song and album are called Nebraska, and In Orbit, predates any—Badlands, "Nebraska" (song), Nebraska (LP, cassette & 8-track tape)—by many summers. Oh, and let us NOT forget, Springsteen's previous album, Darkness on the Edge of Town, opens with (what else?) "Badlands" (song; related to neither "Nebraska" nor Nebraska, but post-Malick, of whom, at the very least, it can clearly be appreciated that Springsteen had a substantiated affection for perhaps, and I said perhaps, bordering on the obsessive). Why is this interesting? Because Wright Morris is THE quintessential Nebraskan author. He is Nebraska shaped like a human being. Shit. Can it be any fucking clearer, man? Coincidence? Sure. I guess, if you believe in that sort of thing. Or maybe it's all a big goddamn conspiracy perpetrated by The Man to remind you you're in a constant state of surveillance and psi-ops so subatomically linked as to appear as just that sort of thing, that thing being your fairytale 'coincidence' horseshit.

You're either on the bus or you're off the bus; that much is true. Morris? Definitely on the bus, and more than likely keeping Neal's ears pealing. But, no: he does not want any of your peppermint goddamn twist and he's not entertaining anything pre-70 and Workingman's.

Or: I'm only saying it's a five-star book for ME, jack.



*(((For those playing along at home: running order: Nebraska (statehood 1 March 1867); In Orbit; Badlands (movie); "Badlands" (song); Nebraska (album); "Nebraska" (song).)))

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable novel, short and sweet. A motorcyclist comes to a small midwestern town and sweeps through it. So does a cyclone. Here’s how it opens:

This boy comes riding with his arms high and wide, his head dipped low, his ass light in the saddle, as if about to be shot into orbit from a forked sling.

Wright Morris is a writer who spits out images like a man chewing tobacco. Here’s a motorcycle ride:

When he stepped out of the cabin the signs on the freeway were like the names on moving freight cars. Too many. He went in the direction the bike would coast. There was sand where the ice filmed the road in the winter making a sound like a wire brush stroking the fenders. The night passed, peeling his shadow from the reeling road. At the side of it the wires dipped and rose, with a lapping sound the poles flag him.

Here’s a philosopher/storekeeper:

Kashperl could not paint, nor draw with charcoal, nor make out of clay acceptable ashtrays, his talent being that of the man whose twig bends in the presence of water. Kashperl the diviner. Is it so important how he looks? A nameless college instructor put it more bluntly: “Kewpy,” he said, “you have a syrup but it doesn’t pour.”

Here’s the sheriff, fallen into a raging creek:

It is Hodler who panics; he sprawls then slides on the oilskin of his slicker, to where he spills, his arms spread wide, into the creek. It is deep enough to float him, his arms thrashing, to where the water flows beneath a culvert, an iron grill beneath it to keep the debris from spilling into the pond. There Hodler is pinned by the force of the water while mountain engines drawing long strings of freight cars cross all the trestles of his life in one deafening roar.

There’s always a mix of the laconic and the dramatic:

Would you believe that in the beeches near the river he watched this man tie a woman to a tree and take her without taking off his hat? He had a pint bottle of Echo Springs in his pocket and he kept his knees flexed to make sure he wouldn’t drop it. When he finished they both went back to picking mushrooms. In the old days, surely, such things were not uncommon, but the times have changed. Nowadays such people would never know toadstools from mushrooms.

And that's the problem for me, actually. The story is packed with slam-bang events told from a bemused distance, a separation imposed by the writing style. Wright Morris is an author who I admire more than I enjoy. But I truly admire him. I like him best when he’s confronting folksy Nebraska with modern civilization, which is what happens here. Okay, one more:

It was not uncommon for Charlotte to reflect the moods of the weather, as she did. On a day like this one she would often, as she said herself, cloud up and rain all over him. After the rain, and as suddenly, she would clear up.

[Sean Morrow · Rating 2 out of 5]

Huh?