{"id":21347,"date":"2015-02-02T10:00:29","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T15:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=21347"},"modified":"2015-10-25T21:04:29","modified_gmt":"2015-10-26T02:04:29","slug":"the-prodigal-professor-william-weaks-morris-1934-1999","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/the-prodigal-professor-william-weaks-morris-1934-1999\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Prodigal Professor: William Weaks Morris (1934\u20131999)”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like thousands of others around the world, I recently finished reading The Goldfinch<\/em><\/strong>, by Donna Tartt<\/strong> of Greenwood<\/strong> and Grenada<\/strong>. It was a great and thrilling ride and as I turned the last page of Theo Decker\u2019s epic adventure, I had a single thought: When will Tartt write a Mississippi novel?<\/span><\/p>\n

\"WillieMorris_gravestone\"<\/a>It would surely please the ghost of her former teacher, the wunderkind Willie Morris<\/strong>, renowned for the autobiographical North Toward Home<\/em><\/strong>, a 1967 best-seller. Tartt was a freshman at the University of Mississippi<\/strong> in 1981 when one of her stories struck the fancy of Morris, then a writer-in-residence at Ole Miss.<\/span><\/p>\n

Legend has it that one evening, Morris happened upon Tartt in the bar at the Oxford Holiday Inn and, by way of introduction said: \u201cMy name is Willie Morris and I think you\u2019re a genius.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

Vicksburg high school teacher Lisa Purser Reid<\/strong> surely thought Willie Morris a genius when she took \u201cThe American Novel from 1914\u201d with him at Ole Miss in the spring of 1980.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Rafael221WillieMorrisQuote\"<\/a>\u201cI wasn\u2019t completely aware of who he was when I took the class,\u201d said Reid, who like Morris would leave the Great Magnolia State after college to work in journalism up north. \u201cBut the first book he assigned was one of his own, North Toward Home<\/em> \u2013 that\u2019s how he introduced himself to us. It was all we <\/span>
\n needed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"WillieMorrisBooksVert\"<\/a>After Morris\u2019s death at 64 from a heart attack, the many books he left behind were still not enough for readers. In 2006, Larry L. King<\/strong> published In Search of Willie Morris: The Mercurial Life of a Legendary Writer and Editor<\/em>. There is a very good podcast of Diane Rehm<\/strong> interviewing King on NPR.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2007, the \u201cWillie Morris Award for Southern Fiction\u201d was established by Gulfport native Reba White Williams<\/strong> and her husband Dave H. Williams<\/strong> for a novel set in one of the original eleven Confederate states.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe was tolerant of us and our lack of sophistication and we were pretty much in awe of him,\u201d said Reid, whose Lebanese immigrant grandparents (the Nicola family) ran a Vicksburg grocery. \u201cHe was so openly affectionate toward the South and talked about what a great breeding ground it was for writers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Morris paraded a long line of good and great writers to the class, \u201cAll friends of his,\u201d said Reid.<\/span><\/p>\n

The notables included Winston Groom<\/strong> (Forrest Gump<\/em>), John Knowles <\/strong>(A Separate Peace<\/em>), and, to a very warm reception and much bourbon, William Styron<\/strong>, best known for Sophie\u2019s Choice<\/em>, which won the National Book Award in 1980.<\/span><\/p>\n

After college, Lisa Reid took a reporting job in Newport News, Virginia, Styron\u2019s hometown. There, she fell in love with another young reporter \u2013 Bruce Reid<\/strong>. The couple moved to Bruce\u2019s hometown of Baltimore (south of Mason-Dixon and as north as Lisa would get before returning to Mississippi.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1999, Reid attended her old professor\u2019s funeral in Yazoo City along with luminaries like David Halberstam<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMore than once he told us that all great works of fiction have to originate from and be about the human heart,\u201d wrote Reid in the Vicksburg Post<\/em> the week of Morris\u2019 death. Thinking of his influence the other day, she said, \u201cI re-read North Toward Home<\/em> when I came back home.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I\u2019m chagrined that I never wrote [Morris] to tell him that I too had gone north and come home.\u201d\u00a0 \"The<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

This article was originally printed in The Local Voice<\/em> #221 (printed January 22, 2015.)<\/span>
\n To download a PDF of this issue, click here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like thousands of others around the world, I recently finished reading The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt of Greenwood<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":249,"featured_media":22146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[314,307],"tags":[5167,5163,5168,5158,5151,5155,1504,4082,5157,5165,256,5156,5154,5,5153,229,7067,4,5162,5161,5152,655,5166,5150,1688,5159,5160,5164],"class_list":["post-21347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-history","category-local-people","tag-bruce-reid","tag-dave-williams","tag-david-halberstam","tag-diane-rehm","tag-donna-tartt","tag-great-american-novel-from-1914","tag-greenwood","tag-grenada","tag-in-search-of-willie-morris","tag-john-knowles","tag-lafayette-county","tag-larry-l-king","tag-lisa-purser-reid","tag-mississippi","tag-north-toward-home","tag-npr","tag-ole-miss","tag-oxford","tag-reba-white-williams","tag-reba-williams","tag-theo-decker","tag-university-of-mississippi","tag-william-styron","tag-william-weaks-morris","tag-willie-morris","tag-willie-morris-award","tag-willie-morris-award-for-southern-fiction","tag-winston-groom"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/WillieMorrisFEATreplace.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}