The best biographies leave you feeling like you intimately know the subject. While he was alive, Yazoo City's brilliant Willie Morris could make people who entered his sphere feel like they were now best friends. In his book, "In Search of Willie Morris," his running buddy and former contributing editor at Harper's Larry L.King remembers that in his research he discovered about 150 people who recounted that Willie also bestowed upon them the title of "best friend."
Born in Jackson, raised in Yazoo City, Morris was a Rhodes Scholar who went on to become the editor of the esteemed Harper's magazine, a publication he transformed into one of the truly American voices with scholarly examinations of the issues and societal changes in play. While studying at the University of Texas, Morris rose to editor of the student newspaper The Daily Texan with opinion pieces and reporting that exposed segregation and defied censorship.
While living in New York, or visiting his first wife at Stanford, Willie's escape into dreams always took him back to Yazoo City.
While at Harper's, Morris published "North Toward Home" in 1967, a work that is part boyhood biography and part Mississippi's jagged socio-political landscape. "Home" is a study of a life of contradictions, fortunately Morris was making the right choices. (Coincidentally, his book was released the same day as William Styron's "The Confessions of Nat Turner," a novel whose generous excerpting would be the first statement of purpose Morris would order as editor of Harper's.)
Four years later after money problems at Harper's, Morris resigned and exiled himself to Long Island (where supposed listened to Nina Simone singing gospel hymns over and over again.) At the house in Bridgehampton, he wrote his next autobiography, the enduring "Good Old Boy" after his son David asked him to describe his boyhood in Mississippi. (Morris is actually buried next to The Witch of Yazoo who he makes famous in this book.)
1973's "The Last of the Southern Girls" is his first real work of fiction, although Morris did base the adventures of a genteel Southern woman in Washington, D.C. on a real person. While it remains one of Morris' lesser-known works, it continues to be revered for its Southern flavor and memories of the Capitol's best bars. Years later, Morris moved back to Mississippi and took the position as "writer-in-residence" at Ole Miss where he nurtured the writing careers of Donna Tartt, John Grisham, and countless others. While in Oxford, he turned out the reportage/societal biography of Philadelphia, MS emblematic in the aggressive nationwide recruitment of star football player Marcus DuPree (who later played at Southern Miss.) This balance of history and personal history is also beautifully captured in 1993's autobiography "New York Days" covering Morris' time at Harper's. "New York Days" elegantly combines the memories of the myriad of writers and artists he brought to Harper's with the hustle and bustle of the big city in its heyday tempered with a tinge of homesickness as Morris begins to appreciate his Southern-ness as he discovers so many ex-Southerners who wish to leave their past behind.
There again is the magic of Morris. The ability to intertwine history and memories. Using his life as a canvas for building characters, establishing relationships and using his skills and perspective as a journalist to give you perspective on the times themselves is what keeps you returning to his books like they are old friends.
In his most enduring and famous book "My Dog Skip," Morris' boyhood is vividly recounted. While having a dog is universal (he also wrote "My Cat Spit McGee,") Morris' adventures provide such an escape that it is no wonder kids all over still read this book 25 years after its publication.
Unlike all Morris' other books, his manner of storytelling provides you the sense of existing in a simpler time and his patient reflection on his childhood - puts adults in the dream state to meditate upon the innocence of their own.
While we lost Morris in 1999, his books dot your shelves with their memories of childhood, adolescence, the vim and vigor of living your dream or at least chasing it. Morris' Mississippi is the one we should also continue to study and analyze as our state grows and changes for the better. Morris once talked about his fitful sleep and short dreams as being the places he relived "small transgressions." Larry L.King describes Morris "retreating from the real world to those dreams." Most of his canon is a place of dreams and him welcoming you to his world - like a best friend would.
Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe in Hattiesburg.
