[The Morris novels] are not in the fashionable mode. Morris is less interested in an event, a happening, than he is in its implications. Lots of exciting events occur in his stories—tornadoes strike, bombs threaten to explode, old men die, young men assert their manhood—but we are not asked to participate in them. We are invited to search them for meaning. (p. ix)

The modern American novel is urban and peopled with sophisticated city types. Morris writes characteristically of westerners, small communities, open areas. Frequently very funny indeed, his novels are closer to the frontier tall tale than to the wisecracking anecdote of the standup comedian…. The stories suggest something of the epic sweep of the West; and like the talk of frontiersmen, the comedy and tragedy are both deadpan. Its subtlety can be missed by those whose ears are deafened by the screaming headlines of...