SOURCE: “Readers and Writers Face to Face,” in The New York Times, November 9, 1958, p. 4FF.

In the following essay, Davis reports on a symposium discussing the writer's role in mid-twentieth-century America, in which Morris was one of the participants.

Recently Esquire magazine and the Writers Club of the School of General Studies, Columbia University, both celebrating anniversaries, joined in inviting four highly articulate writers to take part in a two-day symposium at Columbia. The results were dramatic but puzzling. The writers expressed very vividly feelings of alienation, feelings they found difficult entirely to explain.

At such symposia, which flourish in the colleges, the topics are always impossibly broad ones. This means that intellectually nearly anything goes. One posture is as relevant as another. The topic this time was “The Role of the Writer in America.” The participants were Wright Morris, Leslie Fiedler, Saul Bellow and Dorothy Parker, all...