SOURCE: “Introduction: The Two Sides of Wright Morris's Fiction,” in The Novels of Wright Morris: A Critical Interpretation, University of Nebraska Press, 1978, pp. 1-27.

In the following essay, Crump discusses the conflict between the ideal and the actual, the relationship of time, memory, and imagination to each other, and the influence of Henry James and D. H. Lawrence in Morris's fiction.

Granville Hicks begins his introduction to Wright Morris: A Reader with a familiar lament: “Those of us who strongly admire the work of Wright Morris … are always wondering why everybody doesn't see his writings as we see them, as one of the most imposing edifices on the contemporary literary horizon. We, who look forward to each book of his as it is announced, and talk about it with excitement when it appears, cannot understand why so many pulses remain calm.”¹ Indeed, the continued public and scholarly indifference...