or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Tell the Publisher!
I'd like to read this book on Kindle

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Sorry, this item is not available in
Image not available for
Color:
Image not available

To view this video download Flash Player

 

North Toward Home [Paperback]

Willie Morris
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)

List Price: $15.95
Price: $11.17 & FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $4.78 (30%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Only 16 left in stock (more on the way).
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Want it Tuesday, May 28? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
Hardcover --  
Paperback $9.75  
Paperback, August 22, 2000 $11.17  
Unknown Binding --  
Image
Save on Popular Books This Summer
Browse our Bookshelf Favorites store for big savings on popular fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and more.

Book Description

August 22, 2000
With his signature style and grace, Willie Morris, arguably one of this country's finest Southern writers, presents us with an unparalleled memoir of a country in transition and a boy coming of age in a period of tumultuous cultural, social, and political change.

In North Toward Home, Morris vividly recalls the South of his childhood with all of its cruelty, grace, and foibles intact.  He chronicles desegregation and the rise of Lyndon Johnson in Texas in the 50s and 60s, and New York in the 1960s, where he became the controversial editor of Harper's magazine.  North Toward Home is the perceptive story of the education of an observant and intelligent young man, and a gifted writer's keen observations of a country in transition. It is, as Walker Percy wrote, "a touching, deeply felt and memorable account of one man's pilgrimage."

Frequently Bought Together

North Toward Home + Good Old Boy: A Delta Boyhood + My Dog Skip
Price for all three: $30.94

Buy the selected items together


Editorial Reviews

Review

"North Toward Home is the finest evocation of an American boyhood since Mark Twain."--Sunday Times (London)

"Vivid sketches of personas and places, moments when the spirit of things is caught with affecting precision.... And...prose that is extraordinarily clean, flexible and incisive."--The New York Times Book Review

"North Toward Home is a classic."--William Styron

From the Publisher

Willie Morris always wrote from the heart and with a generosity of spirit. His first book, North Toward Home, was published to extraordinary acclaim in 1967. It was to be his signature work, a memoir on which all his other books would pivot. In North Toward Home he found his voice and discovered his identity.

This self-styled "autobiography in mid-passage" is one man's emotional journey to understanding his own southern origins while reluctantly coming to regard the North as home. As Morris chronicles his own experiences during the nineteen forties, fifties, and sixties he also explains their relationship to the larger contemporaneous trends in America.

And critics applauded. A New Republic reviewer noted that "it is this ambitious attempt to relate recent personal experience to history that gives North Toward Home its character and attraction." A writer for America went a step further. "It wasn't enough that in 1967, at the age of 32, Willie Morris became the editor of Harper's, the oldest and one of the most prestigious magazines in America. He had to compound our amazement by producing this autobiography, one of the best books of the year in any category."

To honor and remember Willie Morris' literary legacy, this book is reissued in hardcover on the sixty-fifth anniversary of his birth--November 29, 1999--as a commemorative edition of a true American classic. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


Product Details

  • Paperback: 464 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Books ed edition (August 22, 2000)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0375724605
  • ISBN-13: 978-0375724602
  • Product Dimensions: 5 x 1 x 8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #344,798 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

I read this years ago, but wish I had read it earlier. John Manicom  |  2 reviewers made a similar statement
I recommend books on whether they are entertaining and whether I learn much. R. Spell  |  2 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
43 of 46 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Different than I expected. And BETTER January 4, 2001
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
After seeing the movie My Dog Skip, I bought this book to learn about a educated man who grew up in the South. I anticipated a recollection of why the South is great. What I read was a man recalling growing up in the South when it was a lazy, great place to grow up in. The first part of the book covers this and provided a perfect synopsis for the movie, My Dog Skip.

The second part of the book covers his time in Texas where he attended college and stayed to become an editor of a local liberal paper. He also was the school paper editor who became famous for his liberal stances taking on the administration. While this section gets long, it is the most interesting section as Morris is thrown in a foreign environment, becomes quite intimidated as many freshman do, and then grows in the process. This growth culminates in his acceptance as a Rhodes Scholar competing against many Ivy League namedroppers who once again intimidate him. He graduates and eventually writes for a liberal paper in Texas covering politics which allows him to see this magnificent state and challenge the beliefs of politicians and himself as he has grown into a full liberal in a very conservative state. Significant time is spent coloring the political landscape of the time and it's quite interesting to view this from 40 years hence. Anyone remember the John Birch Society?

The final section was an evolution as he moves to New York, goes through the humiliating first job search before he finds a low paying job working for Harpers Magazine. He describes what it's like working in New York, which he calls the "Cave", and living in substandard conditions where the sun never hits his building. He describes his first literary party and the pompous attitude of these intellectuals, particularly about the rest of the country. This becomes the fascinating introspective part of the book as he parallels his life in the South and his existence living in the "Cave".

This book covers the 40's,50's and 60's so clearly race was a central theme as the civil rights movement was in boom causing him to challenge so much of what he knew growing up. I think this culminates when he asks a German woman to leave his apartment after she makes some mild racist Jewish remarks. Morris really struggled reconciling the race issue given his background in Mississippi and at one point when he was introduced, he said he was from North Carolina as he had become embarrassed to mention being from Mississippi.

It's a fascinating story of personal growth that any reader will learn from. The book closes with him moving out of the Cave to a 70 mile, 4 hour commute daily to the city. And the last paragraph states the title "North Toward Home". I think many people will take the close differently but to me he was accepting his new home and turning over the page on the South which he would always appreciate and remember fondly.

This book will be of interest to Southerners looking to learn about their heritage and what living in the South in the segregated 1940's was like. Also, people with interests in journalism and political history will enjoy the book. But this book is also good for anyone looking for personal growth through the writings of others. I recommend books on whether they are entertaining and whether I learn much. I was pleasently entertained and learned a great deal. I strongly recommend this book.

Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
28 of 29 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars The Great American Life March 6, 2000
Format:Hardcover
I read this book, in the original 1967 paperback edition, about a year ago... as a work of literature, and as a work of history and autobiography, it is truly magnificent... the language and imagery is lush and evocative, funny and full of truth... I was shocked to hear that he had passed away, as I knew nothing more of him than this one book... for those of us who have a particular fascination with history as it is made, this books publication date of 1967, and the author's provenance as a progressive Southerner, give you an insight into the period, at a level of honesty that no contemporary historian, with it's veil of time and the judgement of history, could match. In this book, LBJ has not yet resigned, Vietnam is just becoming visible, and Martin Luther King Jr. and RFK are not yet dead. Read this book, and Yazoo will be forever ingrained in your mind, as will the the tragic contradictions of the pre-Civil Rights era South, the intimacy and distance between black and white and the interplay of cultures present nowhere else in the U.S.

Buy this book. You will not regret having read it. You will want to give it to your friends to read it, afterwards (or have them buy it over the web).

Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
33 of 36 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Charming story of growing up in the South August 23, 1998
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
For anyone who loves the South or wants to better understand Southerners, Willie Morris is a great, easy read. Lots of humorous stories from a rambunctious little boy's perspective. This is a book you can read to your children, and you will laugh together as Morris tells his tall tales of growing up in small town Mississippi. Willie's books are great fun and must read for those with parents who grew up in the South in the 40's and 50's.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars Should have stayed in Mississippi
Morris is at his best writing about small town, boyhood sports in Mississippi. I devoured every word of his book Always Stand in against the Curve. Read more
Published 5 days ago by RaDadIndy
5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful Coming of Age Memoir
I read this years ago, but wish I had read it earlier. I bought this for my college age daughter. Were she to read it I am sure it would have a salutary effect in the guise of an... Read more
Published 4 months ago by John Manicom
5.0 out of 5 stars North Toward Home
I ordered a used book, North Toward Home, from Amazon. It arrived virtually looking new. What a fantastic writer Willie Morris was. I will order again - more of his books. Read more
Published 8 months ago by 8762
5.0 out of 5 stars NORTH TOWARD HOME
Interesting autobiography that takes the author from his birth State of Mississipi to Texas, then New York, with his changing perceptives al;ong the way
Published 12 months ago by 2FELINES
4.0 out of 5 stars Not Catcher in the Rye . . . all the better
I have never liked Catcher in the Rye. Perhaps it is not the book that is at fault but the undeserved reaction it gets. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Ryan C. Holiday
5.0 out of 5 stars North Towards Home
Willie Morris has done an interesting and provocative job in writing this book. His ability to tell a story is, of course, rarely surpassed and it is well worth the reading.
Published 22 months ago by Mr. Thomas D. Willingham Jr.
5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Memoir
Really delightful. He is a powerful, powerful man who writes beautifully about the less powerful moments of his own life. Read more
Published 24 months ago by Will F.
3.0 out of 5 stars Part brilliant, part boring - uneven and somewhat dated
I read Morris's charming little book about his boyhood, MY DOG SKIP, about ten years ago and rather enjoyed it. Read more
Published on February 4, 2010 by Timothy J. Bazzett
5.0 out of 5 stars An Enlightened Good Ole Boy Who Sure Knew How To Write
The late Mr. Morris was truly a gifted writer. This memoir is broken up into three sections; his childhood in Yazoo, Mississippi, the college years and early career in Texas, and... Read more
Published on November 23, 2009 by Franklin the Mouse
3.0 out of 5 stars Too Much Dogma
My Dog Skip and My Cat Spitz Mcgee were excellent works. Unfortunately his autobiographical work North Toward Home deviates into liberal philosophy to the point of distraction. Read more
Published on July 15, 2009 by C. M. Jones
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews




What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?


Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

Forums

There are no discussions about this product yet.
Be the first to discuss this product with the community.
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 



So You'd Like to...

Create a guide


Look for Similar Items by Category