Customer Reviews

Taps: A Novel

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I had tears in my eyes as I finished this book, knowing that it would be the last love letter from the South from Willie Morris. The sheer beauty of his voice comes through in every line of TAPS, and in every character. This was an author who loved his home and the people around him. I'm so glad that JoAnne Morris was able to bring this final work to Willie's millions of fans and I commend her strength of spirit as well as his. God bless Willie Morris--he will be missed.

Taps is a wonderful book. After reading just a little I
wished that the book was much, much longer. I grew up during
this period and believe it to be true to my experience.
This is the first book I have read by this author. Based on
this book I plan to read all he has written. Very sorry that
mr Morris died so (relatively) young.
I read 20-25 books a year. This is easily the best in quite a
few years.

Simply the best book I read in 2001. Completely satisfied my hunger for a great read -- now hungry for more, of course -- the same feeling I had after reading some of my other favorites: Flamingo Rising, by Larry Baker; Tomcat in Love, by Tim O'Brien; Wildlife, by Richard Ford; Straight Man, by Richard Russo and, of course, anything by Pat Conroy. Morris' last book is the first of his I've read. I'll work my backward through his library now.

TAPS is more than a title, it is the background of a bygone era. It is the very footsteps of youth frozen in time and memory. The setting of Fisk's Landng, Mississippi is the stage on which Swayze Barksdale and his friends learn about life, its hardships, pleasures, and sometimes about tough decisions on day to day priorities. When Swayze and his friend Arch are drafted by the hardware store owner and World War II veteran, Luke Cartwright, to play Taps at a military funeral because as members of the high school band they are the only trumpet players in town, it marks the beginning of the return of casualties from the Korean conflict. Swayze and Arch play Taps and 'echo' at the many funerals which come to punctuate the days and experiences of their young lives. The town's bullies led by Durley Godbold, scion of the wealthiest family in town, make life miserable for Swayze and his friends until Durley leaves for service. He proves opposities attract by marrying his girlfriend Amanda before he leaves. She is as beautiful and well liked as Durley is arrogant and mean. When Durley is reported missing in action, it is bad news to no one but his parents. Soon after that, Swayze and his girlfiend, Georgia, discover that Luke and Amanda have become lovers. They keep their secret, enjoying their friends' comraderie in spite of the age difference, right up to Luke's shocking murder. Swayze's mother teaches tap dancing to the town's more affluent children and he welcomes every chance he has to escape his mother's constant surveillance and the irritiating sound of the tap dancing. The characters and scenes are so skillfully done you can almost hear their voices and picture the school, the teacher, and the old hearse at the funeral home. The developing affection between Swayze and Georgia, between Luke and Amanda, and the intrigues and shocks of life and sudden death in Fisk's Landing are drawn against a rural background which quickly becomes familiar in the first few pages. The playing of Taps captures the reader's imagination and winds its way using the characters' experiences and emotions along a pathway strewn with the reader's own milestones and memories, to touch the heart. Willie Morris died at the age of sixty-six in August of 1999 and TAPS is a fitting memorial of the pleasure he bequeathered his readers.
Submitted by: Jackie Griffey, columnist for The North Shelby Times, Memphis, Tennessee.

Willie Morris has written a remembrance of the 50's in a small Southern town and environment that will present a picture to those that lived in the period and to those learning about what it was like in the "old" days. His use of the language is excellent and his discriptions of the land and nature plus his insight into the characterizations of the people are realistic and visual. An excellent story worth reading.

Taps flows at a languid pace, giving the reader ample time to see, and hear, and smell the South of the Mississippi Delta, and to track the protagonist's very painful process of growing up. This is the fourth book I have read by Willie Morris, along with Larry King's fine memoir to him. King argues that Taps may be the truest, most unvarnished account of Morris' life, particularly when compared with his non-fiction work. He also says that Morris kept working on this book for virtually his entire adult life. If King is correct, then Willie Morris lived his life with an underlying sadness and sense of loss that, as revealed in Taps, is overwhelming. For him to be able to fly as high as he did in his impressive career, particularly his editorship of Harper's, and to write so many books with such rollicking good humor, must have required enormous courage and determination.

Taps is a beautifully written novel by a connisseur of letters. The word imagery is wonderful. It is exhilarating, it is sad, it is poignant. You will never hear Taps again without thinking of Swayze, Luke, Amanda, Georgia and the dog Dusty. It is even better than John Grisham's A Painted House.

I'm going to admit right up front that I have always had a soft spot when it comes to Southern writers who write well about growing up in the American South of the first half of the twentieth century. That positive prejudice comes from how easily I can identify with the stories that these writers have to tell. Willie Morris is one of those writers and, sadly, we lost him in 1999 at the relatively young age of 64.

Taps turned out to be Willie's last book and it was not published until 2001 after his wife, JoAnne Prichard Morris, working from notations that Morris made on the original manuscript, released it to Houghton Mifflin for publication. Willie Morris treasured his memories of growing up in Mississippi during the forties and fifties and, in Taps, he does a wonderful job of creating the atmosphere which he remembered so well. The story takes place in early 1950s Fisk's Landing, Mississippi, and is told through the eyes of Swayze Barksdale, a young high school student who finds his life forever changed by the Korean War.

The changes begin when Swayze and a friend of his are recruited by World War II hero Luke Cartwright to play "Taps" at the funerals of the many Fisk's Landing boys who are so steadily being killed in Korea. Fisk's Landing is small enough that Swayze can easily recall each of the boys being buried in the town cemetery and, in fact, some of them had been classmates of his until they dropped out of high school to join the military. The circumstances of 1951-52 force Swayze to mature in ways, and at a pace, that few 15-year-old boys ever face. He has to deal with the fact that his mother is more than just a little "odd," he finds his first love, discovers sex, gets drawn into a conspiracy to help his two best adult friends hide their own love affair, and loses his girl to the football captain.

But it is when Swayze finds himself playing "Taps" for his closest friend in the world that he really understands what it is to be a man. He has learned lessons in that one year that will serve him well for the remainder of his life and he will never forget the people of Fisk's Landing who helped make him into the man that he ultimately became. Taps is a touching story and Willie Morris wrote it in the style that the best southern writers have, a style that seems to come from growing up in the South during a certain period in time. Frankly, I haven't read all that much of his work, but I suppose I can look at that neglect as being a good thing because now I can look forward to reading the rest of it.

Morris captured the "Big Picture" of how the Korean War affected a small town in Mississippi well, but his writing style was very inconsistent. The story is good and the narrator, Swayze is compelling, but I didn't find it worthy of more than three stars.

Gifted, with a clear distinct voice, Willie Morris' TAPS while insightful to a time past, yet lacks a strong narrative drive. With all the well-drawn characters, Morris sets up the reader in a way that suggests something is going to happen. It doesn't. I would recommend the book, but don't expect to be riveted, rather rocked by the wonderful prose.