The Total View of Taftly: A Novel [Hardcover]

Scott Morris (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2000

When we first meet Taftly Harper he is happily ensconced in the boozy Copiah Harper Tavern in bucolic Copiah Springs. Though Taftly descends from a storied line of Southerners, his father has long ago vanished and his mother is dead. Left to his own devices, Taftly seeks an adventurous and heroic existence for himself: a life of honour with an occasional splash of splendour. Our newly svelte Taftly foremost wants what any pathetically noble creature deserves: to love and be loved. Instead, he finds and loses love, gets assaulted -- almost raped -- by the obscenely obese Clydesdale twins, pestered by a body-building, alien-abducted sidekick; and tormented by the memories of his mother. From peaks of ingenious hilarity to valleys of soul-searching depth, debut novelist Scott Morris has created a character cynical enough to be genuine and ridiculous enough to be loveable. Taftly's saga is not soon forgotten and, through him, we are forced to explore our own position in the world whereby we are left with a rare glimpse of the 'Total View' or how to wrench grace and triumph from an otherwise barren and plotless world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Aiming to juxtapose erudite narration with ignorant characters, Morris's earnest novel of Southern silliness and bawdy, boozy escapades never quite manages to make it off the bar stool. Thirtyish Taftly Harper is the pitiful descendant of local heroes--his great-grandfather built the local college and his granddaddy built the bank. Taftly himself has just shed the weight that branded him a fat loser. Also saddled with psychosexual hang-ups (the legacy of his recently deceased fastidious mother) and painful memories of his ex-girlfriend Ruby, Taftly is on a mission to find love. He thinks he's got a chance when he saves the attractive Fay Davis from her abusive common-law husband, but she marries a doctor. As a parting gesture, Fay removes her dentures and services Taftly--a sexual favor (he subsequently learns) that has earned her notoriety. Rejected and now obsessed with the notion that his teeth are clairvoyant, Taftly buys property outside of town and becomes acquainted with bumbling handyman Dennis Jolly, who claims to have been abducted by space aliens. Torturing himself with thoughts of Fay, Taftly is driven to outcries of anguish beneath the stars. Dennis overhears these soul-searching soliloquies, records them and aspires to become Taftly's Boswell. When Taftly discovers Dennis marketing the tapes as "Lectures from Taftly Harper on God and Many Other Great Thinkers," he goes ballistic. Morris renders his characters as redneck buffoons striving for philosophical loftiness--which, added to the story's rambling plot and bizarre tone, conspire to make Taftly's adventure an incoherent, alienating whirlwind. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

The sweetly ineffectual last survivor of a decayed southern family pines in vain for a Total View of his place in the cosmos. Taftly Harper has a lot going for him, but somehow it never all comes together. The sole heir of his towns first family, he works as a truck driver for his own holding, the Copiah Springs Bottled Water Company. Spurred on by a jogging magazine, he loses a ton of baby fat, but instead of his buff new bod bringing him together with his dream girl, it makes him the target of the elephantine Clydesdale twins. Neither the Catholic priest nor the Baptist minister he consults about this trauma can make him whole again. Soon thereafter, he not only meets his dream girl in the person of Fay Davis but rescues her from Rodney Train, her brutish suitor, and wins her undying gratitudethough their single sexual encounter doesnt deter her from marriage to a local doctor, and leaves Taftly haunted besides. When Taftly retreats to a cabin in the woods to lick his wounds, handyman Dennis Jolly shifts his cracked attention from the alien abductions hes convinced hes a frequent victim of to recording Taftlys every distracted utterance on tape and peddling the results in hopes of becoming a millennial Boswell. Meanwhile, Rodney Train writes from the state pen vowing to kill him. First-timer Morris retails Taftlys modest adventures with a beguiling inconsequence worthy of his amiable hero, even though the lunacy is a little too neatly and generously distributed, and never adds up to a Total View, or much of anything else. Think of Nathanael Wests splenetic A Cool Million with all the bile replaced by bottled spring waterand have a nice day. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Hill Street Press; 1st edition (April 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1892514702
• ISBN-13: 978-1892514707
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,629,482 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stylish, smart, promising writer, August 25, 2000

By 

F. Kelly "wystan" (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Total View of Taftly: A Novel (Hardcover)

I write a monthly book review column for an Atlanta paper, and I ge a lot of review books. Because my space is limited, I can't possibly review everything, so I tend to save the space for books that I think our readers will enjoy the most. I'm really on the fence about "Taftly." I enjoyed it, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to discerning friends, but I'm not sure I want to serve it up to a wide audience. It's not for everyone. Scott Morris may never write a book that's for eveyone. But this book should find an audience; it deserves one.

Scott Morris has clearly read a lot of good fiction, and I bet that both "A Confederacy of Dunces" and "The Moviegoer" have honored places on his shelves. There's a lot of Binx in Taftly -- but there's a lot of Ignatius elsewhere. For me, the manic, Toole-esque characters (Dennis Jolly, Rodney Train and the Clydesdale twins) were the weakest parts of the book. Dennis at least gets a chance to grow a bit, and the notion of him as a redneck Boswell is a hoot. But as catalysts for Taftly's evolving "total view," none of them really works. Instead, I found the soul of the book in the barely-there character of the doctor who marries Fay.

There's so much bad, self-indulgent and programmatic new fiction out there that a "Taftly" is a welcome breeze. It's got ideas -- good ones -- at its core. It doesn't pander. It delights fans of the nifty phrase, and rewards a thoughtful reader. Here's hoping that it finds its discerning audience, and that Morris will continue to cater to us for years to come.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars apparently misunderstood by "non-Southerners", July 31, 2004

By 

A. Rankin - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Total View of Taftly: A Novel (Hardcover)

I read this book a few months ago (and liked it) and since it was on my amazon recommendation list I clicked on it to see what kind of reviews it was getting. There were four listed: two said it was great, even brilliant and two said they were just disappointed, and had some disparaging (even rude) comments about the author. I was surprised to say the least, for I thought the book quite good. Was I missing something or were they? I thought it interesting that the two reviewers who did not like the book were not from the South (and that I and the two reviewers that loved it are). Maybe it takes a Southern person to understand this book, or maybe I'm just not as intellectually advanced as the two dissapointed readers. What I really think, though, is that most Southerners know people who are somewhat similar to Scott Morris's charachters, and identify with their attitudes, problems and desires. That is what makes Mr. Morris's book great. Through his charachters, a reader with imagination can come to see things with a different point of view, in this case... to RELAX. Through Taftly, I was reminded to allow others their quirks (even if I have to watch out for them!) and to be at ease with my own. The two disappointed reviewers (obviously unfamiliar with the Southern mental, social and physical terrain) were unable (even with Mr. Morris's wonderful descriptive imagery) to connect with his characters.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FLAT OUT BRILLIANT, October 15, 2000

By 

Martin F. Clark Jr. (Stuart, Virginia USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Total View of Taftly: A Novel (Hardcover)

I picked this book up at The Southern Book Festival in Nashville. I bought it on Saturday, finished it on Sunday afternoon...barely put it dowm. Scott Morris has a remarkable gift for language, a splendid ear for dialogue, and the finest, edgiest sense of humor I've run across in years. Here's a book full of puns, wit, wordplay, scholarship, droll asides, and ruminations on philosophy,family and religion....yet it still has a great story to tell. Just a gem. If you buy only a single book this year, this should be the one.