North Toward Home

I've been working on Willie Morris' 'North Toward Home' for a while and I am halfway through it. He is a Mississippi native and lived in Jackson at the time of his death. I picked it back up last week and have been making steady progress. It's an interesting insight into Mississippi (and later Texas and New York) in the 1950s and 1960s. I have to tell a bit about Willie Morris. First of all I wish I had gone to view his casket when he was laid in state in the Old Capitol rotunda back in 1999, but he died in August - remember it was August in Mississippi - and the line was so long I did not want to spend my lunch hour standing in the sun to see a closed casket. I regret not going though. At the time I had read Good Old Boy, My Dog Skip and My Cat Spit McGee, which are 'Morris-lite' books (I say that because they're significantly skinnier than his other works and written in an easier-to-read vocabulary). Later in 1999, when his wife had a book launch party at their home near Jackson's Fondren neighborhood, Todd and I were lucky enough to be invited. We also met the famed Spit McGee at the party - a friendly cat who let strangers stroke him. He died later that year if I have my time line right. At any rate, North Toward Home (the first half which I've finished) is a wonderful glimpse into small town Mississippi in the pre-TV era.