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"Life as Literature": Wright Morris's "Love Among the Cannibals"
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attacked by the Greek she ends up smeared with the Greek's blood "blood under her nails, and on her lips was the sun-tanned flesh of the Greek" (112). But if the Greek is Venus, Billie is not a cannibal but a theophage.
18
. The Greek's silence in response to "the love song... of Earl Horter to his cannibelle" (130) foreshadows
her escape from him.
19
. Crump, Novels of Wright Morris, 162.
20
. Hymn to Aphrodite 286-90, tr. Jenny Strauss Clay in The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in
the Major Homeric Hymns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 198.
21
. Clay, Politics of Olympus, 198-9. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello says that Anchises must have kept his
mouth shut; Elizabeth Costello, 185-6.
22
. Wright Morris A Cloak of Light: Writing My Life, reprinted in Writing My Life: An Autobiography
(Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1993), 429-32
23
Cf. 65-66 with Conversations, 31.
24
. See Crump, Novels of Wright Morris, 132. Though Crump himself is ambivalent about this
characterization, he writes that Morris "linked healthy, creative selfhood to impersonal sexuality" (145) which is nonsense, unless health and personality are contradictory. I have argued elsewhere that there are good reasons for thinking that ethical health and personality are contradictory, but I do not think that Morris would have agreed; see Michael S. Kochin, "Individual Narrative and Political Character," The Review of Metaphysics 56(June 2002):691-709.
25
. In A Cloak of Light Morris tells how he peeped on some Harcourt employees chortling knowingly at
one scene in Love Among the Cannibals (64-5), where a starlet firms up her nipples under her dress with crushed ice before singing; Wright Morris A Cloak of Light, reprinted in Writing My Life, 438.
26
. Klein, After Alienation, 234. Lawrence's loves are more sophisticated by reading than Klein asserts, but
that is a matter for another day.
27
. Wright Morris, About Fiction (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), 82-3; A Bill of Rites, 42;
Earthly Delights, 127.
28
. Earthly Delights, 127.
29
. Alcman Partheinon 17 fr. 1 Page, tr. modified from Campbell, Greek Lyric, vol. 1; cited by Clay,
Politics of Olympus, 201.
30
. Morris's thematic treatment of American male immaturity, conjoined twin of the monstrous maturity
of American women, is Man and Boy (1951), reprinted in Two for the Road (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1994).
31
. Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1.5.2, 1215b22-24; Roger Scruton, Sexual Desire: A Philosophical
Investigation (London: Phoenix Press, 2001; originally published London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1986), 295.
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| | Authors: Kochin, Michael. |
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attacked by the Greek she ends up smeared with the Greek's blood "blood under her nails, and on her
lips was the sun-tanned flesh of the Greek" (112). But if the Greek is Venus, Billie is not a cannibal but
a theophage.
18
. The Greek's silence in response to "the love song... of Earl Horter to his cannibelle" (130) foreshadows
her escape from him.
19
. Crump, Novels of Wright Morris, 162.
20
. Hymn to Aphrodite 286-90, tr. Jenny Strauss Clay in The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in
the Major Homeric Hymns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 198.
21
. Clay, Politics of Olympus, 198-9. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello says that Anchises must have kept his
mouth shut; Elizabeth Costello, 185-6.
22
. Wright Morris A Cloak of Light: Writing My Life, reprinted in Writing My Life: An Autobiography
(Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1993), 429-32
23
Cf. 65-66 with Conversations, 31.
24
. See Crump, Novels of Wright Morris, 132. Though Crump himself is ambivalent about this
characterization, he writes that Morris "linked healthy, creative selfhood to impersonal sexuality" (145)
which is nonsense, unless health and personality are contradictory. I have argued elsewhere that there are
good reasons for thinking that ethical health and personality are contradictory, but I do not think that
Morris would have agreed; see Michael S. Kochin, "Individual Narrative and Political Character," The
Review of Metaphysics 56(June 2002):691-709.
25
. In A Cloak of Light Morris tells how he peeped on some Harcourt employees chortling knowingly at
one scene in Love Among the Cannibals (64-5), where a starlet firms up her nipples under her dress with
crushed ice before singing; Wright Morris A Cloak of Light, reprinted in Writing My Life, 438.
26
. Klein, After Alienation, 234. Lawrence's loves are more sophisticated by reading than Klein asserts, but
that is a matter for another day.
27
. Wright Morris, About Fiction (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), 82-3; A Bill of Rites, 42;
Earthly Delights, 127.
28
. Earthly Delights, 127.
29
. Alcman Partheinon 17 fr. 1 Page, tr. modified from Campbell, Greek Lyric, vol. 1; cited by Clay,
Politics of Olympus, 201.
30
. Morris's thematic treatment of American male immaturity, conjoined twin of the monstrous maturity
of American women, is Man and Boy (1951), reprinted in Two for the Road (Santa Rosa: Black
Sparrow Press, 1994).
31
. Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1.5.2, 1215b22-24; Roger Scruton, Sexual Desire: A Philosophical
Investigation (London: Phoenix Press, 2001; originally published London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson,
1986), 295.
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