Wright Morris has been the most consistently original of American novelists for a quarter of a century which has borne witness to his originality by refusing to keep his novels in print. Faulkner once occupied the same position, though not for so long a time; and Morris’ longer stay may have been his own fault, as Leslie Fiedler once remarked, because he would never join a gang. Perhaps he could not because he had anticipated and discounted too many of them. He discovered early that life, from any rational point of view, was absurd but took the discovery as a...