Joseph Wydeven, Professor emeritus of English and Humanities and former dean of Arts and Sciences at Bellevue University, has had an enduring interest in writer and photographer Wright Morris. Wydeven began to read Morris and study his photographs in the early 1970s. He wrote his Purdue University dissertation on Morris, and has since published numerous articles and book chapters on Morris, as well as the 1998 biography Wright Morris Revisted. He first met Morris and his wife Jo in California in 1979 and had at least six visits there with Morris before the writer's death in 1998. He presented a special program on Morris in the Heritage Room in 1985.
Wydeven has sought to give us a deeper appreciation of Morris, who is surely one of the most independent, original, and complex writers to come from our state. Morris was the most productive writer of his generation. He was one of the few who can claim the invention, in the photo-text, of a new literary form. Morris won great critical acclaim, but far less popular success. His works chronicled disquieting aspects of the American experience, and a post-Depression world in which anchors of history and place, seemingly renewed in the 1930s, were once again drifting away. Since Morris' book, The Home Place, has been the 2010 One Book One Nebraska selection, it seemed appropriate to invite Joe Wydeven back to talk about one of his favorite topics.
The program begins at 2:00 PM Sunday, November 21st in the Heritage Room on the 3rd floor of Bennett Martin Public Library in downtown Lincoln. Please join us.
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