AUTHOR WILLIE MORRIS STILL ENJOYS MISSISSIPPI ROOTS

In his New York days, Willie Morris was in touch with everyone from Norman Mailer to Frank Sinatra.

He worked for Harper's, the nation's oldest magazine. In 1967, at the age of 32, he became editor of the celebrated magazine.

Morris resigned from Harper's in 1971 over an editorial dispute.

But while he was familiar with New York's city penthouses, Morris' heart and soul remained firmly planted in his Mississippi roots.

Morris talked about his love for Mississippi and that state's most famous writer, William Faulkner, in a speech Wednesday night at Southeast Missouri State University.

About 60 people attended the lecture at Dempster Hall.

Morris' speech was the keynote presentation of the university's celebration of the centennial of Faulkner's birth. Faulkner died in 1962.

Southeast's Center for Faulkner Studies has a large collection of Faulkner manuscripts and books.

Morris said Faulkner was America's Shakespeare.

"Running through Faulkner's work is the profound recognition of the awful brevity of life," he said.

But Morris said the residents of Mississippi didn't fully appreciate Faulkner until after his death. "I think they liked him. I think they liked his family," said Morris.

But Morris said Faulkner's family and fellow citizens turned on him over his advocacy of civil rights and integration.

A well-known writer, Morris has authored a number of books. Among them: his autobiographical "North Toward Home" and the sequel "New York Days."

Mississippi has produced a number of good writers over the years.

"It is kind of an honorable profession to be a writer in Mississippi," said Morris. "These days people come up to you in bars and churches, of which Mississippi has many."

From 1980 to 1990, he was writer-in-residence at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. He currently lives on the banks of Purple Crane Creek in Jackson, Miss., with his wife, JoAnne, and five cats.

JoAnne accompanied him on his visit to Cape Girardeau Wednesday.

Morris said it isn't easy being a writer. "There have been dry spells and occasional bank loans between books," he said.

As a freshman at the University of Texas, he received a C-minus for a paper he wrote for an English class.

Morris began writing professionally at an early age. He was a sportswriter for his hometown newspaper in Yazoo City when he was 12.

"We were flat-land people," Morris recalled of his rural roots. "It was all cotton then."

Said Morris: "It was a land that Faulkner knew very well. In the 1940s in the Delta, we had a closeness to the land."

The town had a Main Street. There were no shopping centers. "Nor were there many Republicans," he said.

There was no television, an invention that Morris called "that grand silencer of words and conversation."

One of Morris' latest books is "My Dog Skip," which centers around his childhood pet. The book was published in 1995.

"People would bring their dogs to bookstores," he recalled. Morris said he signed a lot of his books to dogs during his national book tour.

On one occasion, a fight broke out between two dogs at a book signing in Oxford, Morris said.