In Orbit

In the space of one day Jubal E. Gainer high school dropout and draft dodger manages to rack up an impressive array of crimes...He steals a friend's motorcycle rapes a simple-minded spinster mugs a pixyish professor and stabs an obese visionary who runs a surplus store. He then waits out an Indiana twister and goes his way leaving as much wreckage in his path as the twister itself.--Library Journal. In Orbit is a short novel full of action and the seriousness can mostly be found between the lines. [There] one can see against what Jubal Gainer's rebellion thoughtless and aimless as it seems is directed. One might say that he is like millions of his contemporaries a Huck Finn without a Mississippi.-- Granville Hicks Saturday Review. Here is another of Wright Morris's craftsmanly novels--terse colloquial restrained fragmented deliberately shadowy. Above all small; not slight not inconsequential but a miniature...All readers will surely appreciate the quality of the prose style one has come to expect in a Wright Morris novel...There is also a muscular quality to Mr. Morris's writing that makes it a suitable instrument for conveying harsher things; and there is his sense of the comic which springs up constantly. In all this is a quiet but rich performance.--New York Times Book Review. One of the most distinguished American authors Wright Morris (1910-1988) wrote thirty-three books including The Field of Vision which won the National Book Award.