On Willie Morris

UMW librarian details Morris’ life and work

By Laura Moyer

Jack Bales developed an enduring
friendship with author Willie Morris, and
was determined to document his career.

Reference and humanities librarian Jack Bales is known for helping University of Mary Washington students do solid, original research. He weans them from Wikipedia and steers them into a world of scholarly books, periodicals, indexes, databases, and primary source materials. To Bales, 54, researching a subject, making sense of the findings, and producing a new work of scholarship are joyful pursuits. They’re not only parts of his profession but his creative passion.

Bales’ latest book, Willie Morris: An Exhaustive Annotated Bibliography and a Biography, was published by McFarland & Co. in July 2006. Its 393 pages chronicle the life and career of Morris, a renowned Mississippi author and editor-in-chief of Harper’s Magazine in the 1960s.           

Bales read Morris’ North Toward Home and My Dog Skip and sent the author a handwritten fan letter in 1995. Morris replied, and the two corresponded and became friends. Almost as soon as he discovered Morris’ books, Bales began tracking down published writings by the author – starting with Morris’ days as a freshman journalist for the student newspaper of the University of Texas and continuing through the Harper’s years and beyond.

Along the way, he edited a collection of Morris’ pieces, Shifting Interludes: Selected Essays, and wrote Conversations With Willie Morris, a book of interviews and profiles.

Morris died unexpectedly in August 1999, at age 64. It happened just months before the release of a movie based on Morris’ My Dog Skip, a tribute to the fox terrier he loved as a boy growing up in Yazoo City, Miss.

Bales was devastated by the untimely loss of his friend. But he became all the more determined to complete his documentation of Morris’ career. He did it in his off hours while working full time at Mary Washington, rising at 4:15 each morning and doing the bulk of the writing for about two hours each evening.

Unlike Morris, who shunned computers in favor of felt-tip pens, Bales relies on his computer that sits in the book-lined living room of his Fredericksburg home.

The 2,000-plus bibliography entries weren’t difficult to write, Bales said. He completed about 20 per week, finishing in the fall of 2004.  Writing the biography section proved more challenging.

Bales started over the 2004 Christmas break and sweated it out until his September 2005 book deadline. His meticulousness slowed the process, as he labored over sentence construction and consulted grammar and style references.

“One time I removed one sentence and added another, but I ended up spending three or four more hours working to smooth out the sentences,” he recalled.

Proofreading and indexing took another several months. When the work was finally done, Bales was exhausted. “I’m Willied out,” he said.

He told a friend, “I’m never going to do another book.”

“Jack,” the friend replied, “in a month you’ll be back at it.”

In fact, it took just two weeks for Bales to light on his next project, a history of the Chicago Cubs in the 1930s and ’40s. He grew up near Chicago and is a fan of the compulsively heartbreaking team. He picked the ’30s and ’40s because those were the team’s glory years, culminating in a trip to the World Series in 1945. (The Cubs lost.)

Bales already has immersed himself in research, and he’s had fun finding photographs and memorabilia from that Cubs era on eBay and elsewhere. Baseball is a departure from Bales’ usual literary subjects. 

He has specialized in authors whose works may be well-known but who themselves haven’t been written about extensively. Among his biography subjects are Horatio Alger, Pulitzer Prize-winning historical novelist Kenneth Roberts, and Johnny Tremaine author Esther Forbes.

Throughout it all, Bales said, Mary Washington as an institution has been supportive. Friends and colleagues at the University have encouraged him and at times provided specific help. 

In return, Bales shares with students the lessons he learns from his own investigations.

“All of this sharpens my own research skills,” he said, “and I love to pass on good techniques and tips to students.”

Laura Moyer is a staff writer with The Free Lance–Star.