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Morris notes Yazoo's new awareness of itself, not as a backwater of lost causes but as a place where important things are happening—a place to be. Yet he knows the South too well, and he knows how tenuous and how mortal is enlightened leadership. The mood of the '60s, with its racial violence and political assassinations, mutes Morris' blend of journalism and autobiography. It puts graceful reins on his prose, which sometimes seems about to run wild like Thomas Wolfe's or feed royally on itself like Norman Mailer's.
It is Morris' tone of voice, finally, that gives Yazoo a nuance and emotional impact far more revealing than any amount of facts or figurings. The subtle tension in the book began well before the past decade. As heir to the tradition of such liberal Southern journalists as Ralph McGill and Hodding Carter, Morris remains faithful to the basic truth that the Southern white and Southern Negro are bound together like no other two groups in the country. In North Toward Home, Willie Morris' grandmother touched this haunting idea when she remarked, "Maybe when we all get to heaven, they'll be white and we'll be black." · R. Z. Sheppard