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Harper's Executive Editor Midge Decter decided to go out with Morris, and resigned. Other staffers wavered. "I just don't know what I'm going to do," said Contributing Editor David Halberstam. "Willie took a musty, dying magazine and made it brilliant and unpredictable. It was a sheer delight to work for him. He was the best editor I ever had." Even John Cowles said he had a "feeling of sadness" at Morris' resignation, though he did nothing to forestall it.
A soft-spoken but strong-willed Mississippian. Morris cut his teeth on controversy in Texas, where, as editor of the University of Texas newspaper, he accused the Governor and legislators of collusion with oil and gas interests. Later, he continued his muckraking on a feisty weekly called the Texas Observer: Harper's hired him from the Observer as an editor. Four years later, at 32, he became the youngest editor in chief in the history of the oldest U.S. literary magazine. Morris said then that he felt "part of the tradition here." He nourished that tradition by publishing the works of some major and unconventional writers. Not only Mailer but William Styron, Arthur Miller and J. Kenneth Galbraith have written for Harper's under Morris' editorship. He labored hard within the limits of Blair's budgets to pay for the talent he sought, and the rule of thumb of $1,000 an article rose to $10,000 on occasion.
Morris admits that he will miss the prestige, parties and publicity that go with the top job at Harper's. "I wanted to go into my office," he said, near tears, "to see my friends, to start laying out next month's issue. All together, I gave eight years to making Harper's the best. God, how I'm going to miss it." While John Cowles searches for his successor, Morris plans to retire to Long Island to finish a novel.