The Fork River Space Project by Wright Morris

First published: 1977

Type of plot: Realism

Time of work: The late 1970’s

Locale: Just over the Nebraska border, near the Kansas border

Principal Characters:

• Kelcey, the protagonist, an aging writer and the narrator of the novel
• Alice, Kelcey’s wife, young, impressionable, petite
• Harry Lorbeer, a plumber, aloof and disinterested
• O. P. Dahlberg, a former writer turned housepainter, esoteric, at times haughty

The Novel

With the action of the novel narrated by Kelcey, the work is basically the story of his intellectual growth as a result of his contact with the two men who live near the Fork River Space Project, Harry Lorbeer and O. P. Dahlberg. The novel, then, is about a new way of seeing, which Kelcey adeptly explains in the first lines of the novel: “I owe this [new awareness] to Harry Lorbeer. He started me thinking—or should I say seeing?” Yet this novel is not merely the story of how one man teaches another man to understand life more clearly.

As the novel opens, Kelcey and Alice summon Lorbeer to unstop their bathroom sink. Lorbeer, in turn, introduces the couple to O. P. Dahlberg, who agrees to paint their porch and build a rose trellis.

Dahlberg’s peculiar disregard for time and yet meticulous work habits excite Kelcey’s curiosity to the point that he visits the local library to learn about Fork River, where Dahlberg and Lorbeer live. The town is no longer on the map, but as recently as 1940 it had a population of some seven hundred. Kelcey’s research proves to be serendipitous: The librarian recognizes the name Dahlberg as that of a science-fiction writer and finds one of his books, a collection called A Hole in Space and Other Stories, published in 1962. The author’s photograph confirms that Dahlberg the painter and Dahlberg the erstwhile writer are one and the same.

Without Lorbeer’s or Dahlberg’s knowledge, Kelcey visits Fork River. He finds a virtual ghost town featuring a large, unexplained crater, seemingly scooped out to the bedrock, and an old schoolhouse with a sign labeling the undertaking as the “Fork River Space Project.”

The rest of the novel centers on Kelcey’s increasing fascination with Dahlberg and the “space project,” and with Alice’s infatuation with Dahlberg and his airy dreams. Intent on understanding the meaning of the Fork River Space Project, Kelcey visits the community on a Sunday afternoon to discover, along with a throng of hippies, that in the old schoolhouse, bedecked with abstract paintings, Lorbeer and Dahlberg are giving a show. Featuring the sound track from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the scene effectively simulates a view of the earth from outer space, suggesting that the mysterious crater outside was formed by extraterrestrial beings.

Meanwhile, Alice has become enthralled both with Dahlberg’s dream and with the man himself. The two of them lecture the bemused Kelcey, arguing that since humankind has destroyed the earth’s purity, the survivors must turn to outer space, where they can recapture a sense of awe.

During another visit to Fork River, Kelcey finds Dahlberg seated in a lotus position, unclothed, covered with perspiration, and apparently contemplating the coming of visitors from another planet. He probes Kelcey’s understanding of the idea of the Space Project. Kelcey remains unconvinced, but he comes away from the experience more aware of himself and his world. He is even able to put into perspective his experiences with two eccentrics he had met in Paris years ago, people whom he neither appreciated nor understood prior to his contact with Dahlberg and Lorbeer.

As the novel closes, Kelcey reads a letter from Alice that tells him that she and Dahlberg are running away together. Kelcey returns once more to Fork River and muses to himself about the meaning of his new awareness about living on the planet Earth.

The Characters

Kelcey is a fascinating and open-minded observer of humanity, sympathetic to Dahlberg even when Dahlberg threatens his generally stable marriage. Kelcey realizes that as an artist he must grow in order to keep himself alive, and to attain the satisfaction of experiencing new ideas, new places, and new people. Yet while he is keen in his observation of people, he concludes that he must live on this planet and not be caught up in a kind of starry-eyed idealism that would put him out of touch with the workaday world.

While many may question his almost casual relinquishing of Alice to Dahlberg’s arms, much can be said for the kind of emotional maturity he displays in realizing that having to let go is one of the risks in any relationship.

Many novelists have used a writer as protagonist, and the result is often excessively self-conscious. In contrast, Morris’s portrait of the artist is wry, low-key, and unpretentious yet thoroughly convincing. There is very little talk about writing in the course of the novel, but through Kelcey the reader sees the world as a writer sees it.

Equally adept is Morris’s portrait of Dahlberg. While many writers may have been satisfied with sketching the housepainter as a one-dimensional eccentric, Morris is not content to present Dahlberg as a mechanical figure that merely advances the plot. Though readers may be put off by Dahlberg’s rude and inconsiderate ways, they learn in time that this idealist is worthy of both admiration and love. At the close of the novel, he remains interesting enough to cause readers to wonder what his ultimate fate will be.

Alice, though less clearly defined, is the natural foil for Kelcey. Where he tends to dwell in the philosophical, she, on several occasions early in the novel, reminds her husband that life exists outside the written page. Yet, at the same time, she is not so much the realist that she can avoid getting caught up in ideas that help her cope with a world she concludes is populated with people intent on destroying it. What is fascinating about Alice is that in the end it is Kelcey who must remind her that she, too, must come out of her orbit. She grows as a character in the novel, but finally it is she, not Kelcey, who is most influenced by Dahlberg’s idealism.

Harry Lorbeer, on the other hand, is the least clearly defined character. He is described as short, a bit of an “oddball,” and the originator of the Fork River Space Project, but Morris says little else about him.

Critical Context

Wright Morris, winner of numerous literary prizes, has been one of the most acclaimed and most prolific novelists of his generation—a “writer’s writer” whose books, with a few significant exceptions, have not enjoyed a wide readership.

While Morris has been unusually productive—few serious modern novelists can match his output—he has, more than most writers, worked and reworked the same material, creatively reshaping it. Thus, there are many parallels between The Fork River Space Project and his other books. Most notable, perhaps, is the emphasis on the transforming power of the imagination, a recurring theme throughout his long career. This slim novel offers readers the pleasure of following a master of his craft at the height of his powers.

Bibliography

Crump, Gail B. The Novels of Wright Morris. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978. Crump explores Morris’s novels and provides an overview and analysis.

Knoll, Robert. Conversations with Wright Morris: Critical Views and Responses. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977. A collection of essays and interviews with Morris.

Madden, David. Wright Morris. New York: Twayne, 1965. Madden provides a critical and interpretive study of Morris with a close reading of his major works, a solid bibliography, and complete notes and references. Useful for Morris’s work through the early 1960’s.

Morris, Wright. “Wright Morris and the American Century.” Interview by James Hamilton. Poets and Writers Magazine. 25 (November/December, 1997): 23-31. Morris comments on his career and his writing and photography over a period of fifty years. He discusses creative imagination and the influence of the American nation on his writing.

Morris, Wright. “Wright Morris: The Art of Fiction CXXV.” Paris Review 33 (Fall, 1991): 52-94. Interview by Olga Carlisle and Jodie Ireland. A lengthy interview with Morris on various aspects of his life and career.

Morris, Wright. Writing My Life: An Autobiography. Santa Rosa, Calif.: Black Sparrow Press, 1993. Morris reflects on his life and career as a photographer, essayist, novelist, and critic.

Wydeven, Joseph J. Wright Morris Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1998. The first complete examination of the work of Wright Morris as a novelist and a photographer. Wydeven includes a portfolio of photographs by Morris along with a detailed analysis of the novels, criticism and memoir that Morris produced. Wydeven focuses on Morris’s principal theme of the American Dream and the promise of the American West.