Paul Begala's Book Candidates

The former Clinton adviser and political commentator says he has argued about the great American novel with James Carville for 25 years, and he shares some of his favorite reads.

North Toward Home. By Willie Morris. 464 pages. Vintage. $16. North Toward Home
by Willie Morris

“Like so many Southerners who grew up in a racist culture but knew in their bones it was wrong, I was drawn to Willie Morris’ journey.”

I first read North Toward Home when I was a student at the University of Texas. Willie Morris was a hero to our small band of Longhorn liberals in the Age of Reagan. Like so many Southerners who grew up in a racist culture but knew in their bones it was wrong, I was drawn to Willie Morris’ journey from Yazoo City, Mississippi, to New York City, by way of Austin, Texas, and Oxford England. As an adult, I became friends with Willie. Got drunk with him, stayed in his home in Jackson, and when he visited the White House, I watched him spin yarns for his old friend Bill Clinton while deftly pocketing some fancy Italian cookies Yasser Arafat had left in the Oval Office. When Willie died, they put one of his corneas in the eye of a 42-year-old African-American forklift driver in Brookhaven, Mississippi, and the other in the eye of a 74-year-old white Mississippian. I like to think that when Barack Obama was inaugurated, one of Willie’s eyes bulged in wonderment, while the other filled with tears of joy.