Love Among the Cannibals was published by Harcourt, Brace in 1957. Two Hollywood songwriters — the Earl of Horter and Mac (the narrator) — drive to a Mexican beach resort for a working vacation. On the way they pick up two young women: a “Greek” (physically perfect, intellectually vacant) and Billie (her friend). The encounter forces the men to confront the gap between the romantic sentiments they manufacture professionally and their actual capacity for genuine feeling.
The “cannibals” of the title are ambiguous: the entertainment industry that devours talent and authenticity, the beautiful young women who consume the men’s attention and money, or the men themselves who feed on manufactured emotion. Morris’s satire operates through the narrator’s voice — a professional maker of sentimental songs who is intelligent enough to see the absurdity of his position but not brave enough to escape it.
The novel represents Morris’s lightest mode — it is genuinely funny, the prose moves quickly, and the beach setting provides a change from the Plains landscapes that dominate his other work. But the underlying themes are consistent with his larger project: the American substitution of manufactured experience for genuine encounter, the relationship between language and feeling, and the difficulty of authenticity in a culture devoted to simulacra.
Collecting Love Among the Cannibals
First edition (Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1957): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $40–$100
- Very good: $15–$40
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation.
The Beach Novel
Love Among the Cannibals (1957) is Morris’s most atypical novel — set in California rather than Nebraska, featuring songwriters rather than farmers. Two middle-aged Hollywood songwriters pick up two young women on the beach, and what begins as a comic sex romp develops into a meditation on ageing, authenticity, and the difference between the real and the performed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Morris influence other writers? Morris’s influence is more diffused than direct. His photo-text experiments anticipated the multimedia narratives of W.G. Sebald and others. His treatment of the Great Plains influenced later Plains writers. His elliptical, silence-laden prose anticipated minimalism. But because he never had a popular breakthrough, his influence is often unacknowledged.