My Uncle Dudley was published by Harcourt, Brace in 1942. It is Morris’s first published novel — a road book in which a boy and his Uncle Dudley drive from Los Angeles to Nebraska in a decrepit automobile, picking up passengers, encountering Americans of all varieties, and improvising their way through one difficulty after another.
Uncle Dudley is Morris’s first version of a character type he would return to throughout his career: the American improviser, the man who lives by wit and charm rather than planning, who makes things up as he goes along and generally lands on his feet. The boy (the narrator) observes his uncle with admiration and growing understanding — recognizing that Dudley’s genius for living moment-to-moment is both a gift and a limitation.
The novel is lighter and looser than Morris’s later work — it was written quickly, without the formal self-consciousness that would characterize The Field of Vision or Ceremony in Lone Tree — but its themes are already present: the American road as space of possibility and rootlessness, the relationship between improvisation and failure, the landscape of the Great Plains as both physical and spiritual terrain.
Collecting My Uncle Dudley
First edition (Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1942): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $100–$300
- Very good: $40–$100
Projected values (2026–2036): Strong appreciation. Morris’s debut novel.
The Road Novel
Morris’s first novel (1942) follows a boy and his uncle on a cross-country drive from California to Nebraska, encountering a gallery of American types along the way. The novel is a picaresque in the tradition of Huckleberry Finn — the open road as stage for American character — and announces Morris’s lifelong themes: the Great Plains, the American past, and the gap between American myth and American reality.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Morris set in the literary canon? Morris is typically placed alongside other Great Plains writers — Willa Cather, Mari Sandoz, Ron Hansen — and alongside experimentalists like John Hawkes and William Gass. His dual career as writer and photographer gives him a unique position in American letters.