Love Among the Cannibals

by Wright Morris

Speaking of this 1957 novel, the author has said it ended his obsession with the reconstruction of the immediate past and moved him into the contemporary scene. The narrator, Earl Horter, is a lyric writer who is in Hollywood with Mac, his partner, to write a musical. With two girls they have picked up and gone to Acapulco.

Genres: Fiction, Literature, Novels

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Wright Marion Morris was an American novelist, photographer, and essayist. He is known for his portrayals of the people and artifacts of the Great Plains in words and pictures, as well as for experimenting with narrative forms.
Morris won the National Book Award for The Field of Vision in 1956. His final novel, Plains Song won the American Book Award in 1981.

Reviews

[John Rawlings · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It's my favorite of the Morris books I've read. Funny like Pynchon, with his lyrics, but less demanding of intellectual impracticalities. I'm too young for all the song references in the book but it's inessential-- as he says. Very good read.

[gabrielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

a book ahead of it’s time. it has everything i love: songwriters, Hollywood, Mexico, red cars, road trips, cannibalism as a metaphor for love, and mysterious women who change the fundamental value of a man’s life.
this book explores the expression of love and sexuality outside the borders of normality and convention, exhibited through the adventure of their journey across the California border to Acapulco, Mexico, to foresee insight on their songwriting process.
the irony of crossing both literal borders and metaphorical borders is not lost on me, nor Wright Morris. They escape their world of daydreams and cliches to one of the present and inside the body.
Horter, in his fourties’, look towards the young and mysterious Greek to hold all that he desires. and the Greek, in her twenties, looks towards the helpless and confused Horter as a means for development and fuel for desire.
She opened him to a new language, one that existed purely for them, one that he may have never known before her, one that he challenged himself to learn for her. Not a word of the cliches, the sayings, the endearments, just a pure craving for the other.
Love Among the Cannibals is flesh feeding on flesh.
It is raw, it is daring, and it is unforgiving.

[Francisco Manuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love Among the Cannibals is a novel that sees the world as a camera might. Wright Morris’s prose renders scenes with photographic clarity. Every gesture and setting feels carefully framed, inviting the reader not just to follow the story but to observe it.

At the center of the novel are two musicians. They're partners in both art and a drifting postwar life. Their entanglements with younger women set the narrative in motion. What begins as a sunlit California story of romance and possibility gradually deepens during their journey to Acapulco. There, amid the stark realities of local life, their easy assumptions about love and desire are quietly unsettled.

Morris resists melodrama. The relationships do not explode or collapse. Instead, they fade, like light softening at dusk. This refusal of conventional resolution is precisely the point. Love here is not an ideal to be won, but something transient, shaped by circumstance, illusion, and the limits of self-understanding.

Wry, observant, and subtly disquieting, the novel balances comedy with an undercurrent of existential unease. Morris suggests that beneath the surface pleasures of romance lies something more primitive and elusive, something that cannot be captured, only briefly glimpsed before it slips away.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

i agree with a previous reviewer that this book is very machismo filled. i didn't really get into it until towards the end and the love among vegetarians/cannibals quote. the female (and sometimes male) characters felt formulaic and archetypical, though perhaps that's the point? anyway, i enjoyed the idea more than the book itself.

[Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is easily one of the most machismo-filled books I’ve read. That being said, I still enjoyed it, and found the book’s theme that people in love are cannibals, interesting. It did take a while to get into it.

[Joey Daso · Rating 3 out of 5]

An irreverent trek through the hookup lands of LA to Mexico, without ever feeling disingenuous or without genuine love, really sweet!

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very entertaining, engaging story about two men who decide to borrow what they believe is a luxurious villa in Mexico to escape there and write a musical. It says a lot about work ethic (the only hardworking people are the looters). Lots of misadventures. Worth reading.

[Ron at Rockhaven · Rating 3 out of 5]

not one of his best by far. tried too hard it seems to be current, or let his critique of then culture infect his voice here, maybe to break from his earlier works. still some memorable characters but that wasnt enough, and i love nearly everything he wrote.