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WORK TITLE: All Joe Knight
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 7/17/1963
WEBSITE: https://www.kevinmorrisauthor.com/
CITY: Los Angeles
STATE: CA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Morris_(writer)
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born July 17, 1963.
EDUCATION:Cornell University, B.A., 1985; New York University, J.D., 1988; also spent a semester at the London School of Economics as an undergraduate.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Lawyer, writer, novelist, and film and stage producer. Morris, Yorn Barnes Levine Krintzman Rubinstein, Kohler & Gellman Law Firm, Los Angles, CA, founding and managing partner. Also coproducer of the Broadway musical titled The Book of Mormon and producer of the documentary film Hands on a Hardbody, 1997. Member of the Board of Directors of the Just Keep Livin Foundation, also known as the j.k. livin foundation
AVOCATIONS:Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, which won a Tony Award.
AWARDS:Tony Award (corecipient) for the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Filmmaker magazine. Also author of reviews and criticisms for the Huffington Post Website.
SIDELIGHTS
Kevin Morris is a founder and a managing partner of a law firm in Los Angeles, California, that focuses on the entertainment industry and represents various media figures. Morris grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and after earning his law degree moved to Los Angeles. He began his career in entertainment law overseeing contracts for independent filmmakers. Morris would go on to produce the 1997 documentary film Hands on a Hard Body, about an endurance competition in Longview, Texas. He also coproduced the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, which won a Tony Award. Morris is the author of articles on media and entertainment for periodicals and criticisms for Websites.
White Man's Problems
Morris’s first book of fiction is the short-story collection titled White Man’s Problems. Morris presents nine stories focusing on the difficulties of modern life, from the entertainment industry in Los Angeles to working class people on the East Coast. “Life undermines the pursuit of success and status in these rich, bewildering stories,” wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Clarion Reviews contributor Rebecca Foster remarked: “Kevin Morris explores the gray areas of modern life.”
In the story titled “Rain Comes Down,” Morris tells the story of a man who has recently retired and whose wife has had a stroke. Not only does he have to deal with caring for his wife but also from the overly protective efforts of his daughter. The narrator of “Summer Farmer” is bored and depressed. Even the most minor inconveniences make him complain. Eventually, however, the reader discovers that the man’s daughter has died from leukemia. Disgusted with the glittery Los Angeles, the man finally connects with an elevator man whose daughter has also died.
“Mulligan’s Travels” revolves around a man named Jim who became rich from ATM technology. Despite his financial success, however, Jim remains basically unhappy with life. His relatively new status as a rich man makes him wonder if he really fits in with the California liberal ethos. He also questions his employment of an illegal immigrant. Eventually, Jim, whose life seems to be dominated by his preoccupation with technology, learns a lesson about real life from the family’s bulldog.
“Morris elevates his characters’ struggles through literary allusions, even beginning, in a tip of the hat to existentialism, with an epigraph from Camus,” noted Clarion Reviews contributor Foster. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called White Man’s Problems “a cleareyed, finely wrought and mordantly funny take on a modern predicament by a new writer with loads of talent.”
All Joe Knight
In his debut novel, All Joe Knight, Morris tells the story of Joe Knight, who loses his father in 1961 because his father was driving drunk. Less than a year later, Joe’s mother dies in another car crash. Joe is only a couple of years old and soon finds himself being raised by his Aunt Dottie in a middle-class but tough-skinned suburb of Philadelphia. Joe, however, feels alone and out touch with those around him until he joins the high school basketball team in 1977.
Although Joe has grown up around bigots, he finally discovers a sense of family on the basketball team, which has a mix of white and black players. While Joe was growing up, Philadelphia faced high racial tension but being on the team has taught Joe that bigotry is full of fallacies. Being on the team also led Joe to finally come to the notion that great things may be in store for him, although he was basically a bench warmer who rarely got to play.
The novel jumps ahead three decades and readers find Joe is divorced and and the father of one. Although Joe struggles with the idea that he is not suited for love, he is nevertheless wealthy due to the sale of his advertising firm. Then one day Chris Scully, who was a star on Joe’s high school basketball team and is now the district attorney of Denver County, calls Joe to let him known federal prosecutors may be after him. It seems they are interested in the sale of his company to a French firm under investigation. Joe is worried because he illegally cut a deal that allowed many of his former teammates to profit as well.
The novel follows Joe as he begins to feel the stress of the investigation, leaving him to ponder who might be talking about him to the authorities. Meanwhile, he goes over his life story. “Like a corner-bar Montaigne, Joe has an opinion on just about everything, from the wealthy to Bob Dylan to the 1974 Philadelphia Flyers to women’s breasts,” noted Mark Athitakis in a review for USA Today Online.
Joe reveals a life that, despite his success, includes many disturbing aspects. Most notably, when Joe was still a young boy he became aware of a pedophile priest in his church, something that he has kept secret for years. After his divorce, Joe seeks out strippers for sex, as he is either unwilling or unable to form any other type of intimate relationship. Despite all his troubles, Joe maintains a strong loyalty to his former teammates, who may also face legal consequences of the probe into Joe and the company that bought his business.
“The tension surrounding the investigation and legal matters is well-handled,” wrote a Kirkus Reviews Online contributor, who went on to call All Joe Knight “a dark and busy rise-and-fall tale.” A Publishers Weekly contributor noted: “Morris’s novel deftly shows that the frustrations of a stunted middle-aged man are evocative terrain.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, December 15, 2014, Ellen Loughran, review of White Man’s Problems, p. 28.
Clarion Reviews, May 5, 2014, Foster, Rebecca, review of White Man’s Problems.
Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2014, review of White Man’s Problems.
Library Journal, December 1, 2016, Patrick Sullivan, review of All Joe Knight, p. 87.
Publishers Weekly, September 19, 2016, review of All Joe Knight, p. 40.
ONLINE
Esquire, http://www.esquire.com/ (December 13, 2016), Tyler Confoy, “Kevin Morris Wrote the Anti-Midlife Crisis Book,” author interview.
Foreword Reviews Online, https://www.forewordreviews.com/ (June 11, 2017), Rebecca Foster, review of White Man’s Problems.
Kevin Morris Website, https://www.kevinmorrisauthor.com (July 23, 2017).
Kirkus Reviews Online, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (February 6, 2017), review of All Joe Knight.
New York Daily News Online, http://www.nydailynews.com/ (January 13, 2015), Arielle Landau, “Reviews from the Slush Pile: ‘White Man’s Problems’ Fails to Live up to Its Very Loaded Title.”
USA Today Online, https://www.usatoday.com/ (December 17, 2016), Mark Athitakis, “In ‘Joe Knight’ an Anti-Hero for Our Times.”*
Kevin Morris (writer)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kevin Morris (born July 17, 1963) is an American lawyer, producer and writer. He is the founder and managing partner of the Morris Yorn Entertainment Law Firm,[1] which represents major American media figures.[2][3] He produced the 1997 documentary film Hands on a Hard Body, and co-produced the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon for which he won a Tony Award.[4]
His articles on media and entertainment have appeared in The Wall Street Journal,[5] Los Angeles Times[6] and Filmmaker Magazine [4] His first book, White Man’s Problems, will be released by Grove Atlantic's Black Cat imprint in January 2015.
Contents [hide]
1 Education
2 Personal life
3 Writing
4 References
5 External links
Education[edit]
Morris graduated from Cornell University in 1985 with a B.A. in Government and spent a semester at the London School of Economics.[7] He attended law school at New York University, where he received a J.D. in 1988.[7]
Personal life[edit]
Morris grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia as the son of a refinery worker and a school secretary[8] At Cornell, he played for the junior varsity basketball team as a walk-on, was president of his fraternity, and a Cornell Tradition Scholar.[9] After graduating from law school at NYU, Morris moved to LA<[3] where he began his career in entertainment law by handling the contracts of independent filmmakers before founding Morris Yorn Barnes & Levine in 1995.[9] He currently resides in Los Angeles.[4] He is a member of the Board of Directors of the jklivin foundation[7] and has been a member of the Cornell University Council since 2011.
Writing[edit]
Morris has written articles on media and entertainment for The Wall Street Journal,[5] the Los Angeles Times,[6] Filmmaker Magazine,[4] and The Jerusalem Post.[10] He has also written reviews and criticism for The Huffington Post.[11] In 2014, he published White Man’s Problems, a collection of short stories. Kirkus Reviews called it a “mordantly funny take on a modern predicament”.[12]
Kevin Morris received wide literary acclaim with his story collection White Man’s Problems, praised by David Carr as “remarkable” and Tom Perrotta as “revelatory.” Now Morris cements his place as a bold new voice in American literature with his muscular debut novel, All Joe Knight. Morris has written for The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and Filmmaker Magazine. He is the Co-producer of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, “The Book of Mormon,” and producer of the classic documentary film, “Hands on a Hardbody.” Morris released his first published book of short stories, White Man's Problems, in January 2015 under Grove Atlantic. His first novel, ALL JOE KNIGHT, launches December 2016 and will also be published by Grove Atlantic.
Morris is also the founding and managing partner of the entertainment law firm Morris, Yorn, et al., which specializes in representing actors, writers, and directors in the motion picture and television industries. He lives in Los Angeles.
Morris, Kevin. All Joe Knight
Patrick Sullivan
Library Journal. 141.20 (Dec. 1, 2016): p87.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
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* Morris, Kevin. All Joe Knight. Grove. Dec. 2016.368p. ISBN 9780802125781. $25. F
Morris, author of the warmly received story collection White Man's Problems and coproducer of the Tony Award-winning musical The Book of Mormon, here offers an engaging debut novel. Joe Knight, who narrates in a gritty, defiant, sardonic voice that's one of the work's greatest strengths, was orphaned as a baby and raised by an aunt in a rough 1960s Philadelphia neighborhood. He finds a true sense of belonging on his high school basketball team, and in late middle age, having made and lost a fortune and recently separated from his wife and daughter, is still cutting deals for his old teammates. Now, though, he learns that one of his deals is being investigated. Walt Whitman is the presiding spirit here, cited strategically throughout, and the novel can be read as an updated, plaintive, dystopian Song of Myself As he's had his full share of successes, Joe Knight can sing about himself and America, but he sings mostly about the loneliness and disillusionment he's brought on himself through bad choices, self-pity, and a sense of entitlement. VERDICT A moving portrait of a lost soul in modern America, for all readers of literary fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 6/13/16.]--Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT
All Joe Knight
Publishers Weekly. 263.38 (Sept. 19, 2016): p40.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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All Joe Knight
Kevin Morris. Grove, $25 (368p) ISBN 978-08021-2578-1
Morris's debut novel (following the story collection White Man's Problems) explores a narcissist's search for meaning in a world that he treats with disdain. Joe Knight never met his father--who "ran into a telephone pole" ending a "nonstop bender" that began when his wife told him she was pregnant--and was orphaned at six months when his mother's body was found with another man in a "smashed-up T-bird." He is raised by his aunt Dottie in the middle-class suburbs of Philadelphia. Joe is a member of the 1977-78 Fallcrest High School basketball team, which offers him a sense of belonging and a glimmer of the greatness that he feels he is destined for, despite his rocky start. ("I'll light you up all night long. All Knight Long," the narrator says.) Decades later, Joe is divorced with a daughter and living alone in Philadelphia. He's "made enough money" from the sale of his advertising agency and "cut off enough strings that I don't have to do anything and I like it." When his old teammate Chris Scully--a starter to Joe's bench position--now the district attorney of Dover County, tips Joe off that federal prosecutors are investigating the sale of his company to a French conglomerate, a deal that Joe cut most of his old teammates in on, it pushes Joe to reckon with his relationships. Pennsylvania and basketball are Updike territory, and one can read this story as homage (Joe's ex is named Janice, like Rabbit Angstrom's wife). Even as an echo of Rabbit's mid-century angst, Morris's novel deftly shows that the frustrations of a stunted middle-aged man are evocative terrain. Agent: Jane von Mehren, Zachary Shuster Harms-worth (Dec.)
White Man's Problems
Ellen Loughran
Booklist. 111.8 (Dec. 15, 2014): p28.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
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White Man's Problems. By Kevin Morris. Jan. 2015. 240p. Black Cat, paper, $15 (97808021238861; e book (9780802191427).
Morris' experience as a producer and managing partner in the entertainment world shows in this collection of short fiction. Many of the stories feature men whose concerns revolve around money and families that bring them more sorrow than joy. Brilliantly crafted, "Rain Comes Down" shows the points of view of a recently retired man and his stroke-impaired wife as he sidesteps the possessiveness of their beloved daughter. There are a fair number of lawyer stories, some admiring, others less so. In "Miracle Worker," a lawyer who has his own flourishing practice sets out to protect a former assistant from her involvement with the scion of a powerful financial firm. Youth and families also play an important role. "The Plot to Hold Hands with Elizabeth Tremblay," a hilarious tale told in first person by a teenage wisenheimer, includes the placement of a dead frog in a water fountain and a skillful use of detention in his search for romance. This first collection will be a satisfactory addition to libraries with short-fiction readers.--Ellen Loughran
Loughran, Ellen
Morris, Kevin: White Man's Problems
Kirkus Reviews. (Apr. 15, 2014):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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Morris, Kevin WHITE MAN'S PROBLEMS Sweet Devil Press (Indie Fiction) $14.99 6, 1 ISBN: 978-1-4929-2380-0
Life undermines the pursuit of success and status in these rich, bewildering stories. True to the title, the heroes of Morris' first volume of fiction try to figure out the conundrums of love, career and family at every stage of the white male life cycle: A wiseass teenager stages a gross prank to catch the eye of a pretty cheerleader; a newly minted lawyer discovers that laziness and disaffection are no bar to advancement at his firm; an old man tries to forge a new connection to his dementia-stricken wife with the help of a pint-sized pianist. Most of the protagonists are professionals living in New York or LA who have their comfortable-to-affluent middle-aged lives shaken up by subtle instabilities. A rich producer shares a secret tragedy with a Mexican repairman; an investment banker is baffled by the technological universe he is supposed to have mastered; a funeral takes an Ivy League grad back to his working-class Irish Catholic roots; a hack attorney relaxes by posing as a crazy homeless man; and in the bleakly comic title story, a man reluctantly chaperoning his son's fifth-grade class on a Virginia field trip has his own callowness contrasted with the august figures of American history. Morris, an entertainment lawyer, producer and journalist, knows his characters and their worlds like the back of his hand. He endows them with both a sharply etched particularity and an iconic heft: "Jim Mulligan stood in boxers and a T-shirt in the refrigerator light, beer bottle in hand, in the same spot as countless American men before and since, at once living the whiteness and watching it, a picture within a picture, hoping for a miracle snack." His wonderfully evocative prose finds a world in tiny details of gesture and setting, in the casually arrogant stirring of coffee or the drab d�cor of a hotel room "conceived in mediocrity." The result is a cleareyed, finely wrought and mordantly funny take on a modern predicament by a new writer with loads of talent. A superb literary gallery of men who can't understand why life has given them what they want.
White Man's Problems
Rebecca Foster
Clarion Reviews. (May 5, 2014):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 ForeWord
https://www.forewordmagazine.net/clarion/reviews.aspx
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Kevin Morris; WHITE MAN'S PROBLEMS; Sweet Devil Press (Fiction: Short Stories) 25.00 ISBN: 9780990335603
Byline: Rebecca Foster
These clear-eyed morality tales showcase lightheartedness and angst in equal measure.
In nine contemporary stories bouncing between nouveau riche Los Angeles and the working-class East Coast, Kevin Morris explores the gray areas of modern life. His believable characters self-consciously grapple with both technology and postmodern cynicism, trying to be good men and not fail their children, "at once living the whiteness and watching it." White man's problems these may be, but Morris's themes feel universal in scope.
Whether looking for creative ways to let off steam after a day in court or enduring chaperone duties on a school field trip to the nation's capital, these average men are simultaneously nothing special and the heroes of their own ordinary lives. Four stories highlight ruthless lawyers who strive to balance family obligations or higher purposes with their professional ambition. Morris is the managing partner of an LA entertainment law firm and coproduced the recent hit musical The Book of Mormon, so he knows the cutthroat milieu of both Hollywood and the law firsthand.
"Mulligan's Travels," the central story, is the best example of the book's preoccupations. At fifty, Jim has made millions from ATM technology, but remains disillusioned: "This was not supposed to be his life." He might have been a football star, but instead is a conventional family man caught in everyday ethical dilemmas: Is it wrong to employ an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper? As a newly moneyed Californian, does he fit into liberal, hipster culture? In a wonderful narrative surprise, it is the family bulldog who reminds this technology-obsessed modern man that flesh-and-blood reality trumps the virtual world.
"The Plot to Hold Hands with Elizabeth Tremblay" is related by a delightfully irascible student who resents the indignities of his 1970s high school life. Here, especially, Morris echoes the wry voice of suburbia found in Tom Perrotta's work. Likewise, "Here Comes Mike," tracing the legend of a Philadelphia basketball phenomenon over four decades, stands out for its dialogue: a triumph of regional, working-class slang. Though in some ways the least typical story, "Rain Come Down" has the most virtuoso style. Stream-of-consciousness passages capture the perspective of a woman with dementia: "You're up high like a car. Fresh air little nip in it but nice riding with warm John."
Morris elevates his characters' struggles through literary allusions, even beginning, in a tip of the hat to existentialism, with an epigraph from Camus. "Mulligan's Travels" references both Swift and Cervantes (what with Jim's constant battle against "technological windmills"); secondary characters are named for Robert Browning and Oscar Wilde (and Scarlett for an illegitimate child evokes The Scarlet Letter); and "we had not set out from Ithaca to end up with snivelers" recalls Homer's Odyssey.
Throughout, the stories contain strong characterization and convincing dialogue. A fine addition to the postmodern literature of suburban angst, this collection is perfect for fans of Perrotta, Andre Dubus III, and Jim Gavin.
Rebecca Foster
White Man's Problems
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster
May 5, 2014
These clear-eyed morality tales showcase lightheartedness and angst in equal measure.
In nine contemporary stories bouncing between nouveau riche Los Angeles and the working-class East Coast, Kevin Morris explores the gray areas of modern life. His believable characters self-consciously grapple with both technology and postmodern cynicism, trying to be good men and not fail their children, “at once living the whiteness and watching it.” White man’s problems these may be, but Morris’s themes feel universal in scope.
Whether looking for creative ways to let off steam after a day in court or enduring chaperone duties on a school field trip to the nation’s capital, these average men are simultaneously nothing special and the heroes of their own ordinary lives. Four stories highlight ruthless lawyers who strive to balance family obligations or higher purposes with their professional ambition. Morris is the managing partner of an LA entertainment law firm and coproduced the recent hit musical The Book of Mormon, so he knows the cutthroat milieu of both Hollywood and the law firsthand.
“Mulligan’s Travels,” the central story, is the best example of the book’s preoccupations. At fifty, Jim has made millions from ATM technology, but remains disillusioned: “This was not supposed to be his life.” He might have been a football star, but instead is a conventional family man caught in everyday ethical dilemmas: Is it wrong to employ an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper? As a newly moneyed Californian, does he fit into liberal, hipster culture? In a wonderful narrative surprise, it is the family bulldog who reminds this technology-obsessed modern man that flesh-and-blood reality trumps the virtual world.
“The Plot to Hold Hands with Elizabeth Tremblay” is related by a delightfully irascible student who resents the indignities of his 1970s high school life. Here, especially, Morris echoes the wry voice of suburbia found in Tom Perrotta’s work. Likewise, “Here Comes Mike,” tracing the legend of a Philadelphia basketball phenomenon over four decades, stands out for its dialogue: a triumph of regional, working-class slang. Though in some ways the least typical story, “Rain Come Down” has the most virtuoso style. Stream-of-consciousness passages capture the perspective of a woman with dementia: “You’re up high like a car. Fresh air little nip in it but nice riding with warm John.”
Morris elevates his characters’ struggles through literary allusions, even beginning, in a tip of the hat to existentialism, with an epigraph from Camus. “Mulligan’s Travels” references both Swift and Cervantes (what with Jim’s constant battle against “technological windmills”); secondary characters are named for Robert Browning and Oscar Wilde (and Scarlett for an illegitimate child evokes The Scarlet Letter); and “we had not set out from Ithaca…to end up with snivelers” recalls Homer’s Odyssey.
Throughout, the stories contain strong characterization and convincing dialogue. A fine addition to the postmodern literature of suburban angst, this collection is perfect for fans of Perrotta, Andre Dubus III, and Jim Gavin.
Reviews from the slush pile: 'White Man's Problems' fails to live up to its very loaded title
BY ARIELLE LANDAU NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Tuesday, January 13, 2015, 2:09 PM A A A
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(NOTE: This review focuses on a newly published book that I read up to the point that I lost total and complete interest, depending on the author’s skill and whether I took my Ritalin.)
With a title like “White Man’s Problems” you can only hope that the author is being ironic.
The most popular urban dictionary entry for “White Man’s Problems” is this: “As defined by the great Louis CK in his concert film ‘Hilarious,’ these problems affect Americans in the middle to upper class. This is when your life is so amazing, that you make s--t up to be upset about.”
So you would expect lots of bellyaching about ATMs that list languages other than English, complaints about cubicles and being on the waitlist for a Mercedes S 63. You would expect Kevin Morris to lean into his title, and in some cases he does: “How predictable and boring it is to be depressed,” thinks the narrator of his first story “Summer Farmer.”
That narrator goes on to be pissed that his cabinet handle is wobbly — “Why me, God? Why me?” — and humiliated at Starbucks when the barista calls his name; and you have to think, good, at least the story is as self-effacing as the title requires.
And then, like a tennis ball, Morris puts just enough spin on it.
Harrigan, it turns out, has lost a daughter to leukemia, and that’s the underlying sadness as he navigates Los Angeles and Century City, which he considers a mirage, all glitter and no substance. But when he runs into an elevator repairman who has also lost a daughter, too, their souls, for a moment, connect.
If the story had ended here, I would have been impressed by the subtly of Morris’ pen.
The implication of “White Man’s Problems,” of course, is that the so-called problems are not only trivial but “in sharp contrast to real problems, experienced by people in other countries.” But, of course, certain emotions, like grief, cannot be contained to race or class or circumstance; they are simply the human condition. And, for a moment, I thought Morris had nailed that point.
“It is true of any of us, should a stranger meet us at the intersection of elevator and automobile when the chill cloud of memory hits; if he should recognize the subterranean cascade of longing and remorse; if he know well the depthless sadness of not seeing a child rise into the brace-face, the inappropriate midriff, the biology major, the bride; he would be privy not just to the naked basis of our being but to our utter defenselessness to the lateral and vertical rhythms and movement of this world,” Morris writes.
And after reading that, I rested the book on my chest and reflected, content.
Alas, Morris kept writing, shifting the perspective to Kingsley, the Mexican elevator repair man. And as Kingsley weaves his way through Los Angeles he has the exact opposite experiences as Harrigan: He has a rapport with all of the Starbucks baristas, he loves Century City and sees it as a place of promise, he is married while Harrigan is divorced, he is happy while Harrigan is sad.
It’s too trite for words.
But, willing to try again, I made a go at the second story, only to give up a couple pages in. It’s as if Morris has as much experience being a teenage boy in the ’70s as he does being a Mexican elevator repairman in Los Angeles; I’m unconvinced.
I only made it to page 21.
“White Man’s Problems,” by Kevin Morris and published by Grove Press, Black Cat hit shelves Dec. 16.
In 'Joe Knight,' an anti-hero for our times
Mark Athitakis , Special for USA TODAY 2:02 p.m. EST December 17, 2016
All Joe Knight: A Novel
by Kevin Morris
(Grove Press)
in Fiction
Buy Now
USA TODAY Rating
The hero of Kevin Morris’ two-fisted debut novel, All Joe Knight (Grove Press, 353 pp., *** out of four stars), might have a familiar ring to avid readers.
Joe once played on a standout high-school basketball team in Pennsylvania. But now, buffeted by mistakes in money and marriage, he’s left pondering what happened to his American Dream. Joe is John Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom revised for the Trump era — more profane and straight-talking, if also harder to admire.
Joe, he tells us, is an unapologetic product of a Philadelphia suburb “full of white-skinned, yellow-toothed, racist, and anti-Semitic working men and their kids.” He came of age during the city’s heightened racial tensions in the 1970s and '80s, culminating in the 1985 MOVE bombing, but playing on a high-school basketball squad with a mix black and white players tempered his bigoted upbringing. After making a mint from selling his advertising business, he’s set those old conflicts in the past.
Or so he thought. The French investor who bought Joe’s business is now under federal investigation, threatening to destroy Joe’s comfy perch, and he’s wondering who might be bad-mouthing him to the authorities. So out pours a life story that’s filled with memories of divorce, strippers, pedophile priests, race-based fights on the court and more. Like a corner-bar Montaigne, Joe has an opinion on just about everything, from the wealthy to Bob Dylan to the 1974 Philadelphia Flyers to women’s breasts.
Reading All Joe Knight means being patient with a truckload’s worth of know-it-all assessments, like this about first meeting his wife: “She had that little bit of feminism smart girls have before they get married and have kids, when the harangue of women’s studies lectures is still in their heads.” And as he feels more threatened, his resentments get uglier, directed toward his former black teammates: “There’s that back part of your mind that always suspects them, the part you don’t say out loud, the part that gets nervous at the cash machine, in the elevator, in the hall.”
Author Kevin Morris.
Author Kevin Morris. (Photo: Austin Hargrave)
But All Joe Knight wouldn’t be worth the time if it were simply a catalog of grievances. Joe is a boor, but Morris gives him an awareness of that boorishness, a complex past, and a gift for sturdy, well-turned observations, such as the teammate who “moved up and down the court like everyone else was running around in a full-court bowl of lemon Jell-O.”
And Morris, a co-producer of the hit musical The Book of Mormon whose debut story collection was pointedly titled White Man’s Problems, has put a spotlight on a lower middle class that gets little attention in contemporary fiction, regardless of race.
Like a guy who’s overly impressed with the sound of his own voice, All Joe Knight runs its mouth a little too long: Morris lets the reader know that Joe isn’t as sharp as he thinks, but not before Joe delivers a lot of half-baked thoughts about society.
Even so, one of the graces of fiction is that an effective character doesn’t have to be likable. Morris’ novel is a surprisingly full portrait of one man who exemplifies the notion.
ALL JOE KNIGHT
by Kevin Morris
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KIRKUS REVIEW
With his marriage over and his business affairs gone murky, the narrator of this uneven debut has only the memory of his glory days on the basketball court as a youth.
In a story that bounces around like an errant foul shot, Joe Knight delivers alternating sections about life in the 1970s as a teen formed by TV, basketball, and music and as an adult adrift. There are recurring interludes on William Penn, the early history of Philadelphia, where the story is set, and brick-making as well as repeated references to Walt Whitman and the Band. “I might be scattered, but that’s okay,” Joe says early on. For a time he focuses on basketball, and fans of the sport will enjoy what Morris (White Man’s Problems, 2014) calls “the perfect harmonic convergence” of good players melding into a great high school team. The sections on Joe’s rise after college from negligible jobs to founding an ad firm that quickly gets hot and leads to an eight-figure buyout hum along at a snappy pace. All is not blue sky, though. As a boy, Joe witnessed something in a church that he holds secret for years. The wealthy adult sours on marriage, and divorce finds him compulsively bedding strippers (the sex scenes aren’t subtle). A self-loathing loner, Joe seems to have left any joy in life on the hardwood courts of high school. When a former teammate tips him to a criminal probe into the buyout, the trouble threatens to entangle the friends of his youth (and the payoff may even help explain those recurring references). The tension surrounding the investigation and legal matters is well-handled, a credit perhaps to the author’s day job as an entertainment lawyer.
A dark and busy rise-and-fall tale, the book doesn’t gel quite as well its young hoopsters.
Pub Date: Dec. 6th, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2578-1
Page count: 368pp
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6th, 2017
Kevin Morris Wrote the Anti-Midlife Crisis Book
His new novel All Joe Knight bucks the typical tropes of an all-too-familiar story.
BY TYLER CONFOY
DEC 13, 2016
41
Kevin Morris, one of Hollywood's most successful entertainment lawyers, always wanted to be a writer. Finally, seven years ago, he found a writing space in Santa Monica and started work on his debut novel. In between bouts of trying and failing to get it published, he self-published a collection of short stories, White Man's Problems, for which South Park co-creator Matt Stone, Morris' friend and client, threw a book party. Grove/Atlantic publisher Morgan Entrekin attended that party and soon after offered Morris a two-book deal, to include a novel.
That novel, All Joe Knight, out this month, is a remarkable and agonizing portrayal of a middle-aged man who doesn't know what's become of his life, and doesn't seem to care. Listed as one of 10 "Best Books of the Month: Literature & Fiction" on Amazon, All Joe Knight alternates between past and present, showing us protagonist Joe Knight's troubled childhood—when the bonds he formed on his high-school basketball team were all that mattered—as well as his present life as a retired, recently-divorced millionaire spending his time alone in Philadelphia's strip clubs. In the midst of this void, he's forced to confront a bad business deal that puts his old teammates in the crossfire.
Morris talks to Esquire.com about the themes behind All Joe Knight, an incendiary look at modern American life.
ESQ: Near the beginning of the book, Joe Knight says, "I'll probably die like this. Another American man who got what he wanted." Joe has experienced major financial success and seems to have gotten what he wanted, but he's leading this empty existence. Why choose him as your protagonist?
Kevin Morris: There's always this assumption that somebody comes out the other side of the midlife crisis sort of repaired in one way or another. Either they have a brand new Camaro or they move to England or they go back to their same old job and are happy. Nobody spends too much thinking about: What if somebody just doesn't get happy? Or gets happy on terms that nobody's anticipating? This theme is only heightened by the election. Post-election, we have the ones that are angry, the ones that are victimized, the ones that are stunned, the ones that are happy, the ones that want to just move away, the ones that are started to get excited about doing something, and the ones that just don't want to do anything anymore. What we're not realizing, though, is that we might start seeing the ones that don't care. I don't mean just don't care like they're apathetic; I mean not caring the way Joe doesn't care. Like, coming out of a midlife crisis not caring, and not in a good way. Like really, really not caring.
THERE'S ALWAYS THIS ASSUMPTION THAT SOMEBODY COMES OUT THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIDLIFE CRISIS SORT OF REPAIRED IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. NOBODY SPENDS TOO MUCH THINKING ABOUT: WHAT IF SOMEBODY JUST DOESN'T GET HAPPY?
Both basketball and the city of Philadelphia play big roles in the book, and Pennsylvania founder William Penn is referenced throughout. How are they all connected?
I'm from Philadelphia. I wanted to write about Philadelphia and William Penn and basketball—all these things which to me have a spiritual relationship of some kind. There's something about basketball in that city that's magical, and the Palestra, that arena, was truly the stuff of make-believe when it got going. For me, there was also a theme of erosion—of erosion in our lives; of our society, country and culture getting away from what were the things that made us so special, getting away from the bricks that we were founded upon. The Democratic National Convention was in Philadelphia, yet you had to listen very carefully to hear the Declaration and Constitution evoked.
It's interesting in that William Penn's ideal for Philadelphia, founded in 1682—"A greene country town, which will never be burnt, and always wholesome"—seems like such a modern impossibility.
Exactly. There's all this deterioration of the things Penn wanted. When the cops threw explosive material on the MOVE compound in 1985, one of the reasons that block burned down is because the houses were built too close together, something Penn never wanted. And Joe keeps this feeling of erosion and despair—very much present in the 1970s during his high school years playing basketball—with him. One of the things I think about a lot is how we get these sugarcoated documentaries about the '70s, '60s and '50s—they'll play some rock n' roll music and show the political heroes and the rock n' roll heroes and presto! You have the story of the '70s. They try to wrap up the decades into these bite-size chunks, when they're not bite size. It was much darker.
Near the beginning, Joe tells us, "Don't let the visual stuff fool you. Music is the only narrative. The only question is what do you listen to when no one else is there." What do you listen to when no one else is there?
I listen to The Band a lot, and Bob Dylan and Liz Phair. And these days I listen to The National a lot when nothing else is around.