 Afterward he was enlisted in the Army.In 1955, Wright moved to Manhattan, New York, and worked a number of low-paid jobs while writing his first novel, "The Messenger", which was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1963.His second novel, "The Wig", received positive reviews, with Conrad Knickerbocker calling it "brutal, exciting and necessary" in "The New York Times".