Mark Harris (author)

Mark Harris (November 19, 1922 – May 30, 2007) was an American novelist, literary biographer, and educator, remembered for his baseball novels featuring the character Henry Wiggen, particularly Bang the Drum Slowly.

Born Mark Harris Finkelstein in Mount Vernon, New York. Harris began his early career as a journalist. After obtaining his doctorate in 1956, Harris became a college lecturer, teaching English primarily at the San Francisco State College and Arizona State University. Harris his first novel was Trumpet to the World (1946). Harris was best known for a quartet of novels about baseball players: The Southpaw (1953), Bang the Drum Slowly (1956), A Ticket for a Seamstitch (1957), and It Looked Like For Ever (1979). In 1956, Bang the Drum Slowly was adapted for an installment of the series The United States Steel Hour, starring Paul Newman. The novel also became a major motion picture in 1973, starring Robert De Niro. Although Bang the Drum Slowly was Harris's only true popular success, most of his novels received critical acclaim. These include Something about a Soldier (1957), Wake Up Stupid (1959), The Goy (1970), and Killing Everybody (1973).

In addition to his work as a novelist, Harris had a productive career in other literary genres. He authored numerous critical essays and articles, edited the poems of Vachel Lindsay and the journals of James Boswell, and wrote several biographies and three autobiographical books. Harris died in 2007. His obituary in The Denver Post called him "one of that legion of under-the-radar writers who for decades consistently turned out excellent novels and went largely unsung as he did...Harris said of his books that 'they are about the one man against his society and trying to come to terms with his society, and trying to succeed within it without losing his own identity or integrity.' He might have said the same thing of himself."