Harris, Mark, 1922-2007

Mark Harris (1922- ), author and educator, born in Mount Vernon, New York.

Mark Harris was born November 19, 1922 in Mount Vernon, New York and was an American novelist, literary biographer, and educator. 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 dramatic television anthology series The United States Steel Hour. The novel also became a major motion picture in 1973, with a screenplay written by Harris, directed by John D. Hancock. Harris died, May 30, 2007, of complications of Alzheimer's Disease at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital at age 84. He was survived by his wife, Josephine Horen, his sister, Martha, two sons, one daughter, and three grandchildren.

Bannow, Steve. "Mark Harris," in Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Gale Research, 1978). Volume 2 Enck, John. "Mark Harris: An Interview," Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, 6, No. 1 (Spring–Summer 1965), pp. 15–26. Eppard, Philip B. "Mark Harris," in First Printings of American Authors (Detroit: Gale Research, 1977). Volume I. Lavers, Norman. Mark Harris (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978). Includes an extensive primary and secondary bibliography.

American author Mark Harris was born November 19, 1922, in Mt. Vernon, New York.

Following military service from 1943–1944, Harris became a journalist and worked on a variety of newspapers and magazines for the remainder of the decade, including the Daily Item (Port Chester, NY. 1944–1945), PM (New York, NY, 1945), the International News Service (St. Louis, 1945–1946), and in Chicago for the Negro Digest and Ebony (1946–1951). Harris remained active as a journalist for most of his writing career.

Harris completed his first novel, Trumpet to the World, while he was employed in St. Louis; it was published in 1946. Two years later, Harris enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Denver and eventually went on to receive a master's degree in English (1951) from Denver, as well as a Ph.D. in American Studies (1956) from the University of Minnesota. Harris's dissertation focused on the life and work of the American literary radical Randolph Bourne.

Even while he attended school, Harris continued to write fiction. He produced three additional novels, all of which were published by the time he received his Ph.D. Following the receipt of his doctorate, Harris began a long, productive career as a college educator teaching at San Francisco State College (1954–1968), Purdue University (1967–1970), California Institute of the Arts (1970–1973), the University of Southern California (1973-1975), the University of Pittsburgh (1976–1980), and Arizona State University-Tempe (1980–2001).

Harris may be best known for his fictional work, Bang the Drum Slowly (1956), the second volume in his trilogy devoted to the fictional baseball player, Henry Wiggen. Harris adapted this novel into a screenplay for the 1973 movie of the same name. Several of Harris's novels have received critical acclaim, notably, Something about a Soldier (1957), Wake Up Stupid (1959), The Goy (1970), and Killing Everybody (1973).

In addition to his work as a novelist, Mark Harris has produced a variety of works in other literary genres. His critical contributions include editing the poems of Vachel Lindsay in Selected Poems of Vachel Lindsay (1963) and the journals of James Boswell in Heart of Boswell (1981).

Harris has written biographies that include Vachel Lindsay's City of Discontent (1952), and Saul Bellow's Saul Bellow: Drumlin Woodchuck (1980). Harris's autobiographical books include Mark the Glove Boy; or, The Last Days of Richard Nixon (1964), an account of Harris's coverage of Nixon's unsuccessful California gubernatorial campaign; Twentyone Twice: A Journal (1966), an account of Harris' experiences in Sierra Leone as a member of the Peace Corps; and finally, Best Father Ever Invented: An Authobiography of Mark Harris (1976), which chronicles his life from late adolescence up to 1973.

Martha Harris, sister of American author Mark Harris, was born in 1933 in Mt. Vernon, New York. After Martha Harris graduated from high school, she and her mother moved to Minnesota to live with her brother Mark's family. She later relocated to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was active in the Social Workers Party.