HARRIS, MARK

HARRIS, MARK (1922– ), U.S. novelist and critic. Harris received a Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of Minnesota. He is best known for his books about baseball players, notably the Henry Wiggen novels: The Southpaw (1953); Bang the Drum Slowly (1956), which was made into a film in 1973; A Ticket for a Seamstitch (1957); and It Looked Like For Ever (1979). Harris also wrote "problem" novels such as Trumpet to the World (1946), Something About a Soldier (1957), and Wake Up, Stupid (1959). City of Discontent (1952) dealt with Vachel Lindsay, and Friedman and Son (1963) was a play about the conflicts of Jewish life. His novel The Goy, about a gentile professor grappling with the meaning of historical writing as well as the meaning of his own life, including his response to Jews, was published in 1970. His study of Bellow, Saul Bellow, Drumlin Woodchuck, was published in 1980. His autobiographical reflections can be found in Mark the Glove Boy, or the Last Days of Richard Nixon (1964), Twentyone Twice: A Journal (1966) and Best Father Ever Invented: The Autobiography of Mark Harris (1976). His novel Speed was published in 1990, followed by Diamond: Baseball Writings of Mark Harris (1994). He also edited The Heart of Boswell (1981). (Lewis Fried (2nd ed.)