Background
Harris, Mark was born on November 19, 1922 in Mount Vernon, New York, United States. Son of Carlyle and Ruth (Klausner) Finkelstein.
( First published in 1946, Trumpet to the World can be se...)
First published in 1946, Trumpet to the World can be seen as a landmark novel, rare for its profound rendering of a black man’s experience in Jim Crow America and prophetic of the social changes to come in the next decade. Its protagonist, Willie Jim, could have been brutalized by his family’s hard existence in Georgia, but he heads out early; could have been thoroughly demoralized by bigotry and discrimination in a hundred forms, but he learns to read and write and thinks for himself; could have been emotionally unfulfilled, but he learns to love in the midst of hate. After his marriage to a white woman, Willie Jim, caught up in the maelstrom of World War II, is sent to an army camp in the South, where his duty includes teaching English to other soldiers. A tragic event there compromises his future at the very moment a book he has written trumpets to the world his dream of social justice and universal brotherhood.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0803223536/?tag=2022091-20
(When the lustful but impotent professor-novelist Lee Youn...)
When the lustful but impotent professor-novelist Lee Youngdahl encounters the beautiful Mariolena Sunwall, a student in his writing class, he learns of a novel she's eager to have published and decides he can help her land a book contract with one of New York's most prestigious publishing house. But he has his own agenda and some extracurricular activities in mind. Working for Mariolena gives him the inspiration he needs to break out of his paralyzing writer's block, but that's not all he's hoping to recover from. While his wife Beth is away visiting their children on a seven-city tour, Youngdahl is determined to find a cure for his impotence and revisit his old Don Juan days.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0759241155/?tag=2022091-20
( Henry Wiggen, the bedraggled six-foot-three, 195-pound,...)
Henry Wiggen, the bedraggled six-foot-three, 195-pound, left-handed pitcher for the New York Mammoths, returns to narrate another novel in his inimitable manner. Fans who loved him in Bang the Drum Slowly, The Southpaw, and A Ticket for a Seamstitch (all Bison Books) will cheer his comeback. Wiggen is now thirty-nine, a fading veteran with a floating fastball, a finicky prostate, and other intimations of mortality. Released from the Mammoths after nineteen years, the twenty-seventh winningest pitcher in baseball history (tied at 247 victories with Joseph J. "Iron Man" McGinnity and John Powell), Wiggen is not ready to hang up his glove. What impels Henry to pitch against Pate, to trek to California and as far as Japan? He still has a few seasons, a few innings left anyway. Is he principled or possessed? You'll have to decide for yourself as author Mark Harris plays out Wiggen's midlife crisis on familiar American turf: the baseball diamond.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0803272448/?tag=2022091-20
( Something about a Soldier is considered by some critics...)
Something about a Soldier is considered by some critics to be Mark Harris's finest novel. The wacky characters and situations are clothed in a trenchant language that says everything Harris wants to say while retaining the purity and simplicity of a fable. The hero is Private Jacob Epp (changed from Epstein), seventeen, from Perkinsville, New York. In 1944 he enters the army and arrives for basic training in Georgia with his Soldier's Handbook and a virginal social conscience. Exposed to racial discrimination and poverty, he becomes a social activist, even flirts briefly with communism. He meets Jolene, a countergirl in the PX, who urges him to embrace her, a warmer object for his love than any abstraction. How Private Epp is saved from death for love is a nutty, ingenious story that the reader won't be able to resist.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080327226X/?tag=2022091-20
(And Of The Love Of The Poet For That City, That State, An...)
And Of The Love Of The Poet For That City, That State, And That Nation.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1258072033/?tag=2022091-20
( This is the third novel narrated by Henry Wiggen, a six...)
This is the third novel narrated by Henry Wiggen, a six-foot three-inch, 195-pound, left-handed pitcher for the New York Mammoths. Henry, who began as a rookie in The Southpaw and developed into a pro in Bang the Drum Slowly, is a mature veteran in A Ticket for a Seamstitch. A seamstress from "somewhere out West" writes to Henry, her hero, that she will be in New York to watch the Mammoths play on the Fourth of July. When she arrives in New York, both the married Henry and his pal, the very unmarried Thurston "Piney" Woods, are at a loss as to what to do with their visitor. The two men finally do the decent thing: they take the seamstress to the automat for dinner. In so doing, they both learn some things worth knowing, although the distraction undoubtedly affects their performance in the big game. In the essay "Easy Does It Not" Mark Harris describes the origins of this wonderfully comic novel.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0803272243/?tag=2022091-20
(This is a novel about something we all know, something we...)
This is a novel about something we all know, something we carry within us: our inward rage, our lives of fantasy. Not all of us accommodate rage or fantasy in the same way. Most of us - bless us - go about our peaceful business, though our confidential fury may produce fantasies we'd rather not confess. Sometimes some of us translate fantasies to outer life. Most of us do not. Brown, in KILLING EVERYBODY (he has no other name we know), carries in his heart a burden of anger so terrible we think that he
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0933256655/?tag=2022091-20
(Originally written in 1959, this is the hilariously explo...)
Originally written in 1959, this is the hilariously explosive account of Youngdahl, a novelist, playwright, ex-Mormon, and father of seven. He is a frenzied man who is beginning a letter-writing campaign to escape his curiously ironic situation, and of course, his profession. Along with Abner Klang, his not-so-literary agent who seems to have misplaced the "f" key on his typewriter, Youngdahl joins forces with a Mormon bishop, a TV adapter, and a prizefighter, among others, to spearhead a comic revolution.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0759239754/?tag=2022091-20
Harris, Mark was born on November 19, 1922 in Mount Vernon, New York, United States. Son of Carlyle and Ruth (Klausner) Finkelstein.
Bachelor of Arts, University Denver, 1950; Master of Arts, University Denver, 1951; Doctor of Philosophy, University Minnesota, 1956; Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Illinois Wesleyan University, 1974.
Reporter, Port Chester (New York) Item, 1944; reporter, Prime Minister, New York City, 1945; reporter, I.N.S., St. Louis, 1945-1946; Professor of English, San Francisco State College, 1954-1968; Professor of English, Purdue University, 1967-1970; member of faculty, California Institute Arts, Valencia, 1970-1973; member of faculty, Immaculate Heart College, Los Angeles, 1973-1974; member of faculty, University of Southern California, 1973-1975; member of faculty, U. Pittsburgh, 1975-1980; Professor of English, Arizona State University, Tempe, since 1980. Visiting professor Brandeis U., 1963.
(When the lustful but impotent professor-novelist Lee Youn...)
( First published in 1946, Trumpet to the World can be se...)
(Lying in Bed is a comedy about a female student named Mar...)
( Henry Wiggen, the bedraggled six-foot-three, 195-pound,...)
(Originally written in 1959, this is the hilariously explo...)
( This is the third novel narrated by Henry Wiggen, a six...)
(This biography of poet Vachel Lindsay is a lively, swift-...)
(Bang the Drum Slowly is about the golden years of basebal...)
(This is a novel about something we all know, something we...)
(The author"s first baseball novel, and the first to featu...)
(This is the tale told by Mary Harris of his effort to bec...)
( Something about a Soldier is considered by some critics...)
( Something about a Soldier is considered by some critics...)
(And Of The Love Of The Poet For That City, That State, An...)
(And Of The Love Of The Poet For That City, That State, An...)
( Winner of the 1991 New American Writing Award. Orig...)
(Adapted for the stage by Eric Simonson.)
(Book by Harris, Mark)
(2 Revised)
Member San Francisco Art Commission, 1961-1964. Served with Army of the United States, 1943-1944.
Married Josephine Horen, March 17, 1946. Children: Hester Jill, Anthony Wynn, Henry Adam.