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."

Mark Harris Finkelstein was born in Mount Vernon, New York, to Carlyle and Ruth (Klausner) Finkelstein. At the age of 11, he began keeping a diary, which he would maintain every day for the rest of his life.

He dropped his surname after graduating in 1940 from Mount Vernon High School because "it was a difficult time for kids with Jewish names to get jobs." He went to work for Paul Winkler's Press Alliance news agency in New York City as a messenger and mimeograph operator.

In January 1943, he was drafted into the United States Army. His growing opposition to war and his anger at the prevalence of racial discrimination in the Army led him to go AWOL from Camp Wheeler, Georgia, in February 1944. He was soon arrested and then hospitalized for psychoneurosis. He was honorably discharged in April 1944. His wartime experience formed the basis for two of his novels, Trumpet to the World (1946) and Something About a Soldier (1957).

Harris joined The Daily Item of Port Chester, New York, as a reporter in May 1944. A year later he accepted a position with PM in New York City but was fired after two months.

In July 1945, he was hired by the International News Service and moved to St. Louis. While there, he met coworker Josephine Horen, whom he married in March 1946. After resigning in July 1946, he spent the next year and a half in a succession of short-lived journalism jobs in Albuquerque (Albuquerque Journal), Chicago (Negro Digest and Ebony), and New York (Park Row News Service).