Synopses & Reviews
Henry Wiggen, hero of The Southpaw and the best-known fictional baseball player in America, is back again, throwing a baseball "with his arm and his brain and his memory and his bluff for the sake of his pocket and his family." More than a novel about baseball, Bang the Drum Slowly is about the friendship and the lives of a group of men as they each learn that a teammate is dying of cancer. Bang the Drum Slowly was chosen as one of the top one hundred sports books of all time by Sports Illustrated and appears on numerous other lists of best baseball fiction. In the introduction to this new Bison Books edition Mark Harris discusses the making of the classic 1973 film starring Robert DeNiro, based on his screen adaptation of the book. Also available in Bison Books editions are The Southpaw, It Looked Like For Ever, and A Ticket for a Seamstitch, the other three volumes in the Henry Wiggen series.
Review
"A book which has its sad, funny, human and holding moments, but which demands an audience which is ready to play ball." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Bang the Drum Slowly is a fine bitter-sweet book." New York Herald Tribune Book Review
Review
"What makes Bang the Drum Slowly unique in current fiction is author Harris' mastery of his offbeat scene....If the characters are no more than one dimensional, it is a dimension that Harris has measured with his heart as well as his eye and ear." Time
About the Author
Mark Harris (1922-2007) is the author of a famous quartet of baseball novels—including It Looked Like Forever—as well as Something about a Soldier, Speed, and The Talemaker. All are available as Bison Books.