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.
Author Bio
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.
Praise
“Bang the Drum Slowly makes wonderful reading—whether one hates baseball or loves it. . . . It is awfully funny in parts, and laughter is rare enough on anybody’s bookshelf.”—New York Times
“What makes Bang the Drum Slowly unique . . . is author Harris’s mastery of his offbeat scene. . . . The talk is natural, larded with casual humor, and earthiness. . . . Harris has measured [his characters] with his heart as well as his eye and ear.”—Time
