The Tale Maker

By Mark Harris

Mark Harris took you out to the ballgame in his Henry Wiggen novels, The Southpaw, Bang the Drum Slowly, A Ticket for a Seamstitch, and It Looked Like For Ever. In The Tale Maker, he takes you to college. Rimrose was well-read, smart, and strong. As the editor of the campus Sentinel, he was perfectly placed to observe how a university worked, and ideally inclined to expose its ethical weaknesses. Supported by his parents, he could concentrate on things that mattered: his writing, his wife-to-be, and his friends and enemies--including the warped Kakapick, who serves Rimrose lastingly as model and prototype of the literary scoundrel. Rimrose--Tale Maker of the title--turns from journalism to fiction-writing, kept alive by his wife's practical and ingenious devotion to selling his stories, even those he has tossed in the trash. As he grows older and begets children, he worries about income and faces stultifying choices: managing his father's small-town newspaper or playing politics in university service.

Mark Harris (1922-2007) is the author of a famous quartet of baseball novels-The Southpaw, Bang the Drum Slowly, A Ticket for a Seamstitch, and It Looked Like Forever. All are available as Bison Books.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803272804
• ISBN13: 9780803272804
• Release Date: October 1995
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 215 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Brilliant Story

The Talemaker almost seems like an afterthought to Harris' career, comared to other novels like Speed and the four Henry Wiggen books. However in many ways The Talemaker may be his best work. Certainly it is his most deeply personal. The main charecters, Rimrose, Kakapick, and Polly Anne are among the most orginal and compelling figures I have ever seen in fiction. Subtly written underneath the story Harris challenges the reader with that eternal question of University English Department's...What is Literature? Kakapick thinks he knows, while Rimrose simply enjoys trying to find out. Of course the story can never give a definate answer but it makes for great reading and re-reading. I have read this book 5 times and always find something new hidden behind one of Harris' many clever phrases. Above everything else, Mark Harris is a master of the American Lexicon.