Harington, Donald
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1935-2009) US author, artist and teacher of art history, all of whose novels after the first are set in or otherwise linked to the fictional town of Stay More in his birth state of Arkansas; elements of Fantastika appear in several books of this quirky Ozarks sequence. Some Other Place. The Right Place (1972) involves Reincarnation and the use of regression through Hypnosis to unlock the ancestral memories of the eighteen-year-old boy who is also the female protagonist's dead grandfather. The peddler who shows up intermittently over a century and a half in The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks (1975), bringing "progress" to Stay More, is a Mysterious Stranger figure. The Cockroaches of Stay More (1989) maps the personalities of past Stay More characters on to cockroaches whose Religion is the worship of mankind and whose insect lives are imagined in science-fictional detail as they enact a tragicomic romance [for Beast Fable see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. Ekaterina (1993) is narrated by a ghost, and ghosts (see Supernatural Creatures) and sentient animal companions feature in With (2004). The Pitcher Shower (2005) is pervaded by the spirit and spirits of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (performed circa 1595; 1600) in its 1935 film version directed by Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle, which is acquired by the itinerant projectionist of the title. Like Fred Chappell, whose work also sophisticatedly plumbs the American heartlands, Harington is a much underrated regional author. [DRL]
see also: Terry Bisson; Jack Butler; Jim Grimsley; William Melvin Kelley.
Donald Douglas Harington
born Little Rock, Arkansas: 22 December 1935
died Springdale, Arkansas: 7 November 2009
works (selected)
series
Stay More
- Some Other Place. The Right Place (New York: Little, Brown, 1972) [Stay More: hb/Wendell Minor]
- The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown, 1975) [Stay More: hb/Wendell Minor]
- The Cockroaches of Stay More (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989) [Stay More: hb/Dale Verzaal]
- Ekaterina (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1993) [Stay More: hb/Lisa Peters]
- With (New Milford, Connecticut: The Toby Press, 2004) [Stay More: hb/Wendell Minor]
- The Pitcher Shower (New Milford, Connecticut: The Toby Press, 2005) [Stay More: hb/Wendell Minor]
links
- Donald Harington
- Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- The Encyclopedia of Fantasy: Beast Fable
- Picture Gallery
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