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William Thomas Harris III (born September 22, 1940) is an American writer. He is the author of a series of suspense novels about Hannibal Lecter. The majority of his works have been adapted into films and television, including The Silence of the Lambs, which became only the third film in Academy Awards history to sweep the Oscars in all of the five major categories.

His novels have sold more than 50 million copies, with The Silence of the Lambs alone selling 10 million copies, as of 2019.

Biography

Harris was born in Jackson, Tennessee, but moved as a child with his family to Rich, Mississippi. He was introverted and bookish in grade school and then blossomed in high school. He attended Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where he majored in English and graduated in 1964. While in college, he worked as a reporter for the local newspaper, the Waco Tribune-Herald, covering the police beat. In 1968, he moved to New York City to work for the Associated Press until 1974 when he began work on his debut novel, Black Sunday.

Personal life

Harris avoids publicity and conducted few interviews between 1976 and 2019. At Baylor University, he met and married Harriet Anne Haley, a fellow student, in June 1961. They had one daughter, Elizabeth Anne, before they divorced in August 1968. Harris remained close to his mother Polly and called her every night no matter where he was. He often discussed particular scenes from his novels with her. Polly died on December 31, 2011.

Harris lives in South Florida and has a summer home in Sag Harbor, New York. His long-term domestic partner is Pace Barnes, a woman who, according to USA Today, "used to work in publishing and is as outgoing as he is quiet". Harris' friend and literary agent Morton Janklow said of him: "He's one of the good guys. He is big, bearded and wonderfully jovial. If you met him, you would think he was a choirmaster. He loves cooking—he's done the Le Cordon Bleu exams—and it's great fun to sit with him in the kitchen while he prepares a meal and see that he's as happy as a clam. He has these old-fashioned manners, a courtliness you associate with the South."

In his first major interview in 43 years, with The New York Times in 2019 to promote Cari Mora, he revealed himself to be a nature lover, and a long-time visitor and volunteer of the Pelican Harbor Seabird Station, an animal rescue center in Miami, Florida, for 20 years. The staff were not aware of who Harris was until a few years prior to when the interview was conducted. He described fame as "more of a nuisance than anything else".

Approach to writing and critical reception

The Silence of the Lambs came out to a very positive critical reception. The Guardian described it thus: "The Silence of the Lambs stands alone in being, I personally believe, the only FBI-centred novel worth reading." The long-awaited Hannibal received high praise from Stephen King, but John Lanchester claimed that it had a "sense of discontinuity".

Harris has described his own writing process as difficult, "almost passive." Fellow novelist Stephen King remarked that if writing is sometimes tedious for other authors, to Harris it is like "writhing on the floor in agonies of frustration", because for Harris, "the very act of writing is a kind of torment". Novelist John Dunning said of Harris, "All he is is a talent of the first rank." In 2019, Harris elaborated on his process, as well as the difficulty, describing it thus: "...sometimes you really have to shove and grunt and sweat. Some days you go to your office and you're the only one who shows up, none of the characters show up, and you sit there by yourself, feeling like an idiot. And some days everybody shows up ready to work. You have to show up at your office every day. If an idea comes by, you want to be there to get it in."

Bibliography

• Black Sunday (1975)
• Cari Mora (2019)

Hannibal Lecter novels

1. Red Dragon (1981)
2. The Silence of the Lambs (1988)
3. Hannibal (1999)
4. Hannibal Rising (2006; prequel)

Filmography

• Hannibal Rising (2007; screenplay)

See also

• Hannibal Lecter (franchise)

References

1. Hoban, Phoebe (April 15, 1991). "The Silence of the Writer". New York. pp. 48–50.
2. ^ Conklin 1999
3. Cowley 2006 p. 45
4. Laughlin 1999
5. Tom Tivnan (May 15, 2019). "How Thomas Harris defined a genre and created fiction's most likeable villain". Penguin Books Limited.
6. Alexandra Alter (May 18, 2019). "Hannibal Lecter's Creator Cooks Up Something New (No Fava Beans or Chianti". The New York Times.
7. ^ Hoban 1991
8. Streibling 2001
9. ^ Cowley 2006 p. 45
10. Bolivar 2012
11. Minzesheimer 1999
12. ^ Alter, Alexandra (May 18, 2019). "Hannibal Lecter's Creator Cooks Up Something New (No Fava Beans or Chianti)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved June 3, 2019.
13. Lanchester, John (July 29, 1999). "Slapping the Clammy Flab". London Review of Books. Vol. 21, no. 15. ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved December 18, 2024.
14. "Hannibal Lecter's Creator Cooks Up Something New (No Fava Beans or Chianti) (Published 2019)". May 18, 2019. Archived from the original on August 24, 2024. Retrieved December 18, 2024.
15. Dunning 1992 p. 159
16. Cari Mora, by Thomas Harris. Grand Central Publishing. January 9, 2019. ISBN 9781538750131. Retrieved January 9, 2019.

Sources

• "Polly Coleman Harris", The Bolivar Commercial, January 3, 2012, archived from the original on June 22, 2013, retrieved April 30, 2013
• Conklin, Mike (April 18, 1999), "Hannibal is up to his old tricks in 'Silence' sequel", Lubbock Avalanche Journal, archived from the original on October 4, 2012, retrieved June 7, 2011
• Cowley, Jason (November 19, 2006), "Creator of a Monstrous Hit", The Observer
• Dunning, John. Booked to Die. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992.
• Laughlin, Meg (August 15, 1999), "The hunt for Thomas Harris", Houston Chronicle, archived from the original on August 15, 2013, retrieved April 16, 2012
• Minzesheimer, Bob (December 2, 1999), "Hungry fans eat up 'Hannibal'", USA Today, retrieved July 22, 2013
• Sexton, David. The Strange World of Thomas Harris. London: Short Books, 2001.
• Streibling, William (2001). "The Mississippi Writers Page; Thomas Harris". Archived from the original on October 11, 2015. Retrieved March 29, 2010.

External links

• Official website
• Thomas Harris at IMDb

• Living people
• American crime fiction writers
• American male novelists
• American thriller writers
• American psychological fiction writers
• Baylor University alumni
• Hannibal Lecter (franchise)
• People from Jackson, Tennessee
• People from Coahoma County, Mississippi
• Writers from New York City
• Novelists from Tennessee
• Anthony Award winners
• American male screenwriters
• 20th-century American novelists
• 21st-century American novelists
• Novelists from New York (state)
• Screenwriters from New York (state)
• Screenwriters from Mississippi
• 20th-century American male writers
• 21st-century American male writers
• 1940 births