[Although] I do think Henry Wiggen (the hero of It Looked Like For Ever and several other Harris novels) is something more than a baseball player, I think he is something less than a writer. Mark Harris, however, is a fine writer, as he has proved many times in his 15 books, among them Bang the Drum Slowly….

[Henry Wiggen is] nearing 40; he is the "27th winningest pitcher in baseball history," admired by the nation, an admirer of women, an ardent free-enterpriser and—here is the problem—the author of three books: The Southpaw, Bang the Drum Slowly and A Ticket for a Seamstitch. He is also supposed to be the author of It Looked Like For Ever. The conceit is that he is not just the narrator, as Huck Finn was of his book, but the actual author. What we are reading is not a novel, but Henry...