R.I.P. William Harrison William Harrison, who adapted his fiction into the films “Rollerball” in 1975 and “Mountains of the Moon” in 1990, died on Oct. 22 at his home in Fayetteville, Ark. He was 79. The cause was renal failure, his daughter, Laurie Karnatz, said. Mr. Harrison wrote dozens of short stories and nine novels, several set in Africa, where he traveled extensively. He founded the creative writing graduate program at the University of Arkansas in 1965 with the writer James T. Whitehead. His short story “Roller Ball Murder” was made into the dystopian science-fiction film “Rollerball,” directed by Norman Jewison from a screenplay by Mr. Harrison. The film cast James Caan as a star of an ultraviolent roller derby that is used to placate the proletariat in a futuristic society. The film became a cult hit, though the reviews were often harsh. In 2002 the film was remade by John McTiernan to even worse reviews. Mr. Harrison and the director Bob Rafelson wrote the screenplay for “Mountains of the Moon,” a 1990 adaptation of Mr. Harrison’s novel “Burton and Speke” (1982). The film, about the 19th-century exploration of the Nile by Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke, starred Patrick Bergin as Burton and Iain Glen as Speke. William Neal Harrison was born on Oct. 29, 1933, in Dallas, and was adopted by Samuel Scott Harrison and the former Mary Etta Cook. He graduated from Texas Christian and Vanderbilt Universities and attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1961, where he published his first short story. In 1958 he married Merlee Portman. They moved to Fayetteville in 1964, and Mr. Harrison began teaching. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973 and stayed at the University of Arkansas until he retired in 1998. His last novel, “Black August,” was published in 2011. In addition to his wife and daughter, Mr. Harrison is survived by two sons, Sean and Quentin; three grandchildren; and a great-grandson. In a 2000 essay, “What It’s Like to Be a Minor American Writer,” Mr. Harrison said he was content with his place in the literary world. “The short answer: it’s wonderful,” he wrote.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 09:55:31 +0000