Macdonald Harris, pseudonym of Donald W. Heiney Biography

American writer and academic, born in California, educated at the University of Southern California; he taught for many years at the University of California, Irvine, and published literary criticism under his own name. After several early novels, such as Private Demons (1961), depicting modern American life, his range widened with Bull Fire (1973), a retelling of the story of the Minotaur and his birth in terms of psychosexual farce, with elements of science fiction. The Balloonists (1976) described a late nineteenth-century balloon excursion to the North Pole; Yukiko (1977) recalls Japan in August 1945; Pandora's Gallery (1979) was set in the Venice of 1797 while Herma (1981) was set in the Belle Epoque; and Screenplay (1982) was a time-travel fantasy about Hollywood. His later works include The Little People (1986), a tale of American self-delusion in Europe; Glowstone (1988), a magic realist fable about Madame Curie; and Hemingway's Suitcase (1990), a clever reconstruction of the author's early years. Stories were collected in The Cathay Stories and Other Fictions (1988).