Howard Burman
Howard Burman is the author of more than twenty full-length plays and 12 books.
About Me
I can’t say I remember much about Brooklyn since we moved out to Great Neck on Long Island when I was four. I do know we lived in the Flatbush area on Avenue H. Dad owned and operated a small trucking company. Occasionally in the summer he would take me to Ebbetts Field to see the Dodgers. My love of baseball, which is reflected in some of the books and plays I have written, began there.
In Great Neck I attended Great Neck South High School, was very involved with the Boy Scouts, played some Little League, and Pony League baseball, and a lot of stickball.
I went out to Ohio to attend Wilmington College. It was there that I became interested in theatre, when rather by accident I got roped into a production of Romeo and Juliet. After my sophomore year I transferred to The Ohio State University where I joined the Strollers Dramatic Society and met Karen who would become my wife.
At Ohio State I designed and produced shows for Strollers, and majored in Theatre History. After receiving my B.A., I stayed on to earn the Ph.D.
My first teaching job was at San Jose State University where I taught various courses in Dramatic Literature and Theatre History. I also directed a few plays, and wrote my first—The Author of The Iliad Was Either Homer or Somebody Else of the Same Name.
Book Collection
Take a look at my fiction, faction, and nonfiction books.
I neglected to send you material about my most successful...
Mutt’s Dream Making the Mick
When seven nuns are...
Duckrabbit
In 1897 in the Indian Territory...
You Shoot Me Now
His mind was a cryptish...
Paradise by Paradise
This cowardly little state...
Surrounded
Written in the style of an...
A Man Called Shoeless
Burman presents a historical novel about the lives and athletic achievements of three baseball greats...
The Legend of Willie, Mickey, & The Duke
Testimonial
What The Critics Say
"THE LEGEND OF WILLIE, MICKEY & THE DUKE Burman presents a historical novel about the lives and athletic achievements of three baseball greats. The titanically talented 1950s ballplayers Willie Mays of the New York Giants, Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees, and Edwin “Duke” Snider of the Brooklyn Dodgers are the focus of Burman’s generous novel. It casts their stories in a propulsive present tense and alternates chapters between them, looking at the progress of their careers; at one point, as Burman puts it, “three of the greatest center fielders ever” were “playing for three different teams within a few miles of each other.” Readers are taken into the workaday realities of the Dodgers, Giants, and Yankees as each of these players is coming up, gaining experience on their way to becoming names that were intrinsically linked, “like baseball, peanuts, and hot dogs. Think of one, think of all three.” Each of the book’s fast-paced chapters charts a new personal or professional moment, whether it’s Mantle thinking about his family’s roots (“He wishes his father could be anything but a miner. He knows it’s killing him, and that one day, maybe soon, he will be gone”) or Mays’ blazing talent quickly setting him apart: “Willie begins playing for a local team—the Fairfield Gray Sox,” Burman writes. “Initially, he played shortstop, but he threw the ball so hard to first that the first baseman complained, so the manager switched Willie to pitcher.” The author has seemingly researched everything that these players ever said publicly, and he keeps his utterly gripping narrative tightly linked to the historical record. “These dramatizations,” he asserts in an author’s note, “do not come at the expense of the truth.” Thanks to Burman’s considerable storytelling skill, the factuality energizes his novel rather than bogging it down; his three main players and a host of secondary characters are all full of life. At the same time, he doesn’t shy away from their faults; Mantle, readers are told, later “made a living as a celebrity drunk.” The end result is a tremendously enjoyable work. A knowledgeable and involving tale of three legends of America’s pastime."
"A MAN CALLED SHOELESS Who is Howard Burman, this individual who can write in such a moving fashion? He’s the real deal. More a biography than anything else, it is a fine piece of creative writing, a book worth reading, for its insight into southern mill towns, the southern mentality, baseball in the Deadball Era, the 1919 World Series, and the undeniably hard life and times of Shoeless Joe Jackson."
"SEASON OF GHOSTS A very entertaining and informative read. One even need not throw in the divorces, the public exhibition of bad manners, dirty dealings on and off the field, or the accusations of drugs (although there are plenty examples in this book) to make one want to pick up and read Season of Ghosts. Burman, well researched as ever, has penned a book on baseball that is a rapid, compelling, and fascinating expedition through the tumultuous season that took place during one of most dramatic and forever-altering periods in the professional game of baseball. Season of Ghosts will inform and entertain all who wish to know the back-story behind the key participants in that beguiling season of '86."
"PARADISE BY PARADISE Burman writes in an intricate, playful prose that brings his protagonist to life in all his lyric, bookish whimsy. With its postmodern flourishes and seemingly endless allusions to literary history, the author manages to evoke the imaginative classics of Flann O’Brien, Anthony Burgess, and David Markson. This is a meditation on the contradictions inherent to a life of the mind, and Burman presents a memorable hero who’s alternately comic and tragic, enlightening and infuriating. The story ends up in what’s perhaps a predictable place, but readers won’t close the book unsatisfied. It ultimately serves as a striking elegy for 20th-century literature and the bygone world in which it greatly mattered. A truly enjoyable comic tale with an emotional core."