A Father, a Son, and the '60s Generation

A MEMOIR  *  MARK T. HARRIS

 
   
 
         

KIDS TALK RADIO: A Father's Day Story

"This is the voice of an exceptionally talented writer."

—Robert Redman, Dearborn Publishing

 

"Mark Harris isn't afraid to go into the dark places, the ones that hold the answers to our deepest questions. He opens himself up, takes us along as he discovers what is hidden within his blood and bones, and helps us find ourselves along the way."

—Jim Warda, author, Where Are We Going So Fast? (Sheed & Wardy, 2001)

 

"Mark Harris makes potentially impersonal issues and ideas seem very close to the bone. His style seamlessly brings together his own insights and struggles with those of the subjects he is discussing."

—Julia Mossbridge, PhD, author, Unfolding: The Perpetual Science of Your Soul's Work (New World Library, 2001)

 

"My father's house shines hard and bright,

It shines like a beacon calling me in the night,

Calling and calling, so cold and alone,

'Cross this dark highway where our sins lie unatoned."

                                                                —Bruce Springsteen

   Set against the backdrop of the “generation gap” of the Vietnam War-era, I Want to Change the World introduces us to the young Mark Harris, by turns irreverent and tender, critical and forgiving, in this moving memoir of one boy’s journey to adulthood. Like the son in Pat Conroy's novel The Great Santini, the young Harris yearns to be free from his father's overbearing shadow. But when the man suddenly dies in a car accident he finds his wish unexpectedly—and tragically—fulfilled. It's a few days before Christmas in 1975 and Harris is a 22-year-old college student. The son's long-desired “freedom” has instead become a melancholy gift.

    Born in California in the 1950s, Harris is the oldest son of a successful businessman whose ambitious career takes the family to the Midwest in the early 1960s. Growing up, Harris is both introspective and daring, a dutiful student with a rebellious streak and, as he enters his teenage years, an increasing penchant for conflict with his politically conservative father.

    As a college student, Harris emerges as a student leader of antiwar protests that rock Southern Illinois University in the early 1970s. But nowhere is the clash over the war more pronounced than in his relationship with his own father. With his father's death, however, Harris finds himself embarked on an unexpected journey. The remorse he suffers for having battled with a man whose head was bashed in by metal and glass gradually turns into an ulcerated sore. Decades later, haunted by the unresolved legacy of their relationship, Harris re-experiences his father’s death as if it has only just occurred.

    Consequently, he undertakes a kind of spiritual journey home, revisiting the unsettled story of his early years. It’s a journey into rich emotional territory as Harris brings a frank and fresh voice to the story of an American childhood. The journey comes to a close as the author travels to locate the remote, long forgotten spot on a Wisconsin highway where his father died. The trip becomes a finale to a son's long quest to find peace with the ghosts of the past.

    Beautifully told, Mark T. Harris writes with sensitivity for emotional landscapes. I Want to Change the World is an evocative coming-of-age story from a uniquely gifted voice of “the peace generation” of the turbulent era of the 1960s and beyond.