H. Res. 1040 
In the House of Representatives, U. S., 
March 20, 2010. 
Whereas Donald Douglas Harington was born on December 
22, 1935, in Little Rock, Arkansas; 
Whereas at age 6, he attempted to write his first novel, ‘‘The 
Adventures of Duke Doolittle’’; 
Whereas at age 12, Harington contracted meningococcal 
meningitis and as a result lost most of his hearing; 
Whereas Harington graduated from the University of Arkan-
sas with a bachelor’s degree in art in 1956, a master’s 
degree in printmaking in 1959, and from Boston Univer-
sity with a master’s degree in art history in 1959; 
Whereas Harington taught art history at Bennett College in 
Millbrook, New York, from 1960 to 1962, and at 
Windham College in Putney, Vermont, from 1964 to 
1978; 
Whereas Harington had short-term teaching appointments at 
the University of Missouri Rolla, the University of Pitts-
burg, and South Dakota State, and taught art history at 
the University of Arkansas from 1986 until he retired in 
2008; 
Whereas Harington’s first novel, ‘‘The Cherry Pit’’, was pub-
lished in 1965 and over the course of his literary career 
he also published ‘‘Lightning Bug’’ (1970), ‘‘Some Other
•HRES 1040 EH 
Place. The Right Place’’ (1972), ‘‘The Architecture of 
the Arkansas Ozarks’’ (1975), ‘‘Let Us Build Us a City: 
Eleven Lost Towns’’ (1986), ‘‘The Cockroaches of Stay 
More’’ (1989), ‘‘The Choiring of the Trees’’ (1991), 
‘‘Ekaterina’’ (1993), ‘‘Butterfly Weed’’ (1996), ‘‘When 
Angels Rest’’ (1998), ‘‘Thirteen Albatrosses (or, Falling 
off the Mountain)’’ (2002), ‘‘With’’ (2003), ‘‘The Pitcher 
Shower’’ (2005), ‘‘Farther Along’’ (2008), and ‘‘Endur-
ing’’ (2009); 
Whereas in 1999, Harington was inducted into the Arkansas 
Writers’ Hall of Fame; 
Whereas in 2003, Harington won the Robert Penn Award for 
Fiction, and in 2006 received the first lifetime achieve-
ment award for Southern literature from Oxford Amer-
ican magazine; 
Whereas writer Kevin Brockmeier expressed that ‘‘the signal 
feature of Donald Harington’s novels is their tremendous 
liveliness. His books are not blind to suffering, featuring 
as they do murder, poverty, kidnapping, loss, and be-
trayal. Yet the mood of his stories is overwhelmingly one 
of celebration. He extends his sympathies so widely that 
even the trees and the hills, the insects and the animals, 
the criminals and the ghosts seem to sing with the joy 
of existence. He brings a tenderness and a brio to the 
page that prevents his characters from sinking beneath 
the weight of their troubles, and one finishes his books 
above all else with an impression of a robust, loving 
comic energy. You feel as if you have been immersed in 
life, both your own life and the particular lives of his 
characters, and that life, for all its misfortunes, is a pret-
ty good place to be’’;
•HRES 1040 EH 
Whereas Entertainment Weekly called Harington ‘‘America’s 
greatest unknown writer’’; 
Whereas Harington was described in the Washington Post as 
‘‘one of the most powerful, subtle, and inventive novelists 
in America’’; 
Whereas Harington once said that his philosophy of writing 
was that literature, that all art, is an escape from the 
world that makes the world itself, when you return to it, 
more magical, bearable, or understandable; and 
Whereas, on November 7, 2009, at age 73, Harington died 
in Springdale, Arkansas, from complications of pneu-
monia: Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved, That the House of Representatives honors the 
life and accomplishments of Donald Harington for his con-
tributions to literature in the United States. 
Attest: 
Clerk.