The Art of Fielding, a lovely work of fiction by Chad Harbach, centers around the lives of four people - Henry Skrimshander, star short-stop on Westish College's baseball team, his best friend and mentor Mike Schwartz, the college president Guert Affenlight, and his daughter Pella Affenlight.
I grew up with an older sister who was a softball star, and within the first ten pages I was roped right back into the baseball culture. I have so many memories of cheering from the sidelines as my sister pitched her teams' wins, and I can remember exactly how it feels to be sitting on the edge of a metal bleacher, holding your breath in the last inning. Reading The Art of Fielding, I could almost smell the red dirt being hosed down at the end of a game.
But this novel is so much more than baseball. In a lot of ways, reading this book is the equivalent of watching the downward spiral of people you love. And I do love these characters. They're tangible and flawed, in the way that fictional characters need to be flawed in order to feel real. They make good decisions, and then they backtrack and make the wrong ones. On one particular occasion, I was yelling at the book, wanting to throw it at the wall, but knowing I wouldn't because my hardcover copy is too dang pretty.
At its core, this book is about cheering for your team, whether that team is the Westish Harpooners, Mike Schwartz' job prospects, or Pella's personal life. I was holding my breath, praying for the victory just as hard as the guys on the field and the spectators in the crowd. But on the baseball field, as in life, the victory doesn't always come, and if it does, it's not always in the way we want it.
I described this book to one of my best friends: "It killed me and then brought me back and then killed me again, and I still don't know how to feel about it. So obviously you need to read it right away."
As a side note, can we talk about the absolutely gorgeous cover? A+ to the design department for this beauty.
Good review! Good length, too. I loved how you personalized it by referring to your family history, and also how you yourself used some literary techniques to make the review pop (like the imagery of smelling the red dirt as they hose it down, or quoting yourself at the end.
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I'm glad we share an affinity for well-designed cover art!
ReplyDeleteChad Harbach is one of the most interesting writers out there as far as writerly writers. What I mean is suckled at the breast of MFA programs and literary magazines.
He has an amazing work of journalism/creative non-fiction over at Slate. It's about the two literary cultures that have arisen in the U.S. I may have to assign it for the class.
www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2010/11/mfa_vs_nyc.html
Sorry, Professor Burton, I may have to skip class for 17 days and hear him present at the New School Summer Writers Colony.
http://www.newschool.edu/summerwriters/