Call me Skrimshander: 5 Reasons to Read Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding
Is it possible to talk about Chad Harbach’s novel The Art of Fielding without addressing the significant advance or the panting anticipation leading up to the Fall season or the way that publishers fell all over themselves trying to sign him and then, how he went with Little Brown because they are David Foster Wallace’s publisher (reputedly for less money but who knows). Oh, and there’s the N+1 founder pedigree. More than one intelligent reviewer has called Harbach the “next Franzen” which I would find insulting if I were Chad Harbach. Not because Franzen isn’t a wonderful writer - I’d go to town on anyone who’d argue he isn’t - but because they really have nothing to do with one another. Have those reviewers read the book? Freedom is a different beast. Anyway, what matters is how strong a novel it is. And it’s a gladiator. I read all 500 odd pages in 2 breathless sittings. And while one friend to whom I leant my copy relented 350 pages in, just about every other soul on the planet who reads it finds it packed to the rafters with things to love. Here’s 5 things that have nothing to do with Jonathan Franzen that I loved about The Art of Fielding.
1. Moby Dick.
Melville and Moby Dick are all over this book. And what I love about all the little references - both oblique and baldfaced - to Mr. Melville throughout is that they aren’t especially on the nose. I loved, for example, that the historical connection between the university and Melville was tenuous and fleeting at best: Guert finds a sketchy record of Melville having visited the region when he - Guert - is a young scholar and not only does it go a long way to paving the way for his eventual career as president of the college but it rebrands the school as a Melville landmark. The baseball team for which the prodigy Henry Skrimshander will eventually be scouted is renamed the Harpooners (the school is located on Lake Michigan which is an amusing geographic jibe in itself). But there are flourishes all throughout the novel and I found myself playing spot the Herman. I won’t deprive you of the sport by disclosing them all here.
2. Baseball say what?
It made me care about baseball which, Moneyball aside, was a surprise to me. Not only did it make me care about baseball but it made me care about baseball for 500 odd pages. Impressive. Obviously it’s about much more than just who’s on third and had to of been for the novel to work. Even so. Impressive.
3. Owen. And while we’re at it, Mike and Guert and Pella and Henry
I loved the characters in this book. Not just like, “they were really well written and fully formed” or some bullshit. No, I loved them like friends. There is pain and deep abiding love in unexpected places and jubilation aside shattering failure. And yet there’s nothing sentimental about the book at all. How does he do that? Remarkable. Owen is especially close to my heart but you’ll have to read the book to find out why. I know, cruel right?
4. University days. Le sigh.
There’s a fraternity - no, not that kind - of people, I know a few myself, who left college but left their hearts behind. I am one of those people. I still go back to the university bookstore down the way during back to school rush to buy books and pens and notebooks. It’s pretty embarrassing but it stops me from the more costly decision of quitting my job and becoming a permanent student…like Will Ferrell in Old School with less beer pong. The Art of Fielding captures that particularly collegiate feeling - tweed, fall leaves, inky new books, dusty lecture halls, libraries - better than anything else I’ve ever read. It hit me in my nerd happy place.
5. Beginning again…and Mickey Rourke.
There’s that terrifying moment when you finish school and you realize that no one can or will tell you where to go next. And if you’re an athlete and your life was consumed by being the best at that but maybe you’re not good enough to keep being that or maybe your body isn’t good enough to keep being that, what do you do? Worse yet if you’re a college athletic prodigy. There’s such beautiful agony in those moments of profound uncertainty. More beauty than in any philosophical assertions for my money. In Mike Schwartz, there’s a bit of Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. A bit of every fading athlete you’ve probably known. But as much of any one of us that has reached a point where what has been done no longer makes sense but the path forward makes even less. That’s why sport has such universal resonance and it’s also why a voluminous book about baseball will appeal to just about everyone.
(photo by Ryan Michael Mills)
