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#5 Platform - The Art of Fielding
Jan. 23rd, 2012 12:39 amCollege and baseball are both my kind of setting to explore commitment and identity.
Book #2: The Art of Fielding
Author: Chad Harbach
Provenance: Borrowed from Westmount Library
Knowing who you are and where you belong is important in sports, perhaps even more than it is in the rest of life. You need to know your position to be able to play, after all. Being the shortstop versus being the catcher are different roles. If you're the shortstop on a baseball team, you know that you're at the heart of the defense, and you should expect the most chances to succeed, and the most chances to fail. Catchers have traditionally been the ones that direct the defense, and at least the central battle between the pitcher and batter.
So yes, the Art of Fielding is about baseball, and to be open at the outset here, there's enough baseball in here that if you really don't like the sport, you're going to find it tough to get through some sections of the book. The heart of the book, though, is about finding who you are and where you belong in life, and how you make meaning for yourself. The book is set in a small liberal arts school called Westish College on the Lake Michigan coast in Wisconsin, a school most known for a visit from Herman Melville first documented by the college president at the outset of the book. Melville is definitely someone to keep in mind here.
The story of the book follows five characters at the college. Henry Skrimshander, a young man who's basically lived to be a shortstop since he was a young kid, and whose personal bible is the eponymous book, written by his hero Aparicio Rodriguez, a Zen-like tome for how to play the middle of the diamond. His life revolves around the sport and getting better at it, which is practically a guarantee something will go wrong. His best friend at the school, Mike Schwartz, is a catcher for the team, the captain of the football team, and is the one responsible for getting Henry into the school in the first place. He yearns to see greatness, and to be great himself, but if he can't manage that, then at least to facilitate it, and he sees something in Henry. A third baseball team member, Owen Dunne, is a gifted scholar, Henry's roommate, and pretty adept as a player, but he isn't attached to sports, exactly; he's got other irons in the fire.
The two non-team main characters are the president of the school, Guert Affenlight, and his daughter Pella. Guert loves the college, since he really formed himself as an academic there, first as a student and then as a teacher, but he's been finding his attention getting drawn to someone new... Owen. He's never been interested in a student before, or a man, and it's all rather confusing for him, if exhilarating. Pella was once a precocious girl, but after a bad marriage, has moved back to Westish and her father 's quarters to try to rebuild her life and her relationships, to find more of a sense of self and where she belongs.
Harbach does a very good job of building the characters, giving you a sense of who they are and how each of them is struggling to find their place and their meaning, but beyond this, the relationships between the characters are very well developed and constructed. Searching for your place and thinking about who you are on your own is important, but you build it through relationships - Mike's trying to build up Henry, Guert trying to redefine himself with Owen and Pella, etc.
Thematically, the book is very rich. Even beyond what I've noted, there are all sorts of other solid, well-built threads to think about. How to find meaning, how to find beauty... how these things can come out of work and repetition. And the writing is really well done, too, fluid, well-described, and with each character's viewpoint feeling different. Some of the bits were really outstanding - a rumination on whether to wash the pile of dirty dishes in someone's else's sink the first time you stay over their place was a personal favorite.
All in all, this book is very well done, very well-realized. I don't know that it's superlative - I didn't finish it and feel like, wow, what an amazing thing I just read, but it's just a notch down from there. It's a well-crafted and fine work of fiction, and it pleased both the sports lover and the story lover in me. Definitely recommended.
Next up: Review for the School of Night.
Book #2: The Art of Fielding
Author: Chad Harbach
Provenance: Borrowed from Westmount Library
Knowing who you are and where you belong is important in sports, perhaps even more than it is in the rest of life. You need to know your position to be able to play, after all. Being the shortstop versus being the catcher are different roles. If you're the shortstop on a baseball team, you know that you're at the heart of the defense, and you should expect the most chances to succeed, and the most chances to fail. Catchers have traditionally been the ones that direct the defense, and at least the central battle between the pitcher and batter.
So yes, the Art of Fielding is about baseball, and to be open at the outset here, there's enough baseball in here that if you really don't like the sport, you're going to find it tough to get through some sections of the book. The heart of the book, though, is about finding who you are and where you belong in life, and how you make meaning for yourself. The book is set in a small liberal arts school called Westish College on the Lake Michigan coast in Wisconsin, a school most known for a visit from Herman Melville first documented by the college president at the outset of the book. Melville is definitely someone to keep in mind here.
The story of the book follows five characters at the college. Henry Skrimshander, a young man who's basically lived to be a shortstop since he was a young kid, and whose personal bible is the eponymous book, written by his hero Aparicio Rodriguez, a Zen-like tome for how to play the middle of the diamond. His life revolves around the sport and getting better at it, which is practically a guarantee something will go wrong. His best friend at the school, Mike Schwartz, is a catcher for the team, the captain of the football team, and is the one responsible for getting Henry into the school in the first place. He yearns to see greatness, and to be great himself, but if he can't manage that, then at least to facilitate it, and he sees something in Henry. A third baseball team member, Owen Dunne, is a gifted scholar, Henry's roommate, and pretty adept as a player, but he isn't attached to sports, exactly; he's got other irons in the fire.
The two non-team main characters are the president of the school, Guert Affenlight, and his daughter Pella. Guert loves the college, since he really formed himself as an academic there, first as a student and then as a teacher, but he's been finding his attention getting drawn to someone new... Owen. He's never been interested in a student before, or a man, and it's all rather confusing for him, if exhilarating. Pella was once a precocious girl, but after a bad marriage, has moved back to Westish and her father 's quarters to try to rebuild her life and her relationships, to find more of a sense of self and where she belongs.
Harbach does a very good job of building the characters, giving you a sense of who they are and how each of them is struggling to find their place and their meaning, but beyond this, the relationships between the characters are very well developed and constructed. Searching for your place and thinking about who you are on your own is important, but you build it through relationships - Mike's trying to build up Henry, Guert trying to redefine himself with Owen and Pella, etc.
Thematically, the book is very rich. Even beyond what I've noted, there are all sorts of other solid, well-built threads to think about. How to find meaning, how to find beauty... how these things can come out of work and repetition. And the writing is really well done, too, fluid, well-described, and with each character's viewpoint feeling different. Some of the bits were really outstanding - a rumination on whether to wash the pile of dirty dishes in someone's else's sink the first time you stay over their place was a personal favorite.
All in all, this book is very well done, very well-realized. I don't know that it's superlative - I didn't finish it and feel like, wow, what an amazing thing I just read, but it's just a notch down from there. It's a well-crafted and fine work of fiction, and it pleased both the sports lover and the story lover in me. Definitely recommended.
Next up: Review for the School of Night.
