The Art of Fielding in Reading with Style

Sep 11, 2016 Whitney rated it really liked it

Shelves: music, school-life

A sort of double-sided antihero story. A quote from the beginning neatly outlines the messy plot to follow.

There are three stages: Thoughtless being. Thought. Return to thoughtless being.

Do not confuse the first and third stages. Thoughtless being is attained by everyone, the return to thoughtless being by a very few.

The strongest link is between the two young men named Henry and Schwartz. They play baseball in a Division III university. Not a big deal in the "grand scheme" of things, but this i A sort of double-sided antihero story. A quote from the beginning neatly outlines the messy plot to follow.

There are three stages: Thoughtless being. Thought. Return to thoughtless being.

Do not confuse the first and third stages. Thoughtless being is attained by everyone, the return to thoughtless being by a very few.

The strongest link is between the two young men named Henry and Schwartz. They play baseball in a Division III university. Not a big deal in the "grand scheme" of things, but this is their book and they're the heroes, okay?!

Henry owes a lot to Schwartz, because Schwartz, as captain of the school team, scouted and recruited Henry. Schwartz paints himself as a best-all-around guy, (he sometimes grumbles about having to "babysit" the whole school) but Schwartz does not speak to Henry AT ALL during Henry's first semester. Schwartz plays football. So all of Henry's experiences of Schwartz, after the first delightful blitz of Joining the Team, are mere sightings: "During his first days on campus, drifting silently from class to class, he didn't see Schwartz anywhere. Or, rather, he saw him everywhere. From the corner of his eye he would glimpse a figure that seemed finally, certainly, to be Schwartz. But when he whirled eagerly toward it, it turned out to be some other, insufficiently Schwartz-like person, or a trash can, or nothing at all." This passage made me laugh out loud.

Without a doubt, Henry and Schwartz have chemistry, once they finally meet for training in the freezing days of January.

But next we meet the bumbling school President and his dippy daughter, and they screw up the whole team. Or, "rather," they screw up the chemistry between Schwartz and Henry, and they undermine the heroes' confidence as team captains. President and little miss President bring a dissertation: " a study of the homosocial and the homoerotic in nineteenth-century American letters . . . the cult of male friendship . . . Emotional nourishment before the modern era of gender equality." In particular they are fans of Herman Melville. Good for them, right? But they are the ones who muster in the "thought" of the team, and thus we see the struggle. Will our heroes be able to "return" to "thoughtless being"?

I'm writing this and making it seem like a real drag, I know. This is why Chad Harbach wrote this book and I didn't. I had fun reading the blunt structure that Harbach includes in the body of the plot, but Harbach develops his characters with humor and pathos and the readers easily get swept along. It does not matter if you know anything about baseball. Come for the homosocial fun; stay for the lessons about baseball.

Also, I was correct in my personal hypothesis that the "team" structure here also speaks to my interest of rock bands. Bands need to have a cohesive chemistry, with one or two members acting in leadership roles. A game of baseball is like playing a set of songs: "Homeric . . . a series of isolated contests. Batter versus pitcher, fielder versus ball. You couldn't storm around, snorting and slapping people, the way Schwartz did while playing football. You stood and waited and tried to still your mind. When your moment came, you had to be ready, because if you fucked up, everyone would know whose fault it was." ...more

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Jul 01, 2018 Chinook rated it it was amazing

Shelves: america, audiobook

At first, I was worried that I was reading a baseball book. I’d certainly heard that it wasn’t just a baseball book, but the beginning was very baseball and very long. And I had started to think this would be about more than baseball only in that it would evaluate and dissect Henry’s character as he played the baseball. Then the bits about American lit started and I admit to breath in a sigh of relief that at least it would also have stuff about something I could get interested in. But eventuall ...more

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Jul 25, 2013 Rosemary rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books

I liked this a lot but I still have no clue about baseball (after reading this book I imagined a shortstop in the place of a wicket-keeper in cricket - wrong, it's more like silly mid-on) and (view spoiler) ...more

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Jun 10, 2012 Juniper rated it it was amazing

Shelves: owned, effing-awesome, 2012-books

What an amazing book. Given all the praise and recognition this novel has received over the past year, I was hopeful of a great read. But...the book totally blew any expectations I had out of the water.

Also - for those wondering - even if you aren't a fan of baseball, you should give this book a read. ...more

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