Away we go with preliminary expectations from some of our contributors before hitting the pages. Please feel free to share your own hopes, dreams, fears about the Art of Fielding in the comment section below.
Also: this goes without saying, but if you read ahead, please don't spoil it for the group as a whole. Reading ahead is only natural, but we'll be keeping the discussion to the prescribed pages. And remember: read through chapter 17 by Wednesday.
Ted Walker
I went to a college about the size and shape of the one featured in The Art of Fielding. I played baseball at this college. I was a catcher. The goal of the reader should not be to find those novels that emulate one’s own experience as closely as possible, but the small college catcher is not exactly literature’s most recurrent motif, so I think I’m off the hook for getting excited about this book. It’s been years, honestly, since a baseball book has stirred me to action the way that this one has. It could be the positive reviews that form a warm nest for the book in my mind like a pile of freshly laundered game jerseys.
I suppose it’s also the expectation that a baseball book will hum with contemporary life: a baseball book that matters. As much as it’s touted as the literary sport, it’s been awhile since the modern literary experience has intersected with the modern baseball experience. I am excited about this baseball book because I hope that it, and this reading club, will be a reward for those of us who hang loosely around the lettered edges of this game, hoping to witness the elusive linked stitch that binds together art and sport.
Patrick Dubuque
The Art of Fielding is a departure for me in terms of genres, being written by someone who is still alive, and I’m heading into the novel with a healthy respect if also some slight trepidation. Even the plot description on the dust jacket reads so conspicuously modern: a series of character studies, centering around mankind’s search for meaning in an uncaring, nihilistic society. I’m guessing that we’ll see something of Steve Sax, or at least his dreaded disease, as Henry comes of age through the novel. But perhaps it is not this gloomy! I should disclose that throwing off my measurements will be Brideshead Revisited, which I finished recently and which appears to have at least something in common with this novel, although hopefully not the endings.
My question, since I’m obviously in this bleak mood: whither the baseball novel? There’s not much agreement on the best baseball novels of all-time, but the majority of the big classics date back fifty or sixty years, and even the most modern of the greats (Kinsella) are nearing thirty. If it’s the All-American sport, why can’t it seem to serve as the foundation of the Great American Novel? (Except in the case of The Great American Novel, of course).
Megan Wells
I try to start a new book with as few expectations as possible. That said, I can tell already that this book is going to make me uncomfortable. People doing stupid things at colleges hits close to home for a lot of us, I'd imagine, even if we turned out alright - or at least avoided a criminal record - regardless. But more importantly, these people engaging in college-age chicanery are ballplayers. Baseball fans are a perverse lot - we love our players to be human and fawn over the details parceled out by beat writers and Twitter feeds. But we get disturbed when they don't match the black-and-white heroism between the lines. We're forced to find a balance between personal flaws and the on-field narratives we build in our heads. I expect to both love and hate a lot of these characters, and to find myself facing a certain amount of cognitive dissonance. What about the book do you think will challenge you?
Adam Webb
Thank you for inviting me to take part in your conversation about The Art of Fielding and providing me with the opportunity this week to judge a book by its cover. (I saw PaulBacon's designs in TAF's enigmatic white brush script on blue.)
Without having cracked the spine and with every effort to not learn any more about the book than I already do (Wisconsin college baseball, Franzen blurb), my thoughts about TAF are dominated by one triviality: How much of the book will occupy itself with metaphorical "fielding"? Will this theoretical metaphor (which I fear infects every chapter of the book) ruin the whole thing for me?
Despite this concern, I have high hopes because TAF is a campus novel, a label that gets applied to some of my favorite wildly different books (Brideshead Revisisted, As She Climbed Across the Table, The Name of the World). But the book isn't being hyped as a campus novel; it's a baseball novel. What was the last 'important' baseball novel? Chabon's Summerland?
Peter Beatty
I have no idea what to expect with this book. Well, that's not true. I read the jacket copy and the blurbs. I can expect prose that will (insert fulsome adjectives from many many prominent writers, and some writers who I think are hacks and some I have never heard of). My natural instincts as a Northeast Ohioan are to resent anything successful or even anything that's supposed to be nice. But I took a pill to shut down my bile generators for the duration of this book club. I honestly can't think of a first novel that's gotten reviews like A of F is getting--actually I'm hard pressed to think of many novels period that are ever praised to such a universal extent. In a age when people seem to relish being the first to issue forth a takedown of anything successful (I recall reading blog posts hating on Freedom's cover art months before the book pubbed)--there's been a surprising lack of critical pushback for The Art of Fielding. That makes me suspect it might be a book does something rare: straight-up entertains people and makes them stop complaining for a few hours/days.
That said, I'm not crazy about the cover. I think the A and F have a subliminal association with terrible Abercrombie and Fitch clothing. I like the colors and the warmth of the hand-drawn (painted?) text but in my heart I accuse this jacket design of aspiring to neoliberal Vampire-Weekend-listening corporate hipsterdom. Dammit the pill isn't working yet.
Eric Nusbaum
I expect this book to be much less about baseball than everybody is saying it will be. There just seems to be no way a novel that gets deep into the nitty-gritty of the game could garner so much New York hype. But that isn’t to say I’m not excited. Writing about sports well in a novel is a hard thing to do. There’s too much cliche, too much nostalgia, too much explaining for a serious fan to get past. The last sporty novel I read was Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland. I couldn’t finish it, but not because of the sports: I thought O’Neill’s cricket scenes and cricket subplot were more beautifully rendered than anything else the protagonist was involved with. I worry that the Art of Fielding will have the opposite problem: baseball will loom as a device, a background, a template for some easy symbolism. Also: I’m skeptical about the title and not totally in love with the cover.
This has been a far more negative paragraph than I was expecting it to be. I guess my question is what makes a book a baseball novel, as opposed to a regular novel? I suppose we’ll be answering together for
Pitchers & Poets Reading Club participants, it's time to pick up your copy of the scorching hot best-selling novel The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach, because we are about to get rolling!
This week, we're going to feature some thoughts from our team of writers, who will reflect on their expectations, some ideas about reading baseball books, and more in preparation for next week's big start.
Here's the plan: We read a pre-determined set of chapters, and then we write, Tweet, and talk about that selection on the week's Wednesday.
For next Wednesday, we'll be discussing chapters 1-17 of the book.
Have you seen the new Planet of the Apes movie in which James Franco trains a super-chimp to live as a sort of hybrid of a puppy and a human child? The super-ape learns very quickly, becoming more and more human. But oh no! He is taken away from James Franco and placed in the care of evil public ape-facility owner Brian Cox and his acne-ridden employee Draco Malfoy.
The super-ape, Caesar, can only take so much abuse from Cox and especially Malfoy. Eventually, sick of it all, he strikes back at Malfoy and in a dramatic moment, speaks for the first time. It looks like this:
Anyway, when I read the news about Logan Morrison's grievance against the Marlins this morning, I thought about Caesar and Malfoy. Today, Morrison stood up for all-ape kind and said NOOOOOOOO.
In no way, of course, am I trying to make the case that Morrison or his fellow MLBers resemble apes -- only that owners treat them as subhuman commodities.(Fantasy owners do this too. And all fans. Even me, sometimes. But if P&P is anything, I hope it's a force for reminding people that baseball players are more than just a walking statistical output machines, even when those players are Eugenio Velez.)
"I want to stand for what's right. The players' association agreed I should apply for a grievance. It's not an easy decision or a decision I took lightly. It's about protecting rights. Guys who have been here for a long time want to make sure their rights won't be stepped on."
Obviously that's more tempered than the Morrison we're used to. But it's not far from the truth about him. Never in all of his tweeting and talking and all of that has Morrison struck me as un-serious about his team, about playing baseball well.
Over two years ago (wow) I wrote a post called "Nate McClouth and the Modern Indentured Servitude." I wrote this:
Trades, and the whole idea of trades, are really kind of insane.
Where else on earth can supposedly competitive entities, allegedly separate businesses, legally traffic in humans like they can in sports? What other environment would encourage something like that? Critics bang fantasy baseball for overlooking the human aspect of the sport, for reducing players to their statistics, but they forget something. Fantasy GMs are trading imaginary rights. Real GMs trade human beings.
This also applies to the way some organizations play fast and loose with moving players between levels. That Logan Morrison was needlessly called down is totally obvious from a statistical perspective. But what about the fact that the Marlins in all likelihood lied about the reason for the demotion?
The grievance is a worthwhile endeavor at the very least. Not just for Morrison (who is the right mix of wronged, savvy, and on courageous) but for all players who are misled by management, and for fans who would rather have an intellectually honest front office guiding their favorite team.
That intellectual honesty question is another post for another day. But I'll say this: it seems obvious that management, players, and fans can benefit from relationships that are more honest and, even accounting for the inherent conflicts, somewhat less hostile.
Here at Pitchers & Poets we don’t shy away from the literary side of things -- the site is called Pitchers & Poets, after all--and lately we’ve all felt the drive to take our literary pursuits somewhere new. We think the recent publication of The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach provides the perfect opportunity to do so.
(For those of you who aren’t familiar, it’s a much-hyped and well-received novel centered around a small college baseball team in Wisconsin.)
With that we’d like to announce the first installment of the Pitchers & Poets Reading Club.
As a part of the reading club, we’ve invited some friends and fellow baseball writers to join us as we work through the The Art of Fielding a few chapters at a time. We’ll discuss the book, our feelings, and whatever else comes to mind as we move along, and hopefully generate conversation with you -- the readers -- who will read along with us at home. The plan is to read a certain number of chapters in a given time period with everyone tagging along, and at the end of each predetermined reading section we’ll provide our thoughts and invite fellow reading club members to participate. (Expect to read somewhere in the range of 100 pages every week.)
We’ll ask you (politely) to contribute your thoughts in the comments section, then bump a lot of those comments up the book club posts themselves. There will also be live chats, tweetathons, and whatever else comes to mind.
Our reader/commenters will include Dayn Perry and Navin Vaswani of Fangraphs' NotGraphs, Adam Webb of Everyday Footnotes, Pete Beatty who edits books and is futurely of The Classical, and of course ... us.
So pick up the book on your digital reader, at your local independent bookseller, or from Amazon if you hurry. We start next week with preliminary expectations, hopes, and fears. Then there’s no waiting for slackers.
Clam Simmons is a librarian living in New England. You can find his ongoing investigation of the 1994 Kansas City Royals at the Royals Review. Clam also heads up the Twitter division of the Greater Boston Bigfoot Research Institute at 826 Boston. You can follow his crypto-tweets @bostonbigfoot and regular tweets @orangehunchback.
New England's favorite gargoyle was cloistered in a lighthouse. His beacon was a hundred miles from the nearest anything. The smell of glue was everywhere. I could not tell for sure but it seemed that the sea tower was the barren womb of a sea god. It was a poor sanctuary from the water, mist covering my glasses and the wave's salty plates constantly breaking in my ears. There was no electricity and the bully clouds outside turned the inside of the lighthouse into a whitewashed moonscape. Using my cell phone for light I discovered a typewriter sitting on top of a girthy manuscript. The typewriter sat on top of a pleather office chair. It was chained to the ground with irons. Stephen P. King was silently stationed on a Victorian ottoman facing the manacled office chair, a Franklin stove weakly dithered behind him. It must have been casual Friday in the lighthouse because King wasn't wearing any pants. He wore a yellow smiley face t-shirt and five months of beard.
The master of horrors apologized for forgetting his khakis and scurried out of the lighthouse in his flip-flops. Left alone I climbed the observation deck. The outlook was dim and the lens was shattered. Glass covered the ground like ice. Maybe the lord of darkness had destroyed it in a fit of inspiration. Maybe it was done to spite the modern pirates and lobstermongers. Either way Stephen King would never had made it as a 19th century lighthouse attendant. When I found a bullet casing on the windowsill I decided it was time to leave. As I made for the exit I made note that the sullen tin cup sitting on the stone floor was the only tangible evidence that King had a human's traditional concern for sustenance. I had to escape before the host of this literary séance returned.
New England's favorite gargoyle was cloistered in a lighthouse.
Of course Stephen King came back before I could reach the door. He was carrying a couple of green twigs. He was wearing khakis. They were completely soaked but King seemed chipper.
SK: I usually try to dry them before the company shows up but you've caught me at high tide. Say that three times fast! Try, dry, high, tide… hey! You're not trying to leave are you? Ha!
The unshaven lord of terrible genius offered me his ottoman while he placed the moist twigs on top of the stove's vaguely orange coals. I have always been a sucker for hospitality. It is my weakness and will be my downfall.
SK: Clam, do you have any dry receipts?
I handed my ferry receipt to the King and he examined it before putting it in the stove.
SK: I'm going to have to cut our time short. When those fresh logs are charred I am going to reclaim my stool and get back to my project.
With the sensitivity and respect due for a writer's in-utero project I asked him if he could possibly describe the project or at least reveal its basic design.
SK: It's called Alien Sex Planet. It's 1300 pages long but it feels like an 1800-page story and I think I'm going to have to cut out a 700-page scene. It involves an exile from the original colony of ancient aliens who in a fit of Onanis releases his seed into the atmosphere only to have it evolve into the planets of an alternative solar system. Of course the exile turns out to be the heir to the throne of the ancient alien kingdom, typical fodder.
As King described the power of ancient alien sperm I begin to feel my soul choke. Somehow Stephen King could sense it. He was not without tender psychology.
SK: By the way, thank you for responding to my inquiry on craigslist...you wouldn't believe the sort of nut-brains out there pretending to be legitimate ghost-writers just to squeeze me of my greenbacks. But seriously Clam, I was very impressed with Elvis Horse Man. You have talent, if you prove yourself you might be able to go places.
I thanked Stephen King for the compliments on Elvis Horse Man. I was very proud of that work. I also stated that I would be very pleased to help with the memoir. Not only was I excited at the prospects of working alongside the definitive master of paranormal barbarism, I was desperate to take a bite out of the debt I had accrued in my five years in the MFA program at Butterman College. Stephen King laughed. He was either unfamiliar with Butterman College and its fabulous faculty to student ratio or the cost of a quality education at the best liberal arts college in the Ozarks. As Mr. King revealed his autobiographical “morsel” he busied himself by plucking hairs out of his beard and watching them smolder in the cinders of the stove.
SK: In 1986 I fell in love with Boston's baseball team. When that white orb snuck past the gates of Buckner's legs and the baseball team lost the great contest, it was a big deal. My eyes were opened and I saw horror on the faces of the baseball men and the sadness on the faces of the fans of the Boston baseball men. It was like witnessing one of the cataclysms in my work. It became my duty to commiserate with the despairing horde and to cheer for Boston's great baseball club, the Red Beans. For several years I found the comfort of familiarity with the puritanical denial of the whole thing. It was great fun. I shared the baseball fan's curses and roots for the changing field of heroes. I was a big Mo Greenwell fan. I loved Mike Vaughn. I cheered for Nomar Offerman and Jose Valentin. These were my favorite baseball men. I had sympathy for them. They were like the doomed characters in my books, the characters I make likeable only so that when they die on page 940 it will be a horrible experience for all my readers. The Boston Beans had no chance. But then about eight years ago the Red Sox team won the big contest and everything had changed. I felt as if the prisoner I had created to suffer had escaped from the jail with turds in his mouth. Yes, I was joyful for the success of my Red Beans for an hour or two but all the narrative tension was gone. I knew that my cheerings for the Boston baseball men must end. But by that point everyone assumed that I was unconditionally passionate for the Boston baseball team. Everyone gave me free tickets to the game. The seats were great, how could I waste them? I'd take a newspaper, a rough draft anything to distract me fm the winnings on the field. Sometimes, in the pennant chase I would hide inside the belly of the Green Monster with my friend, Manny Man.
Then the baseball club wins the big contest again. Clam, I am tired of triumph! Release me from the chains of victory! Tell the world Clam Simmons. Tell the world properly and I will not only let you ghostwrite my memoir, but I will give you all my pictures with me and the Boston baseball men!
Away we go with preliminary expectations from some of our contributors before hitting the pages. Please feel free to share your own hopes, dreams, fears about the Art of Fielding in the comment section below.
As a part of the reading club, we’ve invited some friends and fellow baseball writers to join us as we work through the The Art of Fielding a few chapters at a time. We’ll discuss the book, our feelings, and whatever else comes to mind as we move along, and hopefully generate conversation with you -- the readers -- who will read along with us at home. The plan is to read a certain number of chapters in a given time period with everyone tagging along, and at the end of each predetermined reading section we’ll provide our thoughts and invite fellow reading club members to participate. (Expect to read somewhere in the range of 100 pages every week.)
New England's favorite gargoyle was cloistered in a lighthouse. His beacon was a hundred miles from the nearest anything. The smell of glue was everywhere. I could not tell for sure but it seemed that the sea tower was the barren womb of a sea god. It was a poor sanctuary from the water, mist covering my glasses and the wave's salty plates constantly breaking in my ears. There was no electricity and the bully clouds outside turned the inside of the lighthouse into a whitewashed moonscape. Using my cell phone for light I discovered a typewriter sitting on top of a girthy manuscript. The typewriter sat on top of a pleather office chair. It was chained to the ground with irons. Stephen P. King was silently stationed on a Victorian ottoman facing the manacled office chair, a Franklin stove weakly dithered behind him. It must have been casual Friday in the lighthouse because King wasn't wearing any pants. He wore a yellow smiley face t-shirt and five months of beard.
