The Art of Fielding
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach is a novel centered on a fictional college baseball team, the Westish Harpooners. I’m not a fan of the team or the book. Harbach worked on the novel for over a decade, so you’d think he would have had enough time to come up with some curveballs. The novel is incredibly predictable. Harbach doesn’t embed Easter eggs; he embeds arrows. Everything falls into place exactly how you would anticipate and it shouldn’t have taken 500+ pages to do so.
Important caveat: I don’t particularly like baseball and baseball drives the book’s plot. Of course, the novel is more than that—it’s about the tension between ambition and failure that applies to all of life, not just a literal game. But I didn’t care for the athletic details and obviously that skews my perception.
Harbach received an MFA from UVA, so I want to like him (go Hoos). But I do wonder if he ever actually went to college. Oftentimes, The Art of Fielding feels like an old guy describing a frat party. It doesn’t matter whether or not he’s correct about some of the details involving two drunk people making out in the corner, he’s going to come across as lame-sounding. It’s going to sound dated and contrived. Contrived. That’s the perfect word to describe The Art of Fielding. First of all, everyone has a ridiculous sounding name. Henry Skrimshander. Guert Affenlight. Craig Suitcase. Craig…Suitcase. Craig Suitcase is an inconsequential character introduced on page 309 merely to call the opposing team a “bunch of douchetards” (Hardbach, 309). That should really sum it up for you.
Additionally, amidst the plodding predictability, I have qualms with a bunch of unrealistic events. For example, several times (not sure why this had to happen several times), the college students stay up all night pounding scotch, not sleeping whatsoever, and then suddenly they’re sober enough to make the morning shift at their job. Truly every character in this book—from the president of the college to the star athlete—treats sleep as unnecessary. If your characters don’t act like real people then I can’t buy into your story.
I am surprised that I disliked this book so much. It received the 2011 Guardian First Book Award, which is an award I admire given its good company. Previous Guardian First Book Award recipients include A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which I’m obsessed with, Everything is Illuminated, which I like less so but still respect, and White Teeth, which I like even less so but again, still respect. Clearly some people found inspiring nuggets of truth in The Art of Fielding but I was not one of them. The Art of Fielding receives 1 out of 5 flames.
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