Review: "The Art of Fielding" by Chad Harbach

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach was a real pleasant surprise for me, not being a fan of baseball. It is the reading equivalent of a brisk walk in the perfect kind of weather, it is simple, but is something to be savored. There may be a few spots where things get slow, but I never once felt I would rather being doing something else more useful. It has that kind of magic great longer books have that shorter ones don’t, such as The Secret History by donna Tartt and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. The page length allows the reader to not only see the world in full color, but also live inside it, at least for a brief little while. It is written without a sense of irony or arrogance, and simply tells a story that has many layers about seemingly real people facing problems that all adults have to face. The world in question is the fictional Westish College, a prep school not really known for athletics or anything for that matter, except a brief visit from Herman Melville in the 1800’s. Into this fold come five people: the main character, Henry, is an amazingly good baseball shortstop with a perfect record, who goes to Westish with nothing resembling a life goal, just an overwhelming need to play baseball. There he meets his roommate Owen, who becomes his bookish gay teammate. He also meets the man who will become his mentor Mike, whose selfless acts hide subconscious jealousy. Finally, there is President Affenlight, who was the one who discovered Melville’s visit and became president of Westish after the birth of his daughter Pella, who has come back to Westish to start a new life after a disastrous marriage. All became connected when an accident caused by Henry injures someone. The repercussions of which reverberate in the lives of these five damaged people. Henry loses is confidence, Mike sinks deep into depression, and Owen begins a dangerous affair with Affenlight. All linked together by the game we call our national past time, but all alone in their misery, despite being close to one another. But this is not a depressing read, but quite the life affirming one. It doesn’t really introduce anything new into the baseball or campus literary genre (think a Separate Peace and The Natural, minus the pessimism, and this book would look a lot like that), but it does it so well, you can’t help but feel you are watching a master craftsman rework something we have seen before into a great and incredible work of storytelling that taps into every good emotion you can think of. It is not perfect, but the feelings I had while finishing it and reading it were definitely completely something I could not ignore. I hope Harbach has more up his sleeve in terms of pure, straight forward storytelling without tricks or pyro, cause, to use a horrible cliché, this book really is a homerun.

Rating: 5/5