The Art of Fielding Review

“3. There are three stages. Thoughtless being. Thought. Return to thoughtless being.

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

-An imaginary baseball shortstop.

There are plenty of books with important literary and historical merit that are, nevertheless, a drag. You know the kind of book I mean. Lit-ruh-tyoor. That’s why it’s so refreshing to find a book that is literary and complex but also enjoyable to read. Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding is in that category.

The book follows Henry Skrimshander, a shy young man who just wants to play shortstop. It’s also about Mike Schwartz, Henry’s mentor and the campus ubermensch at Westish College, who’s going to get into an Ivy League law school or destroy himself trying. It’s also about Guert Affenlight, the college president involved in the strangest love affair of his life, and Pela Affenlight, who’s been adrift in a lousy marriage since 18 and just now escaping into a life of her own, and it’s also about Owen Dunne, nicknamed “the Buddha,” Henry’s gay roommate who’s courting both romance and tragedy.

And like all good literature, it’s about those characters and the ideas that tie them together: obsession, failure, home, love (in all its forms), the meaning of being a man, Herman Melville, and the cost of greatness… And true to form, many of these ideas happen on the diamond.

Harbach’s writing is equal parts funny and profound, grand and mundane. And of course Harbach has one of the greatest gifts an author can possess: showing the beauty and the complexity of something you could otherwise go a lifetime without noticing. I never cared about baseball, even when I was playing it. But this novel gave me an appreciation for the game and reminded me of the phantoms that we all walk around with, haunting our steps, lurking behind our successes, and thwarting our double plays.

I would tell you to be warned that there are adult themes in this novel (sex, alcohol, and depression,) but by the time teens are ready for this book’s message, those ideas shouldn’t come across as distressing.

It’s a masterful novel. 5 harpooners out of 5.