Well, it's been a few days. Hope all my thousands of readers are doing well. What did we do this past weekend? We went to Augusta, did some shopping, went to the library and a furniture store, tackled some yard work (and I got a few ropy strands of poison ivy to show for it!). Julia did a lot of work on Sunday... and I watched a lot of basketball. And I finished...
Book Review
I thought Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding was a shoo-in for at least a Runner-Up mention from the Pulitzer peeps, but I was wrong. It's a lofty, ambitious, long, years-in-the-making debut that is also one of the more acclaimed books about baseball in a long while.
I've heard readers and reviewers say that the book isn't just about baseball, but it is, really. There are five main characters here:
- Mike: a banged-up, multi-sport athlete, the catcher on Westish College's long-underachieving baseball team, a wise, pill-popping, seen-it-all scholar rejected from all the law schools he applied to
- Henry: a wunderkind shortstop from North Dakota plucked from post-high school obscurity by Henry and trained and trained and trained until he's one of the finest shortstops in the country
- Guert Affenlight: the president of Westish, a man responsible for bringing to light a historical anecdote about the college involving Herman Melville; a long-time bachelor, he gets romantically involved with one of the students
- Pella: Guert's daughter, who arrives on campus ready to start anew, despite still being married to a stuffy man she ran away with when she was in high school
- Owen: Henry's roommate, a dreamy bookworm who becomes entangled in a risky relationship with Guert.
Harbach knows this world inside and out - not only the details of college life - the cafeteria food, the messy dorm rooms, the off-campus dives, and his thoroughness and knowledge of what goes on during the baseball season is breathtaking. Harbach makes the locker rooms, busses, hot tubs, sunflower seeds, cold morning laps up the stadium's steps tangible, well-etched, indelible.
The story takes many twists and turns, and even if, at times, you grow frustrated by the characters, there's never a moment when they feel static or flat. However, I found Henry to be too inscrutable for most of the book, and Guert's behavior is too naive.
The book is funny, and, yes, there is a Big Game at the end. Harback's prose style is smart, accessible, and he achieves the not-insubstantial task of making baseball not the boring sport it is for people like me. And to those who love the sport, this book should only make you admire it even more.
(****1/2)
Other thoughts from the weekend:
- Okay, next year, I think I need to start putting money on my Fantasy Sports leagues. Last fall, I got in 6 Fantasy Football leagues and won 3 of them, coming in 4th in the other three (all leagues had ten teams). This winter-spring, I entered a Fantasy NBA league, thinking my team was a little above average (Kevin Durant being my one surefire stat-stuffer); besides, my bench stunk and there were 20 teams in the league. Well... There are only four games left in the league's playoffs and my team is int he finals and has a big advantage over my opponent. I think I'm going to win this league too! (If only it meant something.)
- There are few movie experiences as satisfying as an an action movie, be it studio warhorse (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol) or B-movie no-brain-a-thon (Colombiana) done with verve, style, commitment.
- Fact: Even good TV shows can grow so wearisome, especially one whose end, whose should-be narrative closure, is foreseeable in the distance. I'm looking at you, Revenge. Unless, of course, the writers want to drag the thing out in pointless episodes and seasons, which makes ratings sense, I guess, but jettisons believability. It's kind of boring - not turn-it-off boring, just the kind of boring that reminds viewers that its better, soapier days are behind it.
- I'm a big fan of writer Dennis Lehane, but the reason I'm just now reading his modern suspense classic Mystic River is probably because I found Clint Eastwood's heavily-laureled 2003 film so comprehensive. And the book is great, but I defy anyone reading the book after viewing the movie to not visualize Sean Penn in the role of Jimmy Marcus. Is this the greatest dramatic performance of the century so far? It gets my vote.
Today in History:
James Buchanan, the 15th U.S. President, was born today in 1791
Okay, you're at a cocktail party and some geeky, garrulous know-it-all comes up to you and starts talking your ear off. And he starts in on telling you, in his know-it-all way, nine things he knows about the 14th President of the United States, Franklin Pierce. Well, haha, here's your chance. Get all up in this walking encyclopedia's face and tell him that you can do him one better. Here's what kind of knowledge you can drop about the Buch:
1) He was a Democrat with 36 years in public office before being elected President in 1856, serving as various foreign ministers (to Russia, to England) for various presidents.
2) He was out of touch on the slavery issue. He tried to appeal to the southern, pro-slavery cause, thinking that the states could decide whether or not to abolish slavery for themselves, leaving the federal government out of it. To the North, this was a no-no.
3) The granting of statehood to Kansas really stuck a nail in Old Buchanan's coffin. He endorsed a pro-slavery constitution for Kansas. This belief riled Northerners and split the Democratic Party.
4) In 1860, the Democrats were defeated by the Republican Abraham Lincoln. It didn't help matters that Buchanan didn't even support the Democratic candidate, Stephen Douglas.
5) The last president born in the 18th century, Buchanan studied law and set up practice in rural Pennsylvania. He married Ann Marie Coleman, the daughter of a very wealthy man who made his money in iron.
6) The father accused Buchanan of being a gold digger! Rumors began that Buchanan was seeing another woman. Ann's spirits were crushed. Soon after, she die, possibly of suicide. Her family cast out James, refused to allow him to attend the funeral services.
7) Buchanan never married again. He was, and is, the only bachelor U.S. president.
8) It was rumored, though never verified, that he was gay. For a period during his days in Congress, he lived with a North Carolina senator (and future Pierce VP), the two sharing lodgings in Washington and being referred to, by friends, as Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy.
9) By refusing to take a side on the slavery issue, trying to appease both the North and the South, his presidency was seen as a failure, and Buchanan, rightly or wrongly, is viewed as one of the reasons for the Civil War. He was too passive when the southern states began to secede.
10) He had a twitchy eye.
Thanks: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/james-buchanan-is-born
http://millercenter.org/president/buchanan/essays/biography/1
Here's a cool website I found that lets you track your favorite authors and gives you all sorts on info about book signings and events:
http://www.harpercollins.com/members/authortracker/
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