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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Atlantic: A Swing and a Miss [Review of “The Art of Fielding”]

Matt Christopher > Chad Harbach

People used to expect literary novels to deepen the experience of living; now they are happy with any sustained display of writerly cleverness. But The Art of Fielding falls short of this new standard too. Not much distinguishes it from young-adult fiction, a genre in which explicit gay romance is no longer out of the ordinary, except for the frequency of wannabe-erudite allusions: “April is the cruelest month,” “You’re only Jung once,” and so on. (Most of these references would once have been considered high-school level; the worldly cousin on The Patty Duke Show talked like this.) Let no one claim that the characters develop in any profound way….

Back to the baseball. I found the games in the novel unpredictable yet easy to follow; Harbach deserves credit for the ingenuity with which he defies so many sports-movie clichés. But the more we learn about the talented shortstop at the center of these sections, the duller he becomes. Perhaps he was meant to hold our interest as a kind of Kaspar Hauser, but if so, there isn’t enough contrast between him and his surroundings. At Westish College, he fits in all too well. Hearing an impassioned (and very contrived) exchange of groans and shouts emanate from the weight room, he leans against the door to eavesdrop, then falls inside when it opens, whereupon—

Enough; writing too much about a novel this slight is as unfair as writing too little….

RoyalsRetro (AG#1F) Posted: April 24, 2012 at 01:38 PM | 51 comment(s) Login to Bookmark
Tags: books, fielding

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1. Jon W Posted: April 24, 2012 at 06:32 PM (#4115126)

I truly enjoyed this book and thought it had great merit. Not perfect, but I hardly feel "suckered" into reading it, as Myers writes.

2. AndrewJ Posted: April 24, 2012 at 06:57 PM (#4115145)

Myers is right that the attention given The Art of Fielding was more for the behind-the-scenes deal-making than to the intrinsic quality of the novel as a piece of literature. That being said, I did enjoy the novel, and am interested to see what Mr. Harbach has for a follow-up.

3. Jon W Posted: April 24, 2012 at 07:01 PM (#4115149)

Through my work at Variety, I see plenty of behind the scenes stuff on projects for film and TV, so I totally get the concept of something being (over)promoted. That being said, I came to the novel with none of that. I heard it was good, and I heard right.

4. escabeche Posted: April 24, 2012 at 07:14 PM (#4115160)

Oh, this is by B.R. Meyers! He is well-known for hating just about everything -- other bad writers, on his account, include Annie Proulx, Cormac McCarthy, Rick Moody, Don DeLillo, and Paul Auster. Here's his famous hit piece on those folks:

A Reader's Manifesto

which is pretty much in the same vein as the linked piece, even down to putting the word "literary" in scare quotes in the first line. I guess it's his signature move.

5. AndrewJ Posted: April 24, 2012 at 08:21 PM (#4115202)

Oh, this is by B.R. Meyers! He is well-known for hating just about everything

The book world's version of Armond White, then.

6. jcnyc Posted: April 24, 2012 at 08:28 PM (#4115210)

I can take issue with a lot of the substance of A Reader's Manifesto, but this hits the mark:

At the 1999 National Book Awards ceremony Oprah Winfrey told of calling Toni Morrison to say that she had had to puzzle over many of the latter's sentences. According to Oprah, Morrison's reply was "That, my dear, is called reading." Sorry, my dear Toni, but it's actually called bad writing.

7. Darren

Posted: April 24, 2012 at 08:36 PM (#4115215)

Toni Morrison? Toni Morrison is a bad writer? Really?

8. escabeche Posted: April 24, 2012 at 08:37 PM (#4115216)

The book world's version of Armond White, then.

Myers writes much less frequently, and doesn't cultivate and then resolutely defend extravagant enthusiasms for stuff everybody else thinks is trash. I can't tell if White is kidding or not but he's pretty interesting to read.

9. Avoid running at all times.-S. Paige Posted: April 24, 2012 at 08:42 PM (#4115222)

I like White when he write about what he loves. Yeah, he likes trash like Transformers, but he's right about Spielberg, Altman's later work, and Europeans like the Dardenne bros. Also, I think he's been right about Scorcese losing his way over the last decade.

10. escabeche Posted: April 24, 2012 at 09:04 PM (#4115255)

Toni Morrison? Toni Morrison is a bad writer? Really?

No, not really, but some people, when they don't really get into something, decide that other people must be lying when they say they enjoyed it. (See also: David Foster Wallace, James Joyce)

11. jcnyc Posted: April 24, 2012 at 09:18 PM (#4115269)

No, Toni Morrison is not a bad writer. The Bluest Eye is fantastic. Song of Solomon and Beloved too. I have found some of her later works overwrought, occasionally incoherent, and in need of editing. I thought A Mercy was quite bad, and I didn't like Love enough to finish it. Good writers don't always write good books.

12. Justin T is expanding the aperture of awareness Posted: April 24, 2012 at 09:30 PM (#4115288)

Myers had a review of Franzen's book Freedom in The Atlantic too. His argument for hating that book was that nobody should read any fiction less than 100 years old. All the good stuff was written before then and there's enough of it that you don't need to read anything else. Because everything contemporary sucks just for being contemporary.

Seems like a major twit.

13. Infinite Joost (Voxter)

Posted: April 24, 2012 at 09:40 PM (#4115302)

Toni Morrison? Toni Morrison is a bad writer? Really?

I like both DFW (some) and Joyce (a lot), but Toni Morrison is a gifted Faulkner impersonator and not much more.

14. RoyalsRetro (AG#1F) Posted: April 24, 2012 at 09:49 PM (#4115313)

The book world's version of Armond White, then.

Or Jay Sherman.

His argument for hating that book was that nobody should read any fiction less than 100 years old. All the good stuff was written before then and there's enough of it that you don't need to read anything else. Because everything contemporary sucks just for being contemporary.

That argument is a theme of this review as well.

I haven't read Art of Fielding yet (its on my Amazon Wish List if anyone is looking for a gift for me), but I must admit, the excerpts he did pull had me rolling my eyes. The sex scene is just ugh. I hope the whole book isn't like that.

15. RB in NYC (Now Semi-Retired from BBTF) Posted: April 24, 2012 at 09:51 PM (#4115320)

I like both DFW (some)

If a writer is going to release an essay collection called A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again he would be well-served to make sure that doesn't also function as a description of the experience of reading him.

16. Lassus Posted: April 24, 2012 at 10:02 PM (#4115340)

I think I'll have to pick this book up, after reading so many people talking about how both good and awful it is.

17. The Clarence Thomas of BBTF (scott) Posted: April 24, 2012 at 10:25 PM (#4115375)

other bad writers, on his account, include Annie Proulx, Cormac McCarthy, Rick Moody, Don DeLillo, and Paul Auster.

To be fair, DeLillo is ####### terrible. So is Franzen. And McCarthy is painfully overrated.

18. Lassus Posted: April 24, 2012 at 11:37 PM (#4115446)

To be fair, DeLillo is ####### terrible. So is Franzen. And McCarthy is painfully overrated.

Re: Delillo - LIBRA and UNDERWORLD are masterpieces. There's plenty of Delillo I haven't liked (COSMOPOLIS - coming out at as a movie - is ridiculous) but he's not ####### terrible. I don't like Franzen's work because it's primarily about unhappy families treating each other terribly; but many, many people I trust have enjoyed his work as a writer. I don't know much McCarthy.

It is possible to dislike an author's work and still have them be a good writer. Those things are not mutually exclusive.

19. Morty Causa Posted: April 25, 2012 at 12:12 AM (#4115471)

About David Foster Wallace: I read Brief Interviews With Hideous Men and started Infinite Jest. The first seemed like fluff, the second was just a chore--and I've read Joyce, and Barth's Giles Goat-Boy (even the warm-ups in the bullpen at the beginning and end). Actually, even Barth's two starter novels, which are not technically experimental--well, The Floating Opera is about a lawyer, told by the lawyer, and sort of reminds you of a brief, and The End of the Road is like a clinical case study--are much better than anything Wallace ever did. Barth has become revered while being ignored. Thomas Berger's breath of accomplishment is underappreciated, and that's just a shame. Little Big Man is a masterpiece, as are Reinhart in Love, the best of all four very good Reinhart novels, and Killing Time, about the metaphysics of serial murder that leaves you--well, not rooting for the killer, but liking him. John Fowles was a first-rate mind with first-rate ideas who knew how to make them riveting through narrative. You'll never forget The Magus (or The Collector). These writers are distinguished by special qualities and talents, including fierce and original intellects combined with acutely discerning sensibilities.

20. PreservedFish Posted: April 25, 2012 at 12:22 AM (#4115481)

I think that Cormac McCarthy is outrageously good. One of the few authors I've read who produces jaw-droppingly good prose. I guess he's a bit one dimensional in terms of his scope and interests, but he knocks that dimension out of the park.

Paul Auster ... loved New York Trilogy, but every book I've read since then has taken the bloom off the rose a bit more. His prose is so workaday (I read an interview where he admitted that, after a failed poetry career, he basically decided to stop trying to write prettily) that you are stuck with just his characters, plots and themes, which are repetitious and often lazy. So many of his plots turn on stupid stupid coincidences, or a character doing for something "for reasons that he couldn't explain to himself."

21. Matt Waters Posted: April 25, 2012 at 02:44 AM (#4115507)

There's no such thing as bad writing. There is such a thing as opinion.

22. Dr. Vaux Posted: April 25, 2012 at 03:24 AM (#4115512)

There's no such thing as bad writing. There is such a thing as opinion.

Opinion comes in both informed and uninformed varieties. The former variety is much more significant.

23. Greg (U)K Posted: April 25, 2012 at 03:30 AM (#4115514)

There's no such thing as bad writing. There is such a thing as opinion.

Spoken like someone who's never marked undergrad papers before.

24. The Clarence Thomas of BBTF (scott) Posted: April 25, 2012 at 03:59 AM (#4115516)

Bukowski also wrote jaw droppingly good prose. Doesn't change the fact that his books were facile ####. McCarthy isn't that bad, but I stand by my overrated opinion.

Also, The Magus was awesome.

25. Bhaakon Posted: April 25, 2012 at 04:00 AM (#4115517)

People used to expect literary novels to deepen the experience of living

Thank God we've got stats for that now.

26. Lassus Posted: April 25, 2012 at 08:04 AM (#4115534)

There's no such thing as bad writing.

Despite my #18, I do disagree with this. I don't have much time to go into it now, but, er, um.... I know it when I see it?

27. Infinite Joost (Voxter)

Posted: April 25, 2012 at 08:44 AM (#4115540)

The idea that there's no such thing as bad writing is one of those shitass things people say without having the faintest clue what they're talking about.

McCarthy, while I like him, does occasionally uncork a sentence that literally doesn't mean anything. (There are a few of these in Blood Meridian.)

Wallace was an essayist who occasionally wrote novels. His nonfiction is far superior to any of his fiction.

Paul Auster is a butt boy. I'd rather read the back of a shampoo bottle.

28. Lassus Posted: April 25, 2012 at 09:04 AM (#4115547)

The idea that there's no such thing as bad writing is one of those shitass things people say without having the faintest clue what they're talking about.

Yes, calling someone a butt boy as literary criticism is indicative of more insight on the matter.

29. Infinite Joost (Voxter)

Posted: April 25, 2012 at 09:14 AM (#4115550)

Yes, calling someone a butt boy as literary criticism is indicative of more insight on the matter.

Points for missing the intentional irony in the most spectacular fashion possible.

30. Avoid running at all times.-S. Paige Posted: April 25, 2012 at 09:19 AM (#4115553)

I like White when he write about what he loves.

Was this bad writing on my part or was I playing with the sound of words? Only the author knows! Ah, but the author is dead. The reader makes the meaning. No, he doesn't!

31. Edmundo got dem ol' Kozma blues again mama

Posted: April 25, 2012 at 09:41 AM (#4115567)

Also, I think he's been right about Scorcese losing his way over the last decade.

I think most directors would be proud enough of a decade when they did "The Departed" and "Hugo".

32. Edmundo got dem ol' Kozma blues again mama

Posted: April 25, 2012 at 09:43 AM (#4115570)

Most of these references would once have been considered high-school level; the worldly cousin on The Patty Duke Show talked like this

Wow, a Patty Duke show reference! I was definite a Cathy (Cathy adores a minuet, the ballet russe and crepe susette) guy.

33. Avoid running at all times.-S. Paige Posted: April 25, 2012 at 09:50 AM (#4115578)

I think most directors would be proud enough of a decade when they did "The Departed" and "Hugo".

I disagree. I just don't see how these are movies with well-told stories. "Hugo" is especially plodding. He's Scorcese, so of course there are going to be technically brilliant scenes, but, again, where's the story?

34. Crosseyed and Painless Posted: April 25, 2012 at 09:54 AM (#4115584)

I really liked The Art of Fielding. I guess I'm a sucker.

35. Lassus Posted: April 25, 2012 at 10:09 AM (#4115602)

Points for missing the intentional irony in the most spectacular fashion possible.

Well, you're right, I missed it. Educate me, professor.

Or, if it's beneath you, someone else can.

36. The Good Face Posted: April 25, 2012 at 10:10 AM (#4115604)

There's no such thing as bad writing. There is such a thing as opinion.

Spoken like someone who's never marked undergrad papers before.

It's funny because it's true.

37. BDC

Posted: April 25, 2012 at 10:15 AM (#4115613)

I couldn't finish The Art of Fielding, and Myers's take on it is pretty much the same as mine. It's not badly written; the baseball scenes are pretty good; and I recognize that there is an audience for this kind of book: stylish literary fiction about quirky literate people, with a heavily emphasized sense of how literate it is, and not too much plot to get in the way of the prose. It's just distinctly not my taste.

38. Edmundo got dem ol' Kozma blues again mama

Posted: April 25, 2012 at 10:34 AM (#4115627)

"Hugo" is especially plodding. He's Scorcese, so of course there are going to be technically brilliant scenes, but, again, where's the story?

One man's plod is another's languid. :) The mall cop, if you will, was overplayed but other than that I was fine.
Story? Kid loses dad, finds friend and surrogate family, helps depressed grandfather type find joy in life again, while coming to grips with his own loss. If it didn't tug a little at your heartstrings, you have no heartstrings my friend. :)

Plus it was daring (mildly, perhaps, or I could settle for different) and it was a paean to the creation of movies and its early innovators.

39. Avoid running at all times.-S. Paige Posted: April 25, 2012 at 10:54 AM (#4115653)

My favorite part was when they went back to Kingsley's character working in the glass studio. Really beautiful and stunning to see on the big screen. I mean it is Scorcese, so he's always capable of visually stunning moments.

I'd say it was weird that they marketed it as a children's movie because it was really slow for children. I was in a packed theater on the Upper West Side, parents and their kids and the children were restless and loud throughout. I felt bad for them.

40. eddieot Posted: April 25, 2012 at 11:00 AM (#4115660)

The Art Of Fielding had a distinct John Irving feel to it. I loved it. My wife is reading it now and I'm anxious to get her take on it. There's really only one significant female character and she's a bit of a train wreck so it may not appeal to her as much. But I have recommended it to many.

41. PreservedFish Posted: April 25, 2012 at 11:03 AM (#4115664)

McCarthy, while I like him, does occasionally uncork a sentence that literally doesn't mean anything. (There are a few of these in Blood Meridian.)

This is true.

There's no such thing as bad writing. There is such a thing as opinion.

I don't like it when people uncork these arguments that want to consume the entire discussion. Writing isn't some purely-subjective wishy-washy artistic statement. It's a craft. To me this is like saying that there's no such that as bad cabinet making, or bad cello playing, or bad basket weaving.

42. GregD Posted: April 25, 2012 at 11:06 AM (#4115668)

John Irving is a good comp. Well written without being showy. Smart without being taxing. A comic tone over some pretty rough events. A bounded world where action transpires. A sense that women are mostly interesting for their sex and their zaniness.

It's clearly better than many books that get that advance. It's clearly not as good as a number of books that got no advance at all. If you think an advance is a sign of literary merit, the book poses some problems. If you think it's almost entirely unrelated, then the book is interesting enough on its own terms. And after the first PR-induced blitz and jealous counter-reaction, the take on the book has mostly been fair: quite good, not likely destined to be a classic but a smooth, fun read.

I get the jealousy but I also don't get it. It's not like there's a pool of money for literary fiction and The Art of Fielding scooped up the pool. The money that floats around has nothing to do with literary merit, for good or for ill.

43. Guapo Posted: April 25, 2012 at 11:17 AM (#4115683)

I liked The Art of Fielding, but wouldn't describe it as great literature and have no urge to read it again. I also felt like the baseball "setting" really helped draw me in and that if you weren't a baseball fan, it wouldn't do much for you. So I didn't recommend to my wife, for example.

44. JJ1986 Posted: April 25, 2012 at 11:24 AM (#4115691)

I don't know if I like baseball too much, but I really hated the character of Owen for his cavalier attitude towards the game. Sitting on the bench and reading a book doesn't make him quirky, it makes him a disrespectful a-hole. That made large parts of the book hard for me to take.

edit: ####### is apparently censored.

45. Lassus Posted: April 25, 2012 at 11:53 AM (#4115713)

Has anyone here read both "Sometimes You see it Coming" by Baker and "The Art of Fielding"? I'd be interested in similarities. I'm guessing the former is less arty and more accessible, but that's certainly only a guess. I've now decided to try and purchase the latter on the way home from work.

46. BDC

Posted: April 25, 2012 at 12:01 PM (#4115716)

Sometimes You See It Coming is more stylized and has some weird pulpy elements (like a supercomputer that produces ultimate truths about baseball prospects). It's also mysterious and at times magical-realist. The 185 pages I read of The Art of Fielding had none of those features, though who knows what happened after I stopped reading. There seemed to be mysterious potential, but what I read was basically realistic, with quirky John-Irvingy aspects to the realistic characters.

47. gef the talking mongoose Posted: April 25, 2012 at 12:58 PM (#4115762)

Writing isn't some purely-subjective

And grammar isn't putting a hyphen between an -ly adverb (or maybe any other type of adverb; the -ly violation is the one I see all the time, just about everywhere) & an adjective.

/grammar Nazi

48. Lassus Posted: April 25, 2012 at 01:21 PM (#4115786)

Thanks, Bob.

49. morineko Posted: April 25, 2012 at 04:54 PM (#4116046)

The Art of Fielding is pretty much a realist 21st-century version of Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, with baseball instead of the Queen of Faerie and her court. People who love Tam Lin really really love it. But it's flawed, in the same way The Art of Fielding is flawed, in that a lot of people are going to find the student characters insufferable. Pella and Mike saved The Art of Fielding for me; didn't find anything in Tam Lin worth saving.

50. Tulo's Fishy Mullet (mrams) Posted: April 25, 2012 at 05:34 PM (#4116107)

Pella and Mike saved The Art of Fielding for me;

and that's why it should be called The Art of Dirty Sex

I actually enjoyed the novel, but do not think it is as wonderful as some critics have suggested. I kept trying to figure out which WI liberal arts school was the inspiration for this, if any? St. Norbert's College, Cardinal Strich (the two on/near the shore of Lake Michigan).

51. Zach Posted: April 25, 2012 at 05:44 PM (#4116126)

There's no such thing as bad writing. There is such a thing as opinion.

Honestly, since WWII or so you'd have an easier time arguing there's no such thing as good writing.

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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Atlantic: A Swing and a Miss [Review of “The Art of Fielding”]

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