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Loading... The Art of Fielding: A Novel (original 2011; edition 2011)by Chad Harbach
Work InformationThe Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach (2011)
  
Favourite Books (286) » 17 more Top Five Books of 2015 (123) Books Read in 2024 (530) Books Read in 2016 (2,318) Academia in Fiction (51) Five star books (744) To Read (133) Books about sports (59) to get (79) Florida (254) No current Talk conversations about this book.  brozic | Jan 27, 2024 |   A story about a college baseball player and his team sounds dull but this is so much more. Friendship, love, family, expectations, pressure. is there more covered? Probably. I felt completely invested in all the characters and wish I could pay a campus visit to Westish. They did lose me a little bit very close to the end with one ridiculous but sentimental scene but for me the payoff there was pretty good. Now I'm trying to decide if I want to read Moby Dick, an important book inside the book. (  ) hmonkeyreads | Jan 25, 2024 | I could certainly relate to how disorienting it is when your life's plans suddenly are over and your whole sense of self comes into question. So, from that perspective I liked this book. The secondary story about Guelf Affenlight, the college president who falls in love with a male student, the one injured by Henry's ball, adds in a homosexual element, and another angle about how people redefine themselves, and how hard it can be for people to change without running into serious societal obstacles. Pella, Affenlight's daughter, is also going through changes, but hers are within the scope of socially accepted personal development, so she finds the support and resources to get on track with her life even though her father's changed sexual identity had disastrous consequences. ( ) JBarringer | Dec 15, 2023 | While baseball is a central theme, this is certainly not a book about the sport. Rather, we are taken inside the lives and minds of five characters, and the development of them and and the story is exquisite. From love affairs to deep depression, Chad Harbach covers it all. Is it a redemption story? Sort of, maybe. One thing (and sorry about the spoiler here) at no stage in reading this did I expect to read about grave robbery. (  ) buttsy1 | Oct 15, 2023 | ) MugsyNoir | Jul 19, 2023 |
 The book is a throwback to a bygone, if not universally mourned era when charismatic white male novelists wrote intelligent bestsellers, and one senses that it is intentionally so....It is a work of stridently unexperimental psychological realism, featuring likeable characters with cute nicknames, dramatic events that change people’s lives, easily identified and fully consummated narrative arcs, transparently conversational prose and big, obvious metaphors.  Wie aan dit boek begint, wordt een wereld binnengezogen waaruit je niet meer kunt en wilt ontsnappen. Naast honkbalroman, bildungsroman en campusroman zou je De kunst van het veldspel ook een Melvilleroman kunnen noemen. Zonder dat het hinderlijk wordt (zelfs als je ze allemaal zou opmerken, wat geen lezer zich verbeelde), stikt het boek van de verwijzingen naar met name Moby Dick. Dit klinkt als gewichtigdoenerij, maar maakt gewoon deel uit van de spitsvondige speelsheid die dit hele boek kenmerkt. De kunst van het veldspel is een jongensboek voor jongens en meisjes van alle leeftijden. Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding cross-breeds two genres with limited gene pools, the baseball novel and the campus novel, and comes up with a vigorous hybrid, entertaining and engrossing, though almost absurdly high-minded. It's easy to see why The Art of Fielding has done so well: it is charming, warm-hearted, addictive, and very hard to dislike.... The Art of Fielding feels like a novel from another, more innocent age. It revels in themes that have been unfashionable in literary fiction for generations – team spirit, male friendship, making the best of one's talents. In its optimism and lack of cynicism, in its celebration of the wide open spaces of the Midwest and its confidence in the deep inner meaning of baseball, it is a big American novel of the old school.... ...it creates a richly peopled world that you can fully inhabit in your mind, and to which you long to return when you put it down. Centering on an imaginary northern Wisconsin private school and its baseball star-in-the-making Henry Skrimshander, Harbach sidesteps much of the familiar mythmaking that can go along with spinning the American pastime into literature and instead delivers a rich, warmly human story that resonates even if you have no idea what a 6-4-3 double play looks like. Belongs to Publisher SeriesAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big-league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life. As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths. This novel is about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment to oneself and to others. No library descriptions found. 
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.96)
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I liked the writing around Henry's struggles with throwing the ball after hitting Owen. But the last pages and ending seemed off. (