![]() With that in mind, it was hard to imagine Chad Harbach’s debut novel about a scrappy college baseball team offering much new to say about the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd or anything resembling Updike’s “lyric little bandbox” in 2011.Īnd yet, that’s what Harbach has done with “The Art of Fielding.” 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. Touched on by a library’s worth of authors including John Updike, Stephen King and Don DeLillo, there’s something about the game’s deliberate pace, individual focus and enduring simplicity that seems irresistible to novelists. ![]() ![]() In terms of conjuring a shorthand for a certain American innocence, there are few delivery systems quite so direct as baseball. ![]()
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