The Art of Fielding, the game of champions
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, is a coming of age sports novel that transcends the category. It has been praised by almost every major critic in every possible publication. I mostly join that chorus. I like the gentle humor in this book, the sly homage to Melville's Moby Dick, the empathy aroused by his characters, the sure plotting that unhurriedly moves the story to an ending that's unexpected. Harbach's inarticulate hero, Henry Skrimshander is a great surprise, a ball-player stand-in for the artist as mystic. Henry's an outsider. He's the kind of visionary who's uncompromising, self-sacrificing and, for a short-stop, ungrounded in planet earth. Like a Sam Shepard hero, he comes from the obscure West, Lankton, South Dakota, with working class parents, and few aspirations but one. From the age of 9, when he got his glove with Aparico Rodrigues inscribed on it, he wanted to play shortstop like the famous player, whose book, "The Art of Fielding...