Book Review: The Art of Fielding (Chad Harbach)

Chad Harbach’s debut novel, The Art of Fielding, is story of friendship, self-discovery, relationships, mental illness, and the promises and pitfalls of potential.  The plot is solid but the well-developed, complex characters are what kept me up late turning pages.  The Art of Fielding is also about baseball, but in the same way Moby Dick is a book about whale hunting.  The heart of the novel is the relationship between Mike Schwartz and Henry Skrimshander, two members of the Westish College baseball team, and how their friendship and relationships evolve over their time at Westish College.

The fictional Westish is a cozy Division III liberal arts college on the Wisconsin side of Lake Michigan whose main claim to fame happens to be that Moby Dick author Herman Melville once spent a summer there (the college’s mascot is the Harpooners). Schwartz grew up poor and neglected in a tough part of Chicago before enrolling in Westish where he becomes  captain of both the football and baseball teams.  His fierce intensity, high expectations, and demand for perfection, in himself and others, find the perfect subject in Henry, a slender, malleable kid from small town South Dakota who is freaky good with his glove as a shortstop.  His slight build and lack of strength, however, limit his utility as a batter.

At Westish, under Schwartz’ unrelenting tutelage and Henry's own capacity to compulsively endure the boundaries of his physical abilities, Henry transforms himself into a powerful and productive offensive weapon, hitting with both precision and power.  By his junior year, he  emerges as one of the top Major League Baseball prospects in America, and the Westish Harpooners, perennial conference doormats, emerge as potential national champions.  Life is good in Westish and promises to get better.

Meanwhile, handsome and heretofore heterosexual Westish College President Guert Affenlight, a former Westish quarterback who went on to become a renowned Melville scholar and Harvard literature professor, is developing an infatuation with Henry's roommate, Owen Dunne, an urbane, openly gay, and intellectually gifted black student (who also is an outfielder for the Harpooners).  The budding romance is complicated by the arrival of Affenlight's college-aged prodigal daughter and struggling artist, Pella.  A brilliant but undisciplined young woman, Pella seeks refuge with her father from an unhappy marriage to an architect several years her senior and a crippling bout of depression aggravated by the relationship. She soon discovers Mike Schwartz, who has his own set of issues that he has no idea of how to fix.

While all of these complicated relationships are developing, the unthinkable becomes thinkable.  Henry Skrimshander, the shortstop with the grace of Baryshnikov and the cool efficiency of the super-computer Watson, on the verge of establishing the college record for consecutive errorless games, experiences a sudden loss of confidence in his ability to throw a baseball to first base.  Which jeopardizes his errorless games streak, the lucrative MLB contract, and a national championship for the historically hapless Harpooners.  Henry is not equipped to handle these sudden changes and emotionally implodes.  Don't want to give away too much but Pella and Henry maybe complicate their relationship with Schwartz, and President Affenlight and Owen maybe go places a student and college president should not. 

How Harbach sorts this all out is why this novel is so rich and enjoyable. He disassembles and reassembles relationships in ways unexpected but plausible.  You need not be a baseball fan to appreciate this book (but Harbach nails the baseball part). You only need to appreciate strong characters and great storytelling. Recommend.

RCM