I wonder if someone who didn't love baseball -- love, not simply like -- could enjoy this book. I don't think they could. On the one hand, baseball is just a device in the novel, the backdrop for more human drama, but, on the other hand, Harbach's text is so deeply ingrained with a deep appreciation for America's pastime.The main character, Henry, is a baseball phenom. His defense is impeccable, his love for the sport consuming. When things turn a little rotten for him, no one wonders if maybe he'd be ... in a better place if he had other things in his life besides baseball and his best friend, the catcher Mike Schwartz.
The book isn't without problems -- it's slightly unrealistic, and characters are often introduced and then forgotten. But I still really enjoyed it. It's not only an ode to baseball, but an ode to college life, where friendships can become consuming, girls are always walking around in miniskirted mobs, books change lives, bad days can turn into bad weeks and thinking about life post-graduation is an exercise in fear and self-loathing. It's wonderful and horrible, often at the same time.
There's the cliché that the time you spend in college should be the best years of your life, but most people, I think, would reject that idea. Mike Schwartz does: "Life was long, unless you died, and he didn't intend to spend the next sixty year talking about the last twenty-two."
The book also has a lot of meta stuff about literature and the way it affects us; the president of the university's life changed when as an undergrad he discovered an obscure lecture of Herman Melville, and he, his daughter and his lover spend a lot of time talking about books and the role of characters -- how sometimes we just view other people as characters in our stories as opposed to beings unto themselves. It reminds me of a line from The Elegance of the Hedgehog, to be honest. Common literary theme I guess.
Anyway, almost done with Nineteen Eighty-Four. Get pumped. Feminist Victoria is coming.
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