A Great American Novel

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

There is something very wonderful going on in the American literary scene, it has a vibrancy that in many ways is lacking in the modern fiction of English writers. Chad Harbach's debut novel 'The Art of Fielding' is a very much a product of this. This is a wonderful book, strongly in the tradition of the great American novel and reminiscent of Salinger's Catcher in the Rye.

On its surface this is a novel about a college baseball team in small town America and as such seems on first glance something that could not be enjoyed by an English reader who knows nothing about the sport or the college life of an American teenager. But there is so much more than surface to 'The Art of Fielding'. The characters are exquisite, full of deep emotion and beautifully flawed. Their stories are compelling and the further you travel into the book the more you realise it doesn't matter what you know about baseball or college town life.

This is a novel about transition, in many ways university is a pause in life, a time when we take a few years out to decide what to do with the years stretching ahead. This is where we often find out if our dreams really are possible or if we have to accept another life for ourselves. For Henry Skirmshander his dream is to be the best shortstop in baseball history and he pursues it with a single mindedness that is on the one hand obsessive and unhealthy but on the other enviable, all of us in some ways wish we could be so dedicated to one great dream. When his whole future is threatened by one bad throw with dire consequences he struggles to come to terms with the idea that his dream may be at an end. This is something many readers will be able to relate to, the certainty of youth shattered and the struggle to recognise the fact that your plan for the future is only one of many possibilities. Nothing is set in stone and learning to accept this and adapt is part of growing up.

Harbach's cast of characters are all interconnected and while many writers would have fallen at this hurdle, miring the reader in an incomprehensible web of connections which are a struggle to keep track of Harbach is able to keep these relationships balanced and clear and in fact this is one of the novels great strengths. The interactions between Henry and Schwartz or owen and Affenlight are deftly handled and intensely real, keeping the reader emotionally invested in the fates of these characters.

At it's heart this is a novel about change and one's ability to face it and as such Harbach joins a strong literary tradition of American novelists exploring themes of transition showing that the American Dream of Kerouac and Salinger is still a powerful force.