The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

I did make it through this book, but it became increasingly boring as we crept to the 512^th page.  For those who didn’t make it, I’ll end the suspense by saying, Henry got his mojo back [last line of the book]. 

It was boring to me even though:

-     I’m a male

-     I’m a bachelor

-     and I like baseball.

I can only imagine the sheer reading torture this was for those who are:

-     female

-     aren’t into frat-house gross jokes

or lives focused around pizzas and beer.

-     and aren’t into training regimens of athletes.

 

Where did this book go wrong?: let me count the ways.  The boredom started a third of the way through the book as the reader became aware that the cast of characters and their dysfunctional foibles had been typeset in lead and scenes from that point forward were only going to be repetitious variations of what had gone on before.  After halfway through the book, disillusionment set in as the reader realized that there would be no steamy sex scenes, no great moments in baseball history, actually nothing interesting at all.  Maybe we’ve become too jaded or inured living around Guerneville, but all of the sex lives of these characters were pitifully abysmal.  All this, “Will he, won’t she, will she, won’t he, will they join the dance?”

A tortuous read – 1 out of 10 for this elitist, wannabe author, whose only praise comes from the NY Times {see below}.

 

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n+1 began in the Fall of 2004, the project of Keith Gessen, Benjamin Kunkel, Mark Greif, Chad Harbach, and Marco Roth. The magazine, described by Gessen as "like Partisan Review, except not dead," was launched out of a feeling of dissatisfaction with the current intellectual scene in the United States, with the editors often citing Lingua Franca and the early years of Partisan Review as models for their magazine. Both of those magazines embodied the age where the little magazine was a veritable institution and a major centre of innovation in arts and politics.

Their outlook is most frequently summed up by the last lines of their first issue where Gessen proclaimed, "it is time to say what you mean.  " Yet in the Third Issue, critic James Wood responded to criticism of his negative criticism and, singling out this quote by Gessen, stated, "The Editors had unwittingly proved the gravamen of their own critique: that it is easier to criticize than to propose."

The magazine has received mixed criticism to date. Generally, n+1's detractors are irked by the editors' youth and perceived elitism. As the magazine is purportedly an effort to engage a generation in a struggle against the current literary landscape, such seeming elitism seems counterintuitive to the ideals upon which the magazine was founded. The New Criterion critically asked, "is your journal really necessary?" and accused them of exaggerating their own importance. The Times Literary Supplement wryly satirized Kunkel's quote, "We're angrier than Dave Eggers and his crowd," and compared that quote against their Third Issue's unsigned article about and titled Dating.

Others have appreciated these very qualities, writing favorably of the boldness of the project itself and the sincerity and enthusiasm of its contributors. New York Times critic A.O. Scott commented on this in a feature article on the new wave of young, intellectual publications in a September 2005 issue of the New York Times Magazine, saying that n+1 was trying to "organize a generational struggle against laziness and cynicism, to raise once again the banners of creative enthusiasm and intellectual engagement" and that it had a feel that was "decidedly youthful, not only in [its] characteristic generational concerns — the habit of nonchalantly blending pop culture, literary esoterica and academic theory, for instance, or the unnerving ability to appear at once mocking and sincere — but also in the sense of bravado and grievance that ripples through their pages."