Category Archives: Book Review

Book Review

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By Porter Ander­son | @Porter_Anderson

 

From Decem­ber 19, 2011
A review I wrote for the site Reader Unboxed.

Slot­back Rhap­sody, by Christo­pher Harris

Near the cen­ter line of his recently pub­lished foot­ball opera, Slot­back Rhap­sody, debut nov­el­ist Christo­pher Har­ris can make even the most skep­ti­cal guy in the stands believe his protagonist’s secret. You’re ready to buy into the idea that this author has mem­o­rized a play­book as rich as the one his like­able hero keeps executing.

Foot­ball is beloved because there’s a score­board, because the rules are arcane but per­fectly known to mil­lions. Is there any won­der the slow­est of slow-motion instant replay has evolved through foot­ball broad­casts, where we must know whether this shoe defin­i­tively touches the side­line marker or if the ball jig­gles brownly in the wan­ton receiver’s mitts as he hits the turf? It is per­fec­tion because every­thing will be known. Any­one who says the sport is sim­ply a venal sub­sti­tute for war­fare and that it sat­is­fies the mod­ern human’s sup­pressed blood­lust needs, they’ve either advanced to a higher stage of deal­ing with life’s unfath­oma­bil­ity and should be fol­lowed like yogis, or are unchar­i­ta­ble to a fault. The beauty of sta­tis­tics and for­ma­tions and (yes, by heav­ens) instant replay is they let us touch bot­tom. And of course there is no bot­tom to life, which is won­der­ful but awful, and so we pre­tend: for a few hours, we allow our­selves to be charmed by a com­mon spell.

This is a brac­ing, grat­i­fy­ing con­cept. Sport as a tem­po­rary refuge from chaos. Foot­ball as a real­ity ruled by peo­ple, not by the inef­fa­ble gods who han­dle daily life out­side the sta­dium. And it’s a guy too short for the game, weigh­ing under 180 pounds,  who holds up to us this canny fil­ter through which we can view the game’s grip on so many fans in our culture.

Still, Har­ris’ work proves less com­pelling than his diminu­tive protagonist’s. Nick Mor­ri­son. “Mouse,”  as the slot­back on Detroit’s squad is nick­named, may lose both the girl and the dog, that’s true. But Har­ris, an ESPN fan­tasy foot­ball ana­lyst, loses track of his own offense. He suc­cumbs, even­tu­ally, to a “big game” con­clu­sion that surely is any sports story’s most hack­neyed temptation.

To read the full review, jump over to Reader Unboxed.

About Porter Ander­son

Porter Ander­son, BA, MA, MFA, is a Fel­low with the National Crit­ics Insti­tute and has done spe­cial read­ings in the psy­chol­ogy of the arts at the Uni­ver­sity of Bath, UK. As a jour­nal­ist, he has worked with three net­works of CNN (CNN USA, CNN Inter­na­tional, CNN.com) and was on the lead devel­op­ment team for CNN.com Live. He also has worked on The Vil­lage Voice, Dal­las Times Her­ald, D Mag­a­zine, Sara­sota Herald-Tribune and other out­lets. He writes the weekly (Thurs­days) WRITING ON THE ETHER col­umn at JaneFriedman.com. Ander­son also is a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to WriterUnboxed.com and to Dig­i­tal Book World’s (DigiBookWorld.com) Expert Pub­lish­ing Blog. He has been posted by the United Nations to Rome (P-5, laissez-passer) for the World Food Pro­gramme, and served as Exec­u­tive Pro­ducer to INDEX: Design to Improve Life in Copen­hagen. He is based in Tampa and his pri­mary medium is Twit­ter. Fol­low him @Porter_Anderson

Book Review

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The Art of Field­ing / cover by Keith Hayes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Porter Ander­son | @Porter_Anderson

From Decem­ber 5, 2011
A review I wrote for the site Reader Unboxed.

The Art of Field­ing, by Chad Harbach

Deep down, he thought, we all believe we’re God. We secretly believe that the out­come of the game depends on us, even when we’re only watching—on the way we breathe in, the way we breathe out, the T-shirt we wear, whether we close our eyes as the pitch leaves the pitcher’s hand.

The Art of Field­ing has no base­ball imagery on its cover. That’s important.

Keith Gessen, long­time asso­ciate of the novel’s author Chad Har­bach, has writ­ten about designer  Keith Hayes’ search for the right cover treat­ment. The book is, as Robyn Creswell wrote in the Paris Review, “a book about base­ball in the same way that Moby-Dick is a book about whaling—it is and it isn’t.”

That’s a small red har­poon you see under the title. Melville, and scholarship’s love affair with him, loom over many parts of the book. At least one heart is, even­tu­ally, com­pletely skew­ered in the con­tem­po­rary foam of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, insti­tu­tional hubris, and a roman­tic fast­ball slop­pily fielded.

There is some radi­ant writ­ing about base­ball from time to time in these 529 pages.

The coach reached into his bucket, plucked out a ball, and showed it to the short­stop, who nod­ded and dropped into a shal­low crouch, his hands poised just above the dirt. The kid glided in front of the first grounder, accepted the ball into his glove with a lazy grace, piv­oted, and threw to first. Though his motion was lan­guid, the ball seemed to explode off his fin­ger­tips, to gather speed as it crossed the dia­mond. It smacked the pocket of the first baseman’s glove with the sound of a gun going off. The coach hit another, a bit harder: same easy grace, same gun­shot report.

This is your first look at Henry Skrimshan­der. He is a near-magical prodigy on the dia­mond spot­ted by Mike Schwartz, an entre­pre­neur­ial catcher who lures the inar­tic­u­late young phe­nom to a small Mid­west­ern col­lege, West­ish, home of the Harpooners.

What fol­lows makes it hard to say whether Har­bach has made all the world a field of dreams or vice-versa. With deservedly praised dex­ter­ity, Har­bach walks all his players–some of whom have noth­ing to do with baseball—around the bases of events and rela­tion­ships fully as depen­dent on a cam­pus set­ting as they are on their prox­im­ity to West­ish Field.

The “fresh­per­son” Henry, who is trans­formed into a national-championship mar­tyr, func­tions from a pris­tine naïveté that makes him a mag­net to the majors’ scouts and eas­ily the book’s most haunt­ing char­ac­ter. As soon as Mike, his impos­si­bly empow­ered under­grad­u­ate men­tor, is required to field more than he can han­dle in his own sleep­less sphere, Henry is adrift in dirty, shal­low waters.

If you were Henry and you needed Mike you were sim­ply screwed. There were no words for that, no cer­e­mony that would guar­an­tee your future. Every day was just that: a day, a blank, a noth­ing, in which you had to invent your­self and your friend­ship from scratch. The weight of every­thing you’d ever done was nothing.

Henry serves the author and read­ers as a land­mark study of the nat­ural artist/athlete, a vic­tim of youth­ful obses­sion and adult con­ve­nience. The Art of Field­ing is worth read­ing for this char­ac­ter alone,  and the deliv­ery through him of the book’s most explicit observation:

A soul isn’t some­thing a per­son is born with but some­thing that must be built, by effort and error, study and love.

 

To read the full review, jump over to Reader Unboxed.

About Porter Ander­son

Porter Ander­son, BA, MA, MFA, is a Fel­low with the National Crit­ics Insti­tute and has done spe­cial read­ings in the psy­chol­ogy of the arts at the Uni­ver­sity of Bath, UK. As a jour­nal­ist, he has worked with three net­works of CNN (CNN USA, CNN Inter­na­tional, CNN.com) and was on the lead devel­op­ment team for CNN.com Live. He also has worked on The Vil­lage Voice, Dal­las Times Her­ald, D Mag­a­zine, Sara­sota Herald-Tribune and other out­lets. He writes the weekly (Thurs­days) WRITING ON THE ETHER col­umn at JaneFriedman.com. Ander­son also is a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to WriterUnboxed.com and to Dig­i­tal Book World’s (DigiBookWorld.com) Expert Pub­lish­ing Blog. He has been posted by the United Nations to Rome (P-5, laissez-passer) for the World Food Pro­gramme, and served as Exec­u­tive Pro­ducer to INDEX: Design to Improve Life in Copen­hagen. He is based in Tampa and his pri­mary medium is Twit­ter. Fol­low him @Porter_Anderson

Book Review

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Cover design for “Swell” is by Chris Jor­dan with Char­lie Potter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Porter Ander­son | @Porter_Anderson

 

From Novem­ber 21, 2011
A review I wrote for the site Reader Unboxed.

 

I have come to real­ize that merely remain­ing alive is more of an achieve­ment than I expected.

A lot of Orange Whippey’s acquain­tances do their best to prove his point, in Cor­win Eric­son‘s debut novel, Swell.

Whippey is a latter-day Can­dide being chased around the worst of all pos­si­ble islands. He is stranded among lam­preys; tossed off a rust­ing naval ves­sel; seen “court­ing deep vein throm­bo­sis”; sus­pected of kid­nap­ping; abducted, him­self; and more than capa­ble of get­ting and los­ing the girl. Over and over.

He both deplores and deploys his gulli­bil­ity in the dodgy breezes of a fic­tional island called Bis­muth.  For all Ericson’s Thor-thumping ref­er­ences to Scan­di­na­vian lore and “whale roads,” Whippey’s stark aware­ness of his own faults fans a per­ti­nent line of faith: but for the grace of God, we could all end up, as Whippey does, with­out cof­fee or pants.

A bro’s bard

The most sem­i­nal accom­plish­ment here is an unerr­ing ear for guy talk, a pal’s patois of such secure con­sis­tency that Whippey can appre­ci­ate and describe the most exquis­ite, garden-party menu with­out los­ing his grip on the cor­rect libation.

Is there more wine? Dif­fer­ent wine?

Do you mean beer?

Yes, please.

In the bed-head vocab­u­lary of a wry intel­lec­tual buddy, here’s Whippey explain­ing his hatred of work.

The lords of dawn are men such as Mr. Lucy. Their boats and trucks scrub away the shad­ows before them each morn­ing, and they bide their time in the empty hours fash­ion­ing yokes and man­a­cles for the unwary who stum­ble into their toils. They remem­ber when dawn was hours ear­lier and when they had to kill a hun­dred Nazis every morn­ing just to get to the per­co­la­tor. They knew that if every young man in this God-fearing coun­try would just get up at 5:30 AM and per­form a mod­est flag cer­e­mony, the upwelling of patri­o­tism and per­sonal pride would has­ten Judg­ment Day upon us and we could get an early start on ador­ing Jesus in the after­life before the tourists arrived.

And in the best-boy tra­di­tion of a doubt­less Thomas, it’s all in Whippey’s head:

I’d spent years cul­ti­vat­ing the belief that this woman was my cousin. If she were my cousin, I could steal a few peeks now and then and con­tinue to admire the way she’d never lost her youth­ful round­ness, the curves that turn to crags and angles so quickly on so many islanders. I could sleep over on her and Mitchell’s couch, and we could shuf­fle around each other in our under­wear in the morn­ing with­out too much fuss. If Angie were my cousin, the fact that toe­nail pol­ish matched her lip­stick and her habit of wear­ing only a sweat­shirt, a bathing suit, and a ker­chief for half the sum­mer would merely be cute and prac­ti­cal; the way her brown pupils con­trasted with the whites of her eyes in the same man­ner that her tan line con­trasted with her pale skin when her suit slipped a lit­tle off her hip wouldn’t fix­ate me at all.

 

To read the full review, jump over to Reader Unboxed.

About Porter Ander­son

Porter Ander­son, BA, MA, MFA, is a Fel­low with the National Crit­ics Insti­tute and has done spe­cial read­ings in the psy­chol­ogy of the arts at the Uni­ver­sity of Bath, UK. As a jour­nal­ist, he has worked with three net­works of CNN (CNN USA, CNN Inter­na­tional, CNN.com) and was on the lead devel­op­ment team for CNN.com Live. He also has worked on The Vil­lage Voice, Dal­las Times Her­ald, D Mag­a­zine, Sara­sota Herald-Tribune and other out­lets. He writes the weekly (Thurs­days) WRITING ON THE ETHER col­umn at JaneFriedman.com. Ander­son also is a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to WriterUnboxed.com and to Dig­i­tal Book World’s (DigiBookWorld.com) Expert Pub­lish­ing Blog. He has been posted by the United Nations to Rome (P-5, laissez-passer) for the World Food Pro­gramme, and served as Exec­u­tive Pro­ducer to INDEX: Design to Improve Life in Copen­hagen. He is based in Tampa and his pri­mary medium is Twit­ter. Fol­low him @Porter_Anderson