Finally finished Chad Harbach’s “The Art of Fielding” this morning. I think my Goodreads rant pretty much covers the nut of my reaction:
Impressions upon finishing this book: OK ... fuck you, first and foremost, all the people who’ve helped give this novel a four-stars-plus rating. You need to get some higher standards. Second, despite its abominable first half, this book does eventually scrap together a good ending – moving, fascinating, even literary. Third, given this split, I am really angry and annoyed at the author and the editors who worked on this book for publishing such a half-baked novel. Once the characters are set, you’re able to squint a little and forget that for about three hundred pages they seemed totally flat and clichéd. Most of this probably could have been fixed with some revision. It would have been painstaking, probably taken another year or two, but that’s what you have to do when crafting a lasting work of art. But now it’s stuck like this forever, which is really sad, and which in the end amounts, quite simply, to a professional failure. Finally, I’m troubled by the overwhelming decision by reviewers to overlook this in what I can only assume is a desperate search for a “great novel.” I think I understand where they’re coming from, but they’ve ultimately sold everyone short. Biblioklept’s review, “Why I Abandoned Chad Harbach’s Over-Hyped Novel The Art of Fielding After Only 100 Pages” – the only full-on negative review I’ve seen – treats this problem well. In the end, it’s just depressing that so many people – from the author to editors and reviews – have totally fallen short of basic literary standards.
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