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@affenlight
The Brightness
Chad Harbach apparently has a new book coming out next year (2023): "The Brightness."
Google Books says "8 Jun 2023 - 832 pages."
Amazon UK has the same page count, but for Sept 28. No Amazon US listing I can see.
Anyway: woo! \o/
New (2022) UK cover from HarperCollins.
The Art of Fielding
Recently fell in love with the characters in this wonderful novel by Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding. Set in a fictional “Westish college” and focusing on the members of their baseball team, “Harpooners”.
I’m decidedly not linking to any further information sources, for should you be curious, it is always recommendable to go in totally unaware.
Pictured here: Owen, Henry and Mike.
Keep reading
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein found that after reading both works the claims of striking similarities between the unpublished work of the plaintiff and the award-winning novel were unavailing.
Hellerstein said there were more differences than similarities that proceeded the final scene. For example, the two works “are entirely different” in the “professional and personal development” of the two main characters, including how they arrived on their respective teams. More importantly, the judge found that Green’s argument that the overall plot, sequence and pace of the two works were virtually the same fail, representing “a strained attempt to impose structure where none is salient, evident, or important to the works as a whole.”
Even the climactic scene that Green “harps on,” in Hellerstein’s phrase, share, at best, “facial similarities.” None of them, Hellerstein said, represent either copyrightable abstract ideas or ideas, or, when set side-by-side, were “actually similar.”
“In short, when read in context, none of plaintiff’s allegations of substantial similarity hold up, the beaning scene included,” Hellerstein wrote.
Well, the baseball novel is called The Art of Fielding, and even though it is about a college baseball team, it’s really about these five different characters, in this small Midwest college, all stumbling through their lives. It’s very bittersweet. There are queer aspects to the story, so it’s not too out of my wheelhouse.
Writer/director Craig Johnson, on adapting The Art of Fielding for the screen [x]
books I read in 2018 [11/?]: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
“Each of us, deep down, believes that the whole world issues from his own precious body, like images projected from a tiny slide onto an earth-sized screen. And then, deeper down, each of us knows he’s wrong.”
Update of sorts on the new Harbach book [x]
Some people call it the yips, or describe it as having a mental block. But to me, it’s The Creature. And it’s something I’ve struggled with for a long time.
Great article by an outfielder on his struggle with the yips and how he’s coped with the problem.
I selected a novel that was receiving a lot of attention—The Art of Fielding—and I wrote a reckless takedown. I emailed the review to a random editor at Salon.com, who attached a click-bait headline that barely had to do with my piece—English teacher: I was wrong about “Hunger Games”—and published within 24 hours. My wife and I celebrated.
But the piece was really, really bad.
In it, I admit to urging a student to read The Art of Fielding before I’d read it, myself. I affect the tone of a moral librarian, instructing readers on what constituted more and less valuable literature. Try to make sense of this sentence: “If the literary establishment wants our teenagers to fall in love with literature, it must stop cynically writing and imprudently reviewing books like ‘The Art of Fielding’ as though they were examples of adult literary fiction.”
What did I mean by any of this? What was this “literary establishment” that was both “cynically writing” and “imprudently reviewing” books for “our” teenagers?
All that stands out to me now is my naked opportunism and, mostly, jealousy. Jealousy of Harbach’s success, of his having accomplished everything I wanted but that seemed so far from my grasp, and of the reviewers who were blessed to be reviewing for the Times or the New Yorker where they could think honestly and wisely about a work of art—and where they could build reputations with which to publish their own novels.
Harbach, of whom I’d always been a fan (I’d circulated his essay on the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry), had never made any of the claims that I was so vainly dispelling. He’d simply written an entertaining novel about baseball, academia, sex, love, and friendship.
Through a newly established partnership, the companies are looking to produce at least 10 features in the next three to five years.
Holy cow, some honest-to-Ahab news.
IMG and Mandalay Sports Media are partnering on a slate of sport-centric feature films.
The WME-owned management company and the sports media outfit are looking to develop, finance and produce at least 10 feature films over the next three to five years, with plans to distribute via traditional theatrical release and streaming platforms.
The partnership is kicking off with an adaptation of Chad Harbach's best-selling novel The Art of Fielding, which follows a shortstop at a small liberal arts college on Lake Michigan, whose renowned fielding skills begin to deteriorate after an on-field accident.
Craig Johnson (Wilson, The Skeleton Twins) will direct from a script by Tripper Clancy. Mandalay co-chairman Mike Tollin, whose credits include Varsity Blues, Coach Carter and Radio, will produce alongside Carl Hampe, Tom Heller and Frank Hall Green. Will Staeger and Mike Antinoro will executive produce for IMG Films, along with Bill Holderman.
“The Art of Fielding is one of my all-time favorite books, and I couldn't be more thrilled to be making this film with our partners at IMG. We’re thrilled to have financing in place for the slate so we can choose projects based on what we love, rather than what we think we can sell,” said Tollin.
These guys are pretty light on credits, but I’ll take it... Gotta wonder what’ll be cast overboard in a film adaptation (compared to a mini-series) though. IT BETTER NOT BE LOONDORF. (Or Pella. Or Contango. Or Owenlight, which I am still going to make a thing.)
What the standout fiction of the last eight years can tell us about an art form, and a country, in flux.
Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding examines meritocracy’s myths on the campus of a small Wisconsin college and with a keener sense that nothing is ever really fair. Its central allegory is a scholarship shortstop’s sudden loss of the ability to make accurate put-out throws to first base. The errant throw is an apt image for a system that rewards talent in action but withholds its favor from the average or deficient.
There’s a new(ish?) edition of The Art of Fielding from Easton Press. It’s “personally signed” by Chad Harbach, and I guess is kinda nice if you’re into leather-and-gold books, or going for that authentic Guert Affenlight office aesthetic. And it can be yours for a mere $99! (Maybe it helps if you’re actually a college president.)
Personally, I feel it could use more ecru.
The Art of Fielding & Plagiarism (???)
Someone just sent me a link to this article from July, in which a writer more or less accuses Chad Harbach of plagiarizing his unpublished novel on a similar subject.
Now, obviously I don’t know what happened. I’m not Chad Harbach or anyone who would be “in the know” in this situation. But based on the evidence given in the article (assuming it is actually factual), do I think Harbach plagiarized? No I don’t.
Why?
(1) Creative works that stem from the same basic concept - “a division III squad recruits a prodigy” - will inevitably include some of the same narrative and character beats (and of course the ultimate championship game goes down to a pivotal strike in the ninth inning). The trope of “college professor/administrator has a relationship with a student” is also tremendously popular. It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it.
(2) Harbach and this writer have almost certainly the same background in terms of the sports they’ve watched, the books they’ve read, and so on. I read a fuckton of books Harbach has mentioned in various interviews, and of course you can pick out things that inspired him, or things he paid homage to, which may have inspired this writer too. That does not equal plagiarism.
(3) The writer is obviously focusing on the elements of the works that are similar. This leaves out great swathes of material from The Art of Fielding, and I’m assuming equally much from his own work. TAoF owes a HUGE amount to Moby-Dick (and another vital plot point to Emerson), not only in direct references but in the characters and plot themselves.
(4) Many of the similarities he mentions are tenuous at best. Female leads wearing lilac at some point in both novels? Not exactly a crazy coincidence (and presumably there’s absolutely nothing else similar about the two characters). The pitchers Loony (for Loondorf) and Crazy? The protagonist showing up at the game with a gym bag? Also insignificant. He says the similarities run for 25 pages, but I have to think he’d present his strongest case in this article.
(5) The writer gives no suggestion about how Harbach would ever have got his hands on this unpublished novel in the first place, beyond the fact it was sent out to various publishing houses. As an unpublished writer prior to The Art of Fielding who did not have an agent, I doubt that anyone in the publishing business was at all interested in giving Harbach random (unsuccessful) manuscripts for inspiration.
(6) The writer points out that a lot of The Art of Fielding is not in Harbach’s original The Bold Harpooneer. I haven’t read it myself, but from what Harbach and Keith Gessen have said I agree that it’s true. However, the basic elements certainly are there: the division III prodigy and the Owen/Guert romance (Harbach got into his MFA program with an Owen/Guert story). And, as I said, if you’re starting out from that point, there are certain progressions that are, if not inevitable, then very likely.
(7) I keep going back to the A Prayer for Owen Meany issue. Harbach’s novel begins with a character named Owen being hit in the head by a baseball. John Irving’s famous novel includes a character named Owen hitting someone else in the head with a baseball. Many reviewers and readers have assumed Harbach was inspired by Irving. But, nope, total coincidence. Harbach had never read the book. (And yes, I believe him, because there would be no reason at all to lie about it, and he’s been very forthcoming about other inspirations.) Stuff happens.
And by the way, no, Affenlight’s death is not deliberately ambiguous.
Moby Dick - Literature Rocks via Etsy
SOMEONE PAGE CHAD HARBACH THIS IS THE MOST GUERT AFFENLIGHT THING I HAVE EVER SEEN
@affenlight
I picked up this book because I was seeing quotes daily on tumblr and each quote was a quote that made me stop and think. This novel is a life story - yours, mine, the person beside you - it is a story of people who could be anyone and everyone.
This is not a fast paced, high tension novel but rather a story of lives that are ordinary and real. This book will make you think of things you may not have considered before; it will make you realize that there are different views of things that seem so obvious. But more than that, it will make you reconsider the way you perceive the people around you. This novel has life, heart, and soul; it breathes. It is, in a word, incredible.
– Amy V, LCPL Reader’s Advisor
The Art Of Fielding
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
The Art of Fielding tells the story of Henry Skrimshander, a baseball player at Westish College, and how a baseball error changed the lives of five people close to him, himself included.
I kept coming across this book at bookstores, in the hands of readers on the bus, on my college campus, and other places but I hesitated to read it. I know next to nothing about baseball. In the end, the cover was just so aesthetically pleasing, I couldn’t help but buy it. I was not disappointed. I skipped a few meals so I could read this book uninterrupted. This book is so much more than baseball. Harbach uses his passion for baseball to tell a story. It was such a refreshing story about humanity. I enjoyed seeing how Harbach explored relationships between his characters and how the story revealed itself as it went on.
As always, I like keeping things spoiler free but I will say that I think the story took the direction it needed to. There were moments after I finished the book where I wanted to reach out to a character and make sure they were okay, but then I remembered they weren’t real. The characters and their universe were so vivid.
I did check out a few videos of shortstops just so I could get an idea of exactly what Henry did, but I don’t think it was necessary. I suggest that you check this book out and don’t let your lack of baseball knowledge hold you back from this. It’s not one to miss. I’ll admit that after reading this book, I had the strangest urge to buy a Westish College baseball shirt.
I give this: 4.5 Stars
Fancasting, The Art of Fielding
Tom Holland | Henry Skrimshander
Taron Egerton | Mike Schwartz
Jane Levy | Pelle Affenlight
Julian Walker | Owen Dunn
Stanley Tucci | Guert Affenlight
