I liked it; the reviews were well-deserved. It indeed is a cross between The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and The Universal Baseball Association, J. Henry Waugh, Prop.
What struck me most, though, was the contrast with Indecision, the novel by Harbach’s associate, Benjamin Kunkel. As I noted a few years ago, Indecision was notable in that all the characters had agency. That is, each character had his or her own ideas and seemed to act on his or her own ideas, rather than merely carrying the plot along or providing scenery. In contrast, the most gripping drama in The Art of Fielding seem to be characters’ struggling with their plot-determined roles (hence the connection with Coover’s God-soaked baseball classic). Also notable to me was that the college-aged characters not being particularly obsessed with sex—I guess this is that easy-going hook-up culture I keep reading about—while at the same time, just about all the characters seem to be involved in serious drug addiction. I’ve read books where one character or another is an alcoholic or a chain-smoker or whatever, but it’s not so usual to see a book where alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana are so central to just about everyone’s life.
That said, I’m not claiming that Indecision is a better novel than The Art of Fielding. I read Indecision a few years ago and now I can remember vary little about it. The Art of Fielding is much more focused, and I’m guessing it will remain clear in my mind even in 2017. I very much enjoyed reading it.
Trainspotting is another good book in which drug addiction drives the plot. And of course A Scanner Darkly.
Infinite Jest also sounds similar – Baseball is replaced with Tennis, but the theme of addiction, as well as a blasé attitude towards the sex everyone is definitely having, are both definitely there.
I think the UBA is the better book. As I remember it, and I read it a long time ago, it works on the human level as well as the allegorical in a way that made the character of Henry Waugh more meaningful than any of the characters in Fielding. Waugh was creating the theological/mythological saga of the game, but Coover was creating the story of Waugh’s withdrawal from the “real” world (in the sense that any novel’s world is real) into the world of the game.
The parts of Fielding I liked best were the descriptions of fielding. As I said in my blog post about it a couple of weeks ago (here), I found the cliche plot devices a bit disappointing. As for the way sex bappens but without much attention from the characters or the author, I got the impression that Harbach was discreet, almost diffident, about it in an old-fashioned way. But I have no idea why.
I just finished reading it, I think is a great book, however, at the end I think the author struggled a bit with how to manage Pela’s father, and he went for the fastest shortcut.
Recently I’ve noticed that about novels, they build up greatly for the finale, but at the end, they just don’t seem to know what to do with all that momentum. The Road felt a bit similar.