Randy Greenwald

As has been noticed, I don’t have much chance to blog these days. The schedule simply does not allow it. I’m sad about that and hope someday to pick the pace up again.

I did, however, want to take a moment to post a couple of notes about books read and being read.

Over twenty-five years ago I read William Manchester’s first two volumes in his biography of Winston Churchill. I reported earlier that I had recently been able to purchase both volumes and was going to reread them.

Then for Christmas I was given the third volume. I was about to skip the first two and read the third, but a friend on Sunday reported that he was re-reading the first two, and so that is what I’ve begun. I’m only 30 pages in, but I am reminded of the depth and interest of Manchester’s writing and of the fascinating subject that Churchill is. When I read some biographies, I get information. When I read Manchester, I get an education.

I’m glad I’m starting over. Reading all three, of course, may be a year-long endeavor!

The other note I wanted to share was one additional bit from Michael Chabon’s Summerland which I mentioned on Monday. His writing in this book at times sparkles. For reasons I can’t fathom, I loved his account of a giant’s temper tantrum. The account runs three pages, which I can’t excerpt here. But a taste:

“He sputtered and raged; he snorted and choked on his own saliva. He threatened punishments and uttered oaths so heinous and foul that even to summarize them here in mildest of terms would curl the very pages of the book you are holding and make your hands and fingertips hum as if they were swarming with bees.”

For a while I’ve been urged to read something by Michael Chabon, a Pulitzer prize winning contemporary novelist. When I picked up his 2002 novel Summerland and scanned the blurb on the back, I knew I had my point of entry. A fantasy novel with baseball at its core – it begged to be read.

I’m not qualified or able to give a proper review of the book. Reviewers tend to suggest that the book fell short of its potential. As a ‘young adult’ fantasy, it is measured by a certain Hogwartian Wizard. The book was sometimes hard to grasp because so many of the creatures and characters had to be explained. Much new had to be learned before the pieces began to make sense. The pace picked up, however and I found myself well immersed in the last third and intrigued to see the end.

Perhaps this was not Chabon’s, or the genre’s, best. I’m not qualified to tell. But there were gems buried here that made the book a delight for THIS reader.

I know little of Chabon, but he has to be a lover of baseball. He has to be one who understands and appreciates the game.

“A baseball game is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day.”

He writes with such delight in his subject and in the game:

“The truth was that Sasquatches have never been passionate about baseball.”

And he sees how baseball can be the context for explaining so much else:

“Can you see love? Can you touch it?”
“Well,” Ethan said, hoping it was not a trick question. “No, love is invisible and untouchable, too.”
“And when your pap puts on that big Roosters jersey of his, and sits there watching you in the bleachers with the smile never leaving his face? And slaps palms with you after a game even though you struck out four times looking?”
“Huh?” Ethan said.
“Some things that are invisible and untouchable can nevertheless be seen and felt.”

Most fascinating, though, are the themes in the book which, if not Christian in origin, are able to be read in a Christian way. The villain is a creature named Coyote who, in our world, is known as Satan, who says:

“I would like to put an end to existence as we know it.”

His ultimate aim is to poison the universe at its root, but along the way, he ruins what makes life enjoyable. Any traditional baseball fan will appreciate that Coyote entered one world and began to whisper to the inhabitants that the game was boring:

“Is there anything duller in the game of baseball than watching the pitcher hit? Pitcher goes up there, if she even gets the bat off her shoulder it’s to give it a few weak waves like she’s shooing a little moth away. And then, big surprise, three or four pitches later, she’s out. Well,…why does the pitcher have to hit?…Let somebody else hit for the pitcher. One of the old-timers, somebody whose legs, maybe they’re not what they were….

Now we know the origin of the designated hitter rule. It IS the end of the world as we know it.

Coyote’s goal is to undo the creation. Whether he is able to do so or not, I suppose, should be left unsaid here. But the last section perhaps is reflective of what I have heard elsewhere, that Chabon is a fan of Tolkien and Lewis. Reading it made me wonder if he might also be a fan of N. T. Wright, or of the Bible itself.

Cracker Jacks and baseball are forever linked. One may not like everything that is in the box of Cracker Jacks, but there is always a prize that makes eating them worthwhile. So, too, is this book full of prizes worth seeking.