The book is about a South Dakota kid, Henry Skrimshander, who is recruited to play baseball at Westish, a small fictional liberal arts college in Northern Wisconsin. The book focuses on [...]]]> I recently finished reading Chad Harbach’s much-praised “The Art of Fielding.” I loved this book, and I was also frustrated by it.

The book is about a South Dakota kid, Henry Skrimshander, who is recruited to play baseball at Westish, a small fictional liberal arts college in Northern Wisconsin. The book focuses on Henry and the player who recruited him, Mike Schwartz, as well as Westish’s president, Guert Affenlight, and his daughter, Pella. It also focuses on an affair between Affenlight and Henry’s roommate Owen.

Like anyone else who has done their time in academia (and as an English major at a small liberal arts college), I could appreciate many of the allusions to college life and the study of 19th century American literature in particular. Like many baseball fans, I could also appreciate the beautiful passages of the fictional book-within-a-book, “The Art of Fielding,” which is basically Henry’s Bible.

The book is beautifully written in many places. The trouble lay in, as many Amazon reviewers (and, strangely, so few professional reviewers) noted, the overly precious character names and distractingly unbelievable plot points and character actions. This book does not take place in the realm of the fantastic, so we are not asked to suspend all disbelief at the outset. Instead, it is familiar enough that it draws you into the campus setting, but unrealistic enough that it jars you out of the book repeatedly. These students (especially Owen, who seems to be at times a caricature of a gay man) don’t act like college students. Affenlight’s daughter Pella doesn’t act like any woman I’ve ever met; she, out of all the characters, rings the most false to me, particularly in how she interacts with the character of Henry. It’s also terribly unclear whether or not she is close to her father; one passage leads you to believe she is, then another refutes that conclusion.

Harbach could have been better served by his editor, who would have questioned things like a baseball player being allowed to read a book (and not be vilified by his teammates or coach) while he sat on the bench during games (even games he was playing in). Or the distractingly cute or overly obvious (for their literary allusions) character names. Even the basis of one of the main character’s fame, his discovery of a forgotten visit from Melville and how it subsequently shaped the college, seems so outlandish that you wonder if it is a joke. But then we are expected to take so much of the novel seriously, so it seems disjointed.

Passages like this kept me reading:

After each ball, he dropped back into his feline crouch, the fingertips of his small glove scraping the cooked earth. He barehanded a slow roller and fired to first on a dead run. He leaped high to snag a tailing line drive. Sweat poured down his cheeks as he sliced through the soup- thick air. Even at full speed his face looked bland, almost bored, like that of a virtuoso practicing scales. He weighed a buck and a quarter, maximum. Where the kid’s thoughts were — whether he was having any thoughts at all, behind that blank look — Schwartz couldn’t say. He remembered a line from Professor Eglantine’s poetry class: Expressionless, expresses God.

But then painfully awkward phrases like these made me wonder, again, where the editor was:

causing shadows to scurry rodentially over the grass…
Lake Michigan . . . a deep slate blue that perfectly matched his bathroom floor…
The cloud-clotted early light filtered through the bus windows and smeared itself on the drab pebbled olive of the seats…

Harbach has a particularly tin ear when it comes to female characters. The only women who really have any role are Pella (and I’ve already described some of the challenges with that character), a stereotypically effete professor named Eglantine, and Owen’s mom, who of course (because that’s what three out of the four women in this novel do) wants to immediately get involved with one of the male characters, despite how little sense that might make to the reader.

The character of Skrimshander ends up being difficult to know – who is he, really? And that’s a shame because he started out as an intriguing figure and he ends up being two-dimensional. His relationship with Schwartz starts off as promising, but then seems to fade away to nothing but working out together — yet we are supposed to believe that they are very close.

Passages that could have been removed completely (such as the pointless interaction between Henry’s sister and the pitcher Adam Starblind, or the lengthy descriptions of Henry’s time in Pella’s apartment) — should have been, by the aforementioned editor.

And yet, the occasional gorgeous passages that kept me intrigued, overall, by this work. Some of the passages were unforgettably beautiful, particularly the ones about Henry Skrimshander and his raw talent in the infield.

It’s a first novel, and perhaps it was destined to be uneven. But a better editor could have helped prevent that.

Well, picky Bostonians like myself [...]]]> Let’s be clear: Boston is very Irish no matter what day of the year it is. But if you are embracing the American take on St. Patrick’s Day, what better way to spend it than listening to music and enjoying a Guinness in one of Boston’s authentic Irish pubs?*

Well, picky Bostonians like myself would encourage you to at least, in deference to the actual Irish, go to a pub that has some authenticity to it, rather than one of the many interchangeable tourist traps that dot many streets near Faneuil Hall.

Boston is known as one of America’s most Irish cities. To this day, many locals are descended from Irish immigrants who came here in the nineteenth century, fleeing the potato famine. Boston’s special relationship with Irish culture and history is reflected in the many Irish pubs that dot every neighborhood and suburb of “the Hub.”

But be forewarned — asking Bostonians what the city’s best real Irish pubs are is a good way to start an argument.

With that in mind, here are what I think are some of the best Irish pubs in Boston.

The Green Briar – Brighton
Brighton Center boasts several authentic Irish pubs, foremost among them the Green Briar. The menu features Irish staples such as curry and chips and beef stew. The pub often attracts Irish sports fans who watch home teams via satellite here.

304 Washington Street
Brighton, MA 02135
617-789-4100

The Burren – Somerville
The Burren, in Somerville’s restaurant mecca of Davis Square, is named after a rocky region in County Clare, Ireland. The pub features authentic Irish music seven nights a week. This no-frills establishment offers a traditional Irish breakfast and a number of Irish beers on tap.

The Burren
247 Elm Street, Davis Square
Somerville MA 02144
617-776-6896

The Banshee – Dorchester
The Banshee, named after the wailing ghost of Irish legend, is located on “Dot” (Dorchester) Avenue, where many Irish pubs can be found. Irish locals gather here to watch Gaelic football. The pub also offers Irish staples like corned beef hash.

The Banshee
934 Dorchester Avenue
Dorchester MA 02125
617-436-9747

Brendan Behan – Jamaica Plain
The Brendan Behan, named after the controversial Irish writer and revolutionary, has long been a favorite of locals in JP. The pub is known for lively conversation rather than sports watching, and is often mentioned as one of the most authentically Irish spots in Boston.

Brendan Behan Pub
378 Centre Street
Jamaica Plain MA 02130

If you do want to stay in downtown Boston and brave the tourist crowds in Faneuil Hall, here is one pub that is, if not authentically Irish, at least steeped in local history.

The Green Dragon – Downtown
Allegedly the hangout of Revolutionary patriots like John Hancock, the Green Dragon was supposedly the place where a local patriot overheard British troops talking about the plan to march on Lexington and Concord. The eavesdropper hightailed it to the Old North Church to spread the word to Paul Revere.

The Green Dragon features Irish and New England food and live music.

The Green Dragon
11 Marshall Street
Boston, MA 02108
617-367-0055

No matter which Irish pub you visit on St. Patrick’s Day in Boston, you are bound to have a good time soaking up this city’s love for Irish culture — while you get your drink on with a Guinness or two.

*Evacuation Day is also a good reason to celebrate. It’s a uniquely Boston holiday that marks the anniversary (March 17, 1776) of the British withdrawal from Boston in 1776. The city had suffered through an 11-month siege in 1775-1776.

Read my new post about Wayne Morse, a principled and fearless US Senator from Oregon.

You resist. You’ve had it with second-class treatment, so you maintain your seat until you are physically removed [...]]]> You’re sitting in a non-smoking train car when somebody tells you that you must get up and go stand in the smoking car. Why? Because a white person wants your seat. Even though you paid for it.

You resist. You’ve had it with second-class treatment, so you maintain your seat until you are physically removed by three men who gang up on you.

When you’re removed from the car, people clap to see you’ve been put in your place.

I’m not talking about the Amtrak version of Rosa Parks. I’m talking about someone who fought the system seven decades before Rosa Parks did: Ida B. Wells.

Ida B. Wells had a hard life. She was born in Mississippi in the middle of the Civil War, an enslaved child of two enslaved people, Jim and Elizabeth Wells. Jim and Elizabeth became passionate pro-education and pro-justice activists during Reconstruction, and set an incredible example for their daughter and their seven other children. When she was just 16, Ida lost both her parents and one of her siblings in a yellow fever epidemic. She had been visiting her grandmother out in the country and even though she was urged by doctors to stay away until the epidemic passed, she went home to care for her now-orphaned brothers and sisters. At 16, with no money and few resources, she took on the task of raising her seven surviving siblings.

Wells found a position as a teacher and scraped together, with the help of an aunt, a living for her family. They moved to Memphis to be with the aunt, and Wells continued her education during school breaks.

The train incident happened in 1884, and it propelled Wells into a career of writing and political activism. She sued the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company and won, although the decision was reversed by the Tennessee Supreme Court. From that moment she began methodically studying the plight of African Americans both in her state of Tennessee and across the south. As an educator she decried the poor conditions of African American schools and the lack of equality not only in education but in legal protection, health care, and other areas.

Wells parlayed her new writing role into an editorship at the Free Speech and Headlight, a Memphis newspaper. Eventually she became a full-time writer and activist, in part because her strong views about education did not sit well with her employers.

As the post-Reconstruction era allowed the continued rise of white supremacist groups like the KKK, increasing numbers of African Americans were brutally murdered, most often for crimes they hadn’t committed. When three friends of Wells were lynched by a white mob in 1892 (their crime was defending their store — which competed with a white store for business — when a mob tried to burn it down), Wells began an anti-lynching crusade that she would champion for decades.

Wells left Memphis after her friends were killed and her own life was threatened, and she encouraged many other African Americans to do the same. She settled in Chicago, but spent much of her time traveling domestically and abroad to speak out on the topic of lynching. One of her most famous works, a pamphlet she titled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, was the springboard for a multi-year speaking campaign.

Wells did not shrink from the horrible realities of lynching, and she would not let her audience avoid it either. She studied hundreds of lynchings across the country with the discipline of an investigative journalist. She argued that 10,000 African Americans were lynched since Empancipation, and that many of them were killed because of baseless, fabricated, or minor criminal charges. She went on to claim that the real reason whites lynched African Americans was fear of economic competition and a need to reinforce white claims of black inferiority.

Wells was a co-founder of the National Association of Colored Women and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Always outspoken, she often clashed with other activists when she felt they were not militant enough.

Wells’s searing writing, her fearless campaign against lynching, and her political activism were extraordinary acts of bravery — especially in a time when people who looked like her could be killed for no reason at all.

*Scott Hoffman made me laugh when he suggested the “B” stood for “balls.”

Here’s one recent piece, about a merger gone awry:http://tinyurl.com/3jwlr6j

And another business article, on a local start-up’s new funding round: http://tinyurl.com/6bbzuns

You say grace before meals.
All right.
But I say grace before the play and the opera,
And grace before the concert and pantomime,
And grace before I open a book,
[...]]]> Recently while perusing a magazine I came across this beautiful quote from British writer G. K. Chesterton:

You say grace before meals.
All right.
But I say grace before the play and the opera,
And grace before the concert and pantomime,
And grace before I open a book,
And grace before sketching, painting,
Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing;
And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.