The Cue Card: Books, Movies, Music and More

With the opening of baseball season, I sought out “The Art of Fielding” as my next read. I have long been an avid follower of America’s pastime and once worshipped Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine circa 1973 to 1979. The team’s catcher Johnny Bench is still my all-time baseball hero. So I was psyched to pick up Chad Harbach’s debut novel, which I knew just two things about: (a) that it was about baseball and (b) that it had made the New York Times 10 best books of 2011 list: a combination of which definitely perked my interest.

But I didn’t realize “The Art of Fielding” would be a long, sprawling novel of 512 pages nor did I know its storyline, characters, or the gay and straight relationships within. I went in blind and was rewarded with a very entertaining and heartfelt read. It enticed me with its strong sense of place of a Midwestern college campus and main characters who I felt entwined to by the end to the point that I’d miss them when all was said and done.

Many probably know, the novel’s about a baseball star shortstop named Henry Skrimshander who’s recruited and mentored to play at a small college along the shores of Lake Michigan. On the field, Henry is as good as gold, tying the record for innings without an error and catching the attention of major league scouts; that is until one game a throw gets wildly away from him and beans a teammate, forever affecting the fates of five people. There’s Henry, who loses his way amid self-doubt and team captain Mike Schwartz, who’s mentored Henry at the expense of himself; and college president Guert Affenlight, a Melville scholar, who finds himself falling dangerously in love with a student, Owen Dunne, who's Henry's gay roommate; and finally Pella Affenlight, Guert’s daughter, who returns to the college town to start again after a failed marriage.

It’s a coming of age story primarily about male relationships and friendships, and about love and loss. It’s considerably more than just a baseball story (you don’t necessarily need to be a baseball fan to enjoy it), though the sports writing in the book is quite impressive. Author Chad Harbach definitely knows the sights, sounds and feelings around a baseball diamond, and pursues the mental aspects, as well as the blood, sweat and tears an athlete goes through with great insight. The novel is quite dark at points as the main characters all seem to be going through a tipping point or break down at the same time. It’s likely your college anxieties will resurface as you speed through “The Art of Fielding” hoping for a brighter day for Henry, Schwartzy, Guert and Pella. I also enjoyed the school’s connection to Herman Melville, which the author creatively conjures toward the beginning of the novel.

You won’t soon forget this book as it breathes considerably life into its scenes. You go through a lot amid its 512 pages, rising and falling with its cast. And though it’s long, it’s a fast, breezy read that keeps you coming back (though you might not like some things that happen) until its final conclusion plays out. Kudos to Chad Harbach for his engaging debut hit, which apparently has been optioned by HBO in the hope of turning it into a series.

It was a hundred years ago last night at 2:20 a.m. the RMS Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. It’s humbling and shocking even now, thinking of the world’s biggest, fastest ship up to that point (deemed “unsinkable”) and more than 1,500 of its passengers disappearing on its maiden voyage into the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Titanic’s story is one so visual now to our imaginations, as if it were engraved into our DNA. It’s long since taken on mythological proportions.

With its 100th anniversary, I couldn’t help but take the plunge into the massive coverage of all things Titanic. I’ve seen a few Titanic TV specials recently: one on its engine room staff that worked so hard to keep the lights on; another on the iceberg that hit it; another on James Cameron’s analysis of the underwater wreck site that was found in 1985; and finally the 1958 film “A Night to Remember,” which is taken from this book of the same name.

But there’s so much more on Titanic: new research, new books, new theories; all recently banking on the 100th anniversary. But what intrigued me was to go back to the very first book on it, Walter Lord’s classic “A Night to Remember” from 1955. After all, I had never read it before this.

Indeed it is a great source for what happened on the night of April 14-15, 1912. As Lord wrote: “This book is really about the last night of a small town.” And for sure, Titanic was that big and carried that many people. It was like a microcosm of Edwardian society, with cabins and luxuries designated by class, and women and children given first seats on the lifeboats. Never again would the world be quite like this in such circumstances.

“A Night to Remember” reads as if the action were happening right then and there, making it quite dramatic as the tragedy unfolds. From the late sighting of the iceberg, to the damage assessment, call to lifeboats, distress signals, eventual sinking and freezing rescue, Lord pieces together such a vivid picture, strengthened by the 63 survivors he spoke to in writing the book. The quotes of conversations he uses, which enliven the account, are not made up but are amazingly given as remembered by survivors.

“Night” reads a bit like a Jon Krakauer book. And indeed, Walter Lord was one of the first writers to bring journalistic narrative to history, which we are so much better for. The book’s not weighed down with a lot of documentation, speculation or background (for that there are many others), but it briskly recounts in an organized, accurate way what happened and when on that fateful night and the many colorful people involved and lost. Interesting roles are played by Captain Edward John Smith, Titanic’s builder Thomas Andrews, ocean liner president Bruce Ismay, Fifth Officer Harold Lowe (who went back to pick up survivors) and Second Officer Charles Lightoller who survived by balancing with others on an overturned collapsible lifeboat.

After the ship went down, it's amazing that some of the passengers were able to swim to a couple of these collapsible boats in the 28-degree Fahrenheit water and somehow survive until the rescue ship picked them up a few hours later. “Night” conjures scenes like these that you won’t believe and won’t be able to forget. It makes you wish you could change all the little circumstances that led up to the disaster: if only the Titanic weren’t going so fast through an ice field on a moonless night, or if only they saw the iceberg sooner, or if only the ship the Californian 10 miles away came to their distress, or if only they loaded the lifeboats with more people -- or, or, or ….

It’s a great book that can do all that. My only wish is perhaps that author Walter Lord had written an afterword on it that went into the disaster’s hearings a bit. Some of the survivors’ testimony would have been quite interesting, too. But still “A Night to Remember” is quite a night, and there’s more interesting details in Lord’s book “The Night Lives On” from 1986. Sadly he died in 2002, but not before consulting on that other Titanic movie you might have heard of. Apparently Lord once crossed the Atlantic on the RMS Olympic, the Titanic’s sister ship in 1926. So perhaps that is where he got his zest for capturing such a sea story.

If you happen to see the 1958 film of it, which you should, watch for Sean Connery, apparently he is amid the chaos as a deck crewman.

“The Solitude of Prime Numbers” was a pick from my book club, which I wasn’t expecting to like, though actually I didn’t know anything about. But like a moth to a flame I was completely drawn in by this sad, moving novel from 2008. Chalk it up to author Paolo Giordano’s talented storytelling, which captured my imagination and made me follow these damaged characters with such interest.

It’s a love tale of sorts between two lonely outcasts who are both haunted by childhood tragedies. The girl, Alice, lives with a crippled leg from a ski accident and a bullying father. The gifted boy, Mattia, carries the guilt of abandoning his mentally challenged twin sister who disappears and is never found. Alice and Mattia meet in high school, where they sense in each other a kindred spirit of inner pain. He deals with it by cutting himself, she by being anorexic.

To Mattia, who later becomes a mathematician, he and Alice are like twin prime numbers, “alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other.” They separate when he accepts a research job in another country and she marries a local doctor, leaving issues between them unresolved. But many years later they resurface when their paths cross again.

The ending that follows is a bit inevitable but a surprise all the same. The novel leaves quite an impact long after it is over. I found it a quick read with an underlying suspensefulness that made me keep turning the pages. Its often beautiful passages and clever use of math metaphors are quite transcendent.

I was lucky to come across the author (an Italian physicist) in 2010 at a book festival where he read aloud the chapter in which the twin sister goes missing. I remember it being quite disturbing and yet visual. I thought what is this? And now I know. “The Solitude of Prime Numbers” is a small tour de force on the weight of childhood trauma, love, and loneliness. Apparently it was made into a movie in Italy in September 2010.

I typically don’t read spy novels or thrillers, but I was looking for a quick read while on a trip that would be entertaining. Chris Pavone’s debut novel “Expats” was so highly recommended on its book jacket (in retrospect don’t trust these) by Patricia Cornwell, John Grisham and others that I thought surely this would be it. Grisham even compared it to the early works of Ken Follet, Frederick Forsyth and Robert Ludlum; oh, but if only this were true.

At the beginning, “Expats” is quite promising and the idea of it intriguing. A husband (Dexter) gets a new job overseas as a computer security analyst for a high-paying client, which leads his wife (Kate) to decide to quit her secret life as a CIA spy and come clean living as an expat with him in Luxembourg. She seeks to end the duplicity in their marriage from her CIA days and to become a stay-at-home mom to their two sons learning the ways of a foreign country. But life gets too boring for Kate, sitting around dreading the laundry and vacant other moms! And soon suspicions lead her back to undercover work, first in regards to a couple she senses aren’t whom they say are, and ultimately to her husband who apparently has secrets of his own. (Quite a marriage.)

The whole expat atmosphere and deceit within the marriage propel the novel and make the plot interesting. But intermixed flashbacks of Kate’s CIA past confuse and distract from the main storytelling. Also the slew of twists at the end are a turn off, as the tireless scheming (I agree here with the Times’ Janet Maslin) “exceeds all sane expectations.” And I mean that in a uncomplimentary way. It turns pretty nuts. I had to fight my way through to finish it, as it no longer seemed plausible or interesting to me. What starts out promising, spins off the rails in rapid form towards the end.

“The Cat’s Table” received considerable hype and good press when it came out this past October. Author Michael Ondaatje had won the Booker Prize for “The English Patient” in 1992 and his writing has long been revered. This novel seemed especially interesting in its premise about a 11-year-old boy’s unaccompanied three-week voyage on a ship from Sri Lanka to England in the early 1950’s. How adventurous and romantic a notion! I was definitely game for such a journey, particularly if it was based on Ondaatje’s own sea excursion when he was a boy. The book cover, too, of a large ship drew me to it like a chain hooked to an anchor. I would devour this story in no time!

Only trouble was, it didn’t exactly happen like that. In fact, I struggled in parts to stay with it and found the book took a considerable time to get through. Here I wanted to love it, and yet my mind, especially at the beginning was wandering off thinking about other things. Apparently, most readers liked the beginning of “Cat’s Table,” but some found it too disjointed toward the end. I was the opposite; I found the beginning rather hard to get into (despite the relatively easy style) but became more into it toward the end.

The start of the novel entails descriptions of various characters on the ship in short two to three page chapters. There’s the main character, Michael, and his boy pals, Cassius and Ramadhin who he runs around the ship getting into mischief with; then there’s the mishmash group of insignificants assigned with the boys to dine at the “cat’s table,” the one farthest away from the Captain’s. The details onboard are all quite charming, yet more than 100 pages into the book, I found myself grasping to find any semblance of a story. For heaven sakes move this ship along; will anything (ever) come of it?! Luckily, not long after that the waters start to churn so to speak and things become more interesting and resonant.

Thanks in part to Michael’s 17-year-old cousin Emily onboard who spicens things up and might be involved in a prisoner’s escape plans on the ship. The novel, too, opens up more in its storytelling and begins to intersperse Michael’s time on the ship with his life many years later, looking back on the trip. His nostalgia for the journey and how it affected him is quite poignant and pivotal to his coming of age. Years later, he ends up marrying Ramadhin’s sister and reconnects to other passengers, including the semi-mysterious Emily.

The novel is quite a subtle and intimate read, if you're looking for a lot of action and adventure, this might not be your cup of tea. Yet it snuck up on me in due time. By the end, I could feel the weight of its voyage and how it altered Michael and others sitting at the ship's cat’s table. For more info, check out author Michael Ondaatje being interviewed about the book on PBS.

My book club recently picked “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” because it seemed a more uplifting, lighter story than the dark, heavy reads we usually get to. And it turned out to fill that niche quite nicely.  It’s a satirical, different kind of novel that builds on the theme that having faith in the impossible can be quite a good thing.  

Written in the form of emails, letters, reports and diary entries, the novel is about a British fisheries scientist (Dr. Alfred Jones) who is called upon to somehow introduce salmon and fly-fishing into the country of Yemen.  It’s all part of a dream of a visionary sheikh who loves fishing and believes it will have a beneficial effect on his country. The British prime minister’s office latches on to the idea as well, in its search for a positive, feel-good story about the U.K. coming out of the Middle East instead of war.   

Yet to Alfred the idea is totally absurd as salmon aren’t suited to the Yemen’s desert conditions. Regardless he's pressured into the project, coordinating it with help of the sheikh’s U.K. agent Harriet Chetwode-Talbot.  The two make a dynamic team (one nerdy, the other sharp and elegant) along with the sheikh who inspires them to reach beyond what seems possible to reach their goal.  Along the way they face various obstacles, including self-serving bosses and politicians, who are spoofed in the book as pompous asses, as well as Dr. Jones’s unhelpful, unloving wife who provides no encouragement and takes off to another country for work.

Will the project succeed? Will Harriet get together with Alfred? You won’t know until the very end.  But the nice thing is it inspires you to believe in salmon in the Yemen, as it does Alfred, whose life is transformed by the project. In that way, it’s all quite uplifting. My only qualms with the whimsical book is that the narrative is a bit uneven with its various dispatches from different characters; some of which you want to read, others not so much. And the ending seemed perhaps as whimsical to believe as its salmon-in-the-desert premise, continuing its fairy tale-like quality.

Regardless I’m looking forward to it being released as a movie on March 9 with Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt. I suspect it will be a bit different than the book version, with more comedy, romance and perhaps a brighter ending.