FIELDER'S CHOICE: An Anthology of Baseball Fiction

by Jerome--Ed. Holtzman ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 4, 1979

Editor Holtzman has done an unusually graceful job of balancing the light and the serious in this grouping of 27 stories and cuttings; and there's lots of serious stuff to blend in here because baseball's imagery and psychology have attracted so many serious writers--Robert Coover, Philip Roth, John Sayles, Bernard Malamud (all represented by nicely chosen selections from novels), and Andre Dubus, for example. Not that the more obvious comic foreground is neglected: here's Thurber, here's Runyon, here's Lardner, here's Frank Sullivan (with his Cliche Expert), and here also--in the volume's only real lapse--is P. G. Wodehouse's atypically strained ""The Pitcher and the Plutocrat"" (which also appears, under a slightly different title, in the new Wodehouse collection, The Swoop, above). Holtzman can be forgiven for wanting a Wodehouse in his book, however, especially since all the other entries--from H. Allen Smith's famed ""Rhubarb"" to a nice surprise from Chaim Potok--are just the right choices for this celebration of the frequent intersection of baseball fandom with literary sensibilities.

Pub Date: April 4, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1979

Categories: FICTION