The New York Times‘ sports media guy, Richard Sandomir, published this piece on Stephen King’s newest. Read the novella last week, and, frankly, I wonder if it would have received all this attention had it been written by a different (read: not as famous) author. While it’s a sufficient story, we keep waiting — knowing it’s a work by the master of macabre — for the shoe to drop. When it does, it really doesn’t seem that big a deal, IMHO.
The Times article isn’t so much of a review as about other famous novelists who wrote about baseball, including Bernard Malamud, Don DeLillo, Robert Coover, Philip Roth, and Mark Harris, among others.
“King spent two weeks writing “Blockade Billy” and a third week polishing it,” Sandomir writes. I’m kind of surprised it took that long. There’s been a lot of buzz because of the fact that King is a baseball fan, having published fiction (The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon) and non-fiction (Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season, with Stewart O’Nan), on the subject.
I’ll have more to say on Blockade Billy in a review for Bookreporter.com in the near future.
Has anyone else read it? What do you think?
is available on Amazon.com,
{ 4 comments }
Hi Ron,
I have read it and kinda agree with the general concensus. That is, OK, but nothing great. Without creating a spoiler, I think the setup–an old man talking to author King–was a good device, but the execution of the story fell short for me…lacking some of King's typical metaphysical surprise.
Without King's name, this book may not have gotten published, period.
The old man acting as first person narrator of a story about pre-1960s baseball reminded me of another one: Philip Roth's The Great American Novel.
I haven't yet read Roth's Great American Novel…it is on deck with a couple of other books I am teeing up, Pat Jordan's False Spring and Three Nights in August by Buzz Bissinger…which would you recommend to read next?
Wasn't impressed with Bissinger; that kind of deep in-game analysis has been done several times. Jordan's book was good, but if you have the time — since it's such a big book — like that post-war era of the game, and want to relax with fiction, I'd go for Roth.
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