Review roundup, May 31

♦ The Austin American Statesman posted this review of Lefty: An American Odyssey, the biography of an underrated hurler for the New York Yankees in the 1930s-earl 1940s. Upshot: “…”Lefty” charms not for the way it tells the story of a life but for the way it captures the way Gomez saw and experienced the details of his world.”

♦ The New York Times‘ “Paperback Row” features mini-reviews of forthcoming releases, including Harbach’s The Art of Fielding: A Novel. Too brief to post an “upshot.”

♦ The Walworth County Sunday — a Wisconsin publication — included this review of Joyce Westerman: Baseball Hero. Westerman was a member of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

♦ Bosox Injection posted this review of Bruce Spitzer’s Extra innings. Is it just me, or does it not say that much about the actual story? To be sure, the writer liked the book, but I’m not exactly sure why since he barely touches on any details. Instead, he spends a fair amount of type discussing “chapter construct” and other myriad items that just strike me as non-sequitor. He opens the piece with this:

The average pitcher’s odds of pitching a no-hitter are .000645 percent, or, ballpark estimate, rounded off: one chance in a million. In the spring of 1938, Cincinnati Reds’ rookie pitcher Johnny Vander Meer pitched two no-hit games, back-to-back. The feat has never been duplicated.

But now comes a rookie author who has tossed two perfect games in the same outing; Spitzer surpasses Vander Meer by creating an authentic baseball hero tale about a re-animated Ted Williams and a credible futuristic world in this entertaining “Second Chance/ What If?” novel. [emphasis in the original]

And concluding with this:

Amidst our electric, current culture, that has far outpaced the now passé FUTURE SHOCK world envisioned by Alvin Toffler in 1984, Spitzer adroitly tosses a perfect game double-header; he pitches with a ball with 91 meticulously stitched chapters, encapsulating his meaning within a 395-page span of white space from cover to cowhide cover; the statistical result is a well-paced 4.30 PPC average. (Page Per Chapter.)

Is this this determining factor when it comes to literary quality, the ideal number of pages per chapter. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there have been ergonomic studies on this, but it doesn’t seem like much of an endorsement.