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Chabon's Summerland
I just finished slogging my way through Michael Chabon's 2002 young adult-oriented novel, Summerland. The good news? He loves baseball as much as he loves comic books. The bad news? This book is not very good, as a YA book, as a fantasy novel, as a novel at all.
The story, all 500 pages of it, follows an 11 year old named Ethan Feld, who has been chosen by an otherworldly "talent scout" who once pitched in the Negro League to save all of reality, the human realm and the faerie realms, from a scheme by Coyote to end and then recreate the world. Ethan, joined by two teammates from his lousy little league baseball team, embarks on a journey across Summerland, the land of giants, little people, sasquatches and thinly disguised figures of American legend, to stop Coyote (here a full-fledged villain, albeit a seemingly likeable one), rescue his father, and learn how to play baseball. Did I mention that Coyote (aka Prometheus, aka Loki, aka Raven, aka Shaitan) invented baseball, played by every race in Summerland?
Chabon never quite figures out what he's trying to do. Is this a book about a father and a son? Is it a fantasy about baseball? Is it one of those full-of-itself books that treats baseball like it's the cure for everything? (I love baseball, but for the love of Casey Stengel, it's just a game!) Is it meant for kids in a day and age when many kids don't care for any major sport? How many kids know anything about the Negro League? Is it for their parents, a "safe" children's book that turns back the clock to the time when baseball ruled America's free time?
It's certainly not meant for die-hard fantasy readers, as it is too derivative to give them much pleasure. For example, while a far cry from the quality of King and Straub's The Talisman, there are too many echoes of that novel in here. But whereas that book was not a kids' book (despite Jackie Sawyer's age), this one is, and I feel like Chabon has occasionally kept things too simple. I haven't read much children's literature, but compared to what I have read - Pratchett's Maurice comes to mind - this is rather flat.
I wish there were more to recommend to this. Chabon can write - he proved that with Kavalier and Clay. And baseball has always been a sport that works in the literary realm. (An example: The New Yorker's longtime baseball writer, Roger Angell, was also its fiction editor. How 'bout that?) But something is missing here. Maybe it's engaging characters. Maybe it's an engaging plot. Maybe it's an editor to slice this down to size.
A couple of things do work. The relationship between Ethan and his father is believable. (Maybe Chabon should have written a non-fantasy book about the father and son?) One of Ethan's weird teammates turns out to be a changeling, and his discovery of his true self is well-handled. And the idea that Coyote invented the idea of the designated hitter, with dire consequences for the first faerie team to use it, is rather cute.
But on the whole, this book falls flat. At times, it gets interesting. But it never gets good.
The story, all 500 pages of it, follows an 11 year old named Ethan Feld, who has been chosen by an otherworldly "talent scout" who once pitched in the Negro League to save all of reality, the human realm and the faerie realms, from a scheme by Coyote to end and then recreate the world. Ethan, joined by two teammates from his lousy little league baseball team, embarks on a journey across Summerland, the land of giants, little people, sasquatches and thinly disguised figures of American legend, to stop Coyote (here a full-fledged villain, albeit a seemingly likeable one), rescue his father, and learn how to play baseball. Did I mention that Coyote (aka Prometheus, aka Loki, aka Raven, aka Shaitan) invented baseball, played by every race in Summerland?
Chabon never quite figures out what he's trying to do. Is this a book about a father and a son? Is it a fantasy about baseball? Is it one of those full-of-itself books that treats baseball like it's the cure for everything? (I love baseball, but for the love of Casey Stengel, it's just a game!) Is it meant for kids in a day and age when many kids don't care for any major sport? How many kids know anything about the Negro League? Is it for their parents, a "safe" children's book that turns back the clock to the time when baseball ruled America's free time?
It's certainly not meant for die-hard fantasy readers, as it is too derivative to give them much pleasure. For example, while a far cry from the quality of King and Straub's The Talisman, there are too many echoes of that novel in here. But whereas that book was not a kids' book (despite Jackie Sawyer's age), this one is, and I feel like Chabon has occasionally kept things too simple. I haven't read much children's literature, but compared to what I have read - Pratchett's Maurice comes to mind - this is rather flat.
I wish there were more to recommend to this. Chabon can write - he proved that with Kavalier and Clay. And baseball has always been a sport that works in the literary realm. (An example: The New Yorker's longtime baseball writer, Roger Angell, was also its fiction editor. How 'bout that?) But something is missing here. Maybe it's engaging characters. Maybe it's an engaging plot. Maybe it's an editor to slice this down to size.
A couple of things do work. The relationship between Ethan and his father is believable. (Maybe Chabon should have written a non-fantasy book about the father and son?) One of Ethan's weird teammates turns out to be a changeling, and his discovery of his true self is well-handled. And the idea that Coyote invented the idea of the designated hitter, with dire consequences for the first faerie team to use it, is rather cute.
But on the whole, this book falls flat. At times, it gets interesting. But it never gets good.
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Part, I guess, is that I rather enjoy the "tall tale" rambling style of the book, which is broad enough to fit a lot of what you mention and IMO do it well.
Of course, Milage -Does- Vary, and I'm sorry that it did in this case.
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