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A review by ssindc
The Celebrant by Eric Rolfe Greenberg
5.0
What a strange and wondrous, albeit thin and quirky niche piece of historical fiction, and, as a special bonus, a gratifying and fulfilling novel! It didn't surprise me to learn that the original - published now more than twenty years - saw print through a University press; so, kudos to the University of Nebraska Press for recognizing the genius of the work and anticipating that the book could become a gift to those lucky enough to receive it.
I wish I'd made a note as to how it ended up on my reading list. I expect I saw it on the newspaper sports page at the beginning of the baseball season, which would make sense, to the extent that it's on the list of Sports Illustrated's Top 100 Sports Books of All Time. So let's get the obvious out of the way: if you don't know or care about (and, potentially, love) baseball , this book is not for you. It's an homage to the history of the game, if not a meditation or a benediction. If the phenomenon of sports iconography, of unabashed hero worship (particularly of the legends such as, here, Christy Mathewson) means nothing to you, I expect this will leave you cold. But if you love the game, if you've read, I dunno, Men at Work, or Summer of '49, or, Shoeless Joe, or, more recently, Moneyball or, on the fiction side of things, The Art of Fielding, or even the are-you-kidding-me, "is it more bizarre that folks wrote, published, or read this" restropsective Stephen King chronicle The Faithful, ... well, this is a must read.
But ... but ... as geeky and as detailed and as micro and as myopically obsessive the baseball theme dominates, there is ... so ... much ... more to this - both in terms of the history - yes, lots and lots and lots of baseball (in the early 1900's, particularly the professionalization of the league, the leagues, the players, the World Series, and yes, the scandals) but also the immigrant (particularly Jewish) experience, life in New York City, travel (trains and those new automobiles), department stores, hotels, ... and, yes, the story itself, of coming of age, and family, and of expanding horizons, and self-examination, and change, and love, and loss.
Part of me wishes that the baseball minutiae wasn't as dense so that more readers might embark up on the journey, meet the protagonist's family, and wonder at what aspects of the history are real versus imagined. But I can't imagine how non-baseball fans could penetrate the initial layer of breathless recounting (or re-imagining) of individual games (regardless how epic or significant they've become over time).
Which brings me to the conclusion that I'll join those that deemed this one of the best baseball books ever, ... and that's plenty good enough for me.
I wish I'd made a note as to how it ended up on my reading list. I expect I saw it on the newspaper sports page at the beginning of the baseball season, which would make sense, to the extent that it's on the list of Sports Illustrated's Top 100 Sports Books of All Time. So let's get the obvious out of the way: if you don't know or care about (and, potentially, love) baseball , this book is not for you. It's an homage to the history of the game, if not a meditation or a benediction. If the phenomenon of sports iconography, of unabashed hero worship (particularly of the legends such as, here, Christy Mathewson) means nothing to you, I expect this will leave you cold. But if you love the game, if you've read, I dunno, Men at Work, or Summer of '49, or, Shoeless Joe, or, more recently, Moneyball or, on the fiction side of things, The Art of Fielding, or even the are-you-kidding-me, "is it more bizarre that folks wrote, published, or read this" restropsective Stephen King chronicle The Faithful, ... well, this is a must read.
But ... but ... as geeky and as detailed and as micro and as myopically obsessive the baseball theme dominates, there is ... so ... much ... more to this - both in terms of the history - yes, lots and lots and lots of baseball (in the early 1900's, particularly the professionalization of the league, the leagues, the players, the World Series, and yes, the scandals) but also the immigrant (particularly Jewish) experience, life in New York City, travel (trains and those new automobiles), department stores, hotels, ... and, yes, the story itself, of coming of age, and family, and of expanding horizons, and self-examination, and change, and love, and loss.
Part of me wishes that the baseball minutiae wasn't as dense so that more readers might embark up on the journey, meet the protagonist's family, and wonder at what aspects of the history are real versus imagined. But I can't imagine how non-baseball fans could penetrate the initial layer of breathless recounting (or re-imagining) of individual games (regardless how epic or significant they've become over time).
Which brings me to the conclusion that I'll join those that deemed this one of the best baseball books ever, ... and that's plenty good enough for me.