FIELD OF BROKEN DREAMS: Michael Bishop’s Brittle Innings

The essence of creativity, according to Arthur Koestler’s classic analysis of The Act of Creation, is bisociation: the bringing together of disparate notions in such a way that a kind of cross-fertilization occurs and the compound becomes greater than the mere sum of its parts. Some of the partners brought together in this fashion seem to be made for one another from the very beginning, whereas others initially strike the onlooker as so bizarre as to be virtually unthinkable, but even the most unlikely juxtapositions are capable of synergistic association in the right circumstances.

Brittle Innings is a novel about Frankenstein’s monster playing minor league baseball in the American Deep South during World War II. At first sight this may appear to be one of the most ridiculous combinations of motifs ever devised, but Michael Bishop demonstrates that it is not—and, indeed, that there is a unique propriety in it. The fundamental tale which is told in the story is so nearly universal that there are very few lengthy works of fiction which do not contain some form or echo of it, but precisely for this reason it is a tale which cannot be renewed and revivified and given claws to catch the heart without being encoded in some peculiarly striking fashion.

It is possible to discern the meaning and significance of Frankenstein’s monster as an allegory of the human predicament purely in terms of the text which created him and its imagistic legacy, and it is possible to discern the meaning and significance of baseball as a microcosm of human hopes and desires without reference to any texts at all, so it is not immediately apparent why the two would benefit from fusion. We know, though, that everything stands out more clearly against a contrasting background and this particular juxtaposition is a contrast indeed. The point, of course, is not simply to make things stand out clearly, but if possible to make the resultant clarity so sharp and so insistent as to burn its image on the brain behind the beholding eye. This task requires an artist of great ability, and the more startling the contrast the greater that ability must be. Michael Bishop has already shown himself to be a writer of considerable skill and consistent grace—not to mention awesome versatility—but Brittle Innings is the book which reveals exactly how great his ability is.

Brittle Innings contains three narratives nested one within another. The outer frame is narrated by a sports journalist, explaining how and why he had to make a deal with an aging baseball scout, by which the journalist will get to write the book he wants to write—an educative account of the scout’s career—if he first writes a book on his subject’s behalf, telling the story which he yearns to tell. The main part of the text is this story: a first-person account of the long-gone season which first raised and then put paid to the scout’s hope of being a major-league player. Contained within it, however, is yet another first-person narrative: the partial autobiography of the monster Victor Frankenstein made, whose early career was described in a series of letters written by Robert Walton aboard a vessel trapped in the Arctic ice, which eventually came into the hands of Mary Shelley and were published by her as a “novel.”

The protagonist of the main narrative, Danny Boles, is a stammering seventeen-year-old high-school student in Tenkiller, Oklahoma, when he is spotted as a potential professional shortstop by the sister of the owner of a team in the Chattahoochee Valley League (whose territory overlaps the border between Georgia and Alabama). It is 1943 and the draft has decimated the pool of available players; part of Danny’s attraction is that he seems unlikely to be judged fit for military service. He gladly signs for the Highbridge Hellbenders and sets off to join them, aware of the irony of the fact that his smidgin of Cherokee blood is travelling the infamous “trail of tears” in reverse. The journey is nightmarish; the GIs with whom the train is crammed look upon him with unanimous naked hatred and he is robbed and raped by a sergeant who claims to know his allegedly-despicable father. This recalls to Danny’s mind the horror of an occasion when his father (whom he has not seen in years) struck him across the throat, with the result that he could not talk at all for two years; he is struck dumb again and arrives at his destination speechless.

Partly by virtue of his dumbness and partly by virtue of his protruding ears, Danny is nicknamed Dumbo by his new team-mates. Although they are rough-mannered and bad-tempered most of them treat him reasonably kindly most of the time, but the incumbent shortstop whose rival he has been appointed to be, Buck Hoey, is implacably hostile and hateful from the outset. Danny’s nightmare is briefly intensified when he is allocated a half-share in a room occupied by the grotesque giant Henry “Jumbo” Clerval, but he comes to realize that this is actually a position of privilege (the giant has never before allowed anyone to share with him). Clerval becomes his protector, and in exchange the infallibly-discreet Danny becomes the giant’s confidant and confessor.

As the season progresses Danny gradually wins a reputation as a good player, but it is his awkward relationship with a girl—the daughter of the team’s lone middle-aged groupie—which eventually allows him to break through his psychological barrier and recover his voice. In the meantime, news of his father’s death is given to him by Franklin D. Roosevelt himself, after a game at which the touring president has made a morale-boosting appearance. The fates of Danny and the monster become increasingly entwined, complicated by deceit and mystery in some matters but secured by honest mutual aid in other and more vital ones; in the end they are a team within a team, one for all and all for one.

The point of all this is, of course, that—as their nicknames suggest—Danny and the monster have a great deal in common. In essence, they are embarked upon precisely the same quest, which is summed up by the title of a book which the monster goes to some trouble to obtain: On Being a Real Person by Harry Emerson Fosdick. The monster is a prolific consumer of self-help books—and, for that matter, of books of many other kinds, all of which he seems to approach in much the same earnestly inquisitive fashion.

Since deciding not to end his life in the Arctic wilderness after taking his creator’s body from Walton’s ship, the monster’s sole project has been to fit himself for life in human society, in the hope of one day being accepted therein. By the time that Danny meets him he has contrived to ameliorate the unprepossessing color of his skin and to modify his altogether unnatural height (by surgically excising sections from his own leg-bones without the benefit of anaesthetic). He has become a vegetarian and a pacifist, and is now well-educated and well-spoken. Most important of all, he has found in the baseball diamond the one arena of human affairs where his capabilities will more than compensate for his unfortunate appearance. Through baseball, the monster has a chance of becoming an object of admiration among his potential fellows, if only he can make it into the major league. In essence, all of this is simply Danny’s problems and Danny’s dreams writ large. He too yearns to become a fully-fledged member of the human race, and he too must overcome a whole series of hurdles carelessly erected for him by his father/creator—whose one and only positive contribution to his life chances was to teach him how to play baseball.

The particular significance of baseball in American life—and hence, of course, in the story—is that it provides a kind of Utopian model of how society is supposed to work in an age of individualism. The performance of the individual, arising out of his own talent, skill, determination, and conformity with the rules, is everything—but everything the individual accomplishes contributes to the performance of the team, seamlessly uniting his personal interests with those of a greater whole (which extends, of course, to all the team’s supporters). Like getting married and having children, only much more so, being a baseball player offers a ready-made certificate of belonging to human society, and playing in the major leagues is the ultimate badge of honor.

Unfortunately, the model which looks so wonderful and so perfect in the abstract can only be as good in practice as the society which contains it, and the actual baseball team of which Danny and the monster are parts is riven with all the conflicts of the world without. For instance, the black pitcher who is better by far than any of the players—and is the bastard son of its aristocratic owner—is excluded from the all-white league and forced into a menial role, his superiority in the field of play generating envy and bitter resentment instead of admiration. This is merely the most glaringly obvious of the monstrous injustices, hatreds, and ironies which are scrupulously mirrored in the make-up and behavior of the Hellbenders. It is the marvellous detailing and deft extrapolation of this analogy which provides the measure of Michael Bishop’s accomplishment in producing this novel.

The power of Brittle Innings to move the reader derives from the fact that although Danny and the monster—like everyone else who ever travelled the reversed trail of tears which leads from childhood to adulthood—are desperate to become “real persons” it does not seem that the people around them are making much use of their own opportunities to do likewise. Nor is it obvious that the society they so earnestly desire to join has much use for members of the worthy sort which they are so ambitious to become. In the end, as we know from the very beginning by courtesy of the frame narrative, Danny’s chance to go up to the majors is ruined by Buck Hoey’s malice; he must settle for a very different role in the world of baseball—and, perforce, in the world per se. Were he alone in the story this would inevitably seem like his own failure, but he is not alone; if the role which the monster plays were not enough to make it abundantly clear that the failure is, in fact, the world’s, the journalist is there to pop up when everything is said and done, still so preoccupied with his own project that he cannot see anything more than a tall tale in the allegory he has been asked to pass on.

Brittle Innings appears to have begun life as a novella (the author’s notes include an acknowledgment to a screen-writer who produced a movie script based on some such early version) but its five hundred pages are not in the least excessive. There is not a wasted image or phrase in the text, which is extraordinarily rich and eminently readable from beginning to end. It is a very fine book indeed, and I cannot emphasize too heavily the insistence that no potential reader should allow himself or herself to be put off by the seeming freakishness of its premise. It is not the first good sequel to Frankenstein to be produced by an American SF writer—it is at least arguable that the whole “steampunk” craze was kick-started by Steven Utley and Howard Waldrop’s stirring “Black as the Pit, from Pole to Pole” (1977)—but Brittle Innings seems to me to be the best sequel imaginable, at least for the present. If the story were ever to reach the big screen the resultant movie would surely be a travesty, but if the making of such a movie were to persuade more people to read the book that would be ample justification for the endeavor.