Customer Reviews

The Greatest Slump of All Time

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've read Kinsella, Malamud, Harris, Lardner... and this remains my favorite piece of baseball fiction -- and it's well up the list on favorite reads, period. You'll laugh a lot, and think about it long after you've put it down. The characters are vividly drawn, the dialogue crackles, and while the story has its exaggerated comedic moments (there's an amazing no-hitter that remains a personal favorite), the tone is realistic and the details ring true. Carkeet never makes fun of his characters -- ok, almost never -- but he sure makes them fun.

Highly recommended, and if you enjoy this, you'll also enjoy his novels on linguist-for-hire (I'm not making this up) Jeremy Cook, _Double Negative_, _The Full Catastrophe_, and _The Error of Our Ways_.

The Greatest Slump is one of the greatest baseball stories. A hapless team of talented misfits struggle with their lives and psychological problems as they make their way through a winning season. Professional baseball has never been funnier. A classic of sports "anti-psych". Carkeet writes better than almost anyone else in America, and in this novel he pins the favorite pass-time on the point of his pen and shakes it until we are all splattered in laughter.

In a stroke of what may be coincidence, all the key players on a National League contender fall into clinical depression. Each teammate despairs in the face of crushing personal challenges that threaten to make the each day too horrible to endure. Yet the team's collective talent and years of mechanical "good habits" propel the club ever higher toward a seemingly inevitable and fatal humiliation. Life, friendship, honesty and humility eventually prevail. This book has a message for young male professionals and those who would understand them.

Novelist and Linguist David Carkeet's take on the great American pastime is really a take on the great American dream, in all its comic absurdity. Without giving away any spoilers, the denoument is inverted from that of the usual sports story. The fact that it's an ensemble cast seems to have been off-putting to some readers, but the basic theme is that of any "team" - and by inference, a microcosm of how we assemble ourselves as a whole in society as collections of individuals. We are more than the sum of our parts (or neuroses), but at the same time nothing without hanging on to our individual identities and idiosyncracies.

This is an often hilarious book, but it's by no means a happy one. The observations about baseball, and of baseball, are incisive, but at the same time you don't need to be a baseball fan to enjoy the novel. It's one of the subtle characteristics of this book, as with any (well-done) book about a subculture, in that if you know the subculture, you'll recognize a nuanced description of it, but if you don't, you'll feel immersed in a new world.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend reading this in the dark of winter after your team has choked out yet another futile season, but as a book of deep comic depression, it makes for good summer reading when you have a live ballgame to fall back on when you're all done.

A minor classic in 9 chapters.

I wanted to like this book.

The main problem for me was that this book had no discernible plot. It was just Carkeet moving from one quirky player's problems to another quirky player's problems. I only read until page 50, and the book's plot had not start moving at that point. Not a good sign.

I also didn't like the tone of the writing. Carkeet seems very taken by his quirky style and cleverness. It overwhelms the book, and is ultimately what keeps the plot bogged down in minutiae.

Perhaps his existing fans will like this book, but I found it boring and unenjoyable.

Interesting, fun-to-read book about a mismatched bunch of eccentrics, some of them would-be psychos, who come together to form a pretty good baseball team without losing their hangups, uncertainties, fears, hopes, dreams and odd-ball ways.

At times a laugh-out-loud book, always a fun, "can't-put-it-down" book especially for lovers of baseball, the game and all the personalities and stories that surround it. Not for the baseball purist, however, just the fun lovers. As with life and most good books, it has a serious side mixed with humor, compassion, anger and, always, emotion. Good Read...(Out of Print, but worth trying to find...)

This is a great baseball novel. My hat goes off to the author who captures the spirit of not only the game but of the players

This was recommended as a great baseball book, and perhaps that sets the bar pretty low. Carkeet knows baseball, writing easily about nuance and detail of the game - to the point where a casual fan or non-fan will probably be at a loss. The problem is with the structure. The premise is that every member of a contending professional baseball team simultaneously falls into depression. Hijinks follow. Unfortunately, the narrative clicks so quickly from one character to the next, and there are nine protagonists, that it eventually becomes impossible to sort out one character from another. I found myself paging along, not remembering which character had which peculiarity, waiting for something to happen. Very little happened.

Carkeet's prose is cute, and occasionally powerful. But the book is not particularly strong.