Customer Reviews

The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The basic story of Coover's book is quite simple. Henry Waugh creates an intricate single-player baseball game that's played with dice. He plays entire seasons with his eight-team league; he keeps detailed statistics for every player and every game; he creates backstories and personalities for his players; he develops an administrative body for his league and imagines political debates among the players; and he acts as an official historian of the league, writing volumes of stories about the game and its players. When something shocking and unexpected occurs within the game, Henry gradually loses the ability to distinguish between reality and imagined events within the game. In the end, he is more or less consumed by his game.

As the synopsis above no doubt suggests, this story begs to be read as an allegory. One might read it as an allegory of God's relation to His creation. Henry, like God, is a creator who appears to have complete control over his creation, and yet, like God, his creation comes to take on a life of its own. When terrible things occur, he desperately wants to step in and set things right, but he also wants the game to retain its integrity. So Henry is like God in that he remains outside his creation even though it seems he could sometimes intervene to set things right. (Indeed, some of the game's players are said to have some sense of a higher power controlling their destiny.) One might also read Henry's relation to his game as an allegory of man's attempt to make sense of his world through art, religion, science, philosophy, etc. All that's really going on is the random event of rolling the dice, as, in some sense, all that's really going on in the universe is certain random physical events. And yet Henry imagines an entire alternate reality to make sense of the random events of his game. His player backgrounds and psychologies, his historical interpretations of the game, his imaginings of crowds and stadiums--all of this is intended to give the random throws of the dice some meaning, some significance to him. (This reading is also suggested by our one look at Henry at work in his job as an accountant. Rather than merely crunch the numbers, he reads a story of the operation of a business off his accounting books. He makes sense of the numbers by seeing them as evidence of something beyond themselves.) Finally, one might interpret Henry's relation to his game as an allegory of the artist's relation to his works.

These allegorical readings notwithstanding, it's also possible to read this book as a simple and moving story of one isolated man who gradually loses touch with reality. While Henry seems a decent enough chap, he has no family, only one friend (and not an especially close one), no real love interest, and no interests outside of his game. From what we learn in the novel, it seems his entire life consists in (occasionally) going to work at his mind-numbing job, stopping at the local bar to drown his sorrows, and sitting at his kitchen table playing his game. Since Henry's life is thoroughly dull and uneventful from the outside, the book focuses on what's going on in his mind. The focus of the book is his isolation and his attempts to create something important and lasting and to be a part of something larger than himself. The opportunity to create something important is what the game appears to provide him, and so it's not all that surprising that he ends up losing himself in his game.

This, of course, suggests that Henry can be understood as an example of the way in which alienated individuals can get lost in solitary pursuits that are made available to them by modern life. Because he lacks an community of people with which to identify, Henry ends up getting lost in his game in much the same way that others can get lost in books, television, the internet, etc. All of these things appear to provide their user with a connection to a world beyond himself, and yet total immersion in them brings you no closer to other people than you'd be without them.

I'd give this book 4.5 stars if I could; that seems a more accurate assessment. The reader should note that this isn't really a baseball book. It's more about the trappings of baseball--the statistics, the history, the players, the rites--than it is about the game itself. So this isn't a book for someone looking for a presentation of dramatic athletic feats; instead, it's a book for the baseball fan whose appreciation of the game is intellectual rather than visceral.

When I was in middle school, I was perhaps a little too much in love with a Nintendo football game called Tecmo Bowl. The game was great. I played out an entire season of NFL games using the video game teams, recording wins, losses, which teams made the playoffs, and keeping a running total of the player's stats for the season. I would even pretend to be the announcer, and sometimes recorded my commentary (painfully inane if I ever listened to it afterwards). Then I would go out in the back yard and reenact the highlights from each game. In many respects, I was similar to the protagonist of Robert Coover's The Universal Baseball Association, Inc.: J. Henry Waugh, Prop., who devises an intricate version of simulated baseball that he plays in his kitchen with dice. The difference is that I was twelve. Henry is fifty-seven.

To escape from reality into a world of imagination is regarded as endearing and encouraging in children - in adults, it seems pathetic and disturbing. As the novel progresses, we see how far Henry has taken his obsession: he concocts life stories for the players, composes songs supposedly popular in the alternate reality inhabited by the UBA, conducts pretend interviews, writes newspaper articles, lines his shelves with record books, and even conflates events of his own life with the lives of the players - and vice versa. What could drive a man to do all this? Certainly not a love for the game. In fact, Henry admits that real baseball bores him. Possible explanations seem to be desire for control, intense boredom, overwhelming feelings of isolation, or simply inability to mature and face the problems of adult life.

However, we are not given a simple explanation for Henry's habit, nor are we led to believe that his actions are to be thought of in a negative light. In many ways, Henry's Association is an exemplification of mankind's drive to create. This issue - is Henry hiding or creating? - forms the most compelling theme of The Universal Baseball Association, as well of providing much of Henry's internal conflict.

But Coover isn't content to deliver a novel with a simple theme, or ask simple questions - and therein lays both the novel's greatness and its folly. We encounter lengthy stream-of-consciousness passages, during which Henry's mind loses the ability to distinguish creation from reality. We hear Henry presented as a god, complete with powers over life and death. We are treated to parallels between creation, destruction, war, and the curious relationship between omnipotence and impotence. The entire last chapter sounds like Absurdist Theater. As we near the end, there can be no doubt that Henry is an overt schizophrenic, and yet, like Humbert Humbert, Henry has a way of making sickness seem normal.

In the opulent extravagance of the novel lies a certain genius. The flights of fancy taken by Henry's supple mind suggest meaning on a wide variety of levels. Not all of it succeeds, especially when Coover digresses into the topic of sex. Still, the book succeeds overall, both as narrative and as commentary on the nature of man. By the end, the association becomes Henry's entire system of meaning - his way of exploring good, evil, purpose, and nihilism. Perhaps answering metaphysical questions using dice is absurd, but perhaps not. As Henry reflects, "You roll, Player A gets a hit or he doesn't, gets his man out or he doesn't. Sounds simple. But call Player A 'Sycamore Flynn' or 'Melbourne Trench' and something starts to happen. He shrinks or grows, stretches out or puts on muscle.... Strange. But name a man and you make him what he is."

I don't recommend this book for the faint of heart. While you can summarize the basic story of "The Universal Baseball Association" in a few words, the actual reading experience is far more intense than a summary would suggest. This book celebrates the myth of baseball as American creation in just about the darkest way imaginable.

The novel's set-up is an appealing one. J. Henry Waugh (whose initials read YAHWEH) took eight of the original post-Civil War major league franchises, populated them entirely with players of his own invention, and evolved his league through dozens of seasons via a tabletop, dice-activated baseball game of his own design. The league begins to consume his life in its 56th season -- and his 56th year. It sounds fun to take on a project like this. Indeed, on the Internet you can even find recreations of the UBA charts as J. Henry Waugh may have designed them.

As the book goes on, however, progressively fewer paragraphs are devoted to the point of view of our protagonist. Rather, Henry's players -- unaware of his very existence -- begin to do all the talking for him. The slide begins innocently enough: Henry leaves work a few minutes early one Wednesday afternoon so he can reread the boxscore of a perfect game one of "his" rookies pitched the night before. While reading, he imagines the past greats of his league telling stories about the early years. In one of the book's funnier moments, one of those old-time players is suddenly cut off in mid-quote when Henry realizes that the man in question is, in fact, dead.

Thus we learn more about Henry's league: His players live full lives after retirement from the playing field, and can even marry, have children, and die. The league structure involves politics, intrigue, romance, music -- sometimes all at once. One of the book's more gruesome in-jokes is retold in a ballad that Henry wrote to celebrate the exploits of one "Long Lew Lydell".

As the book progresses, Coover writes verbose yet carefully structured passages in which Henry vanishes entirely, replaced by the players taking increasing free reign over his subconscious. What the players say in Henry's head is a subtle distortion of what Henry's just been through. Henry's take on women is colored, for example, by the fact that his girlfriend charges by the hour; his players have dreams which mirror his own anxieties. It gets so that Henry can't even complete a conversation with the few acquaintainces in his life, without the players' voices intruding. This becomes progressively more disturbing, especially if you note what happens during Henry's final appearance in the book.

You can't blame Henry for leaving behind such a dreary accounting job; he is escaping into a richer world than did Bartleby, for example. In fact, you could put the book down after Chapter 7 and read it as a happy ending. In 2005, I'd almost venture to say that "Office Space"-type fantasies retroactively make Henry one of the first heroes of the so-called information age. One of the key questions at the end: are we meant to feel sympathy for Henry at the end? Empathy? Pity? Disgust?

What gives "Universal Baseball Association" its life is not the baseball scenes or the office scenes, but rather the depth and texture of Henry's increasingly complicated fantasy sequences. You can see the entropy in Henry's universe by comparing the player names in the final chapter to those in the first two chapters, before things started to go wrong. While difficult to get through -- this is certainly not a beach book, although that's where I read most of it -- "Universal Baseball Association" rewards repeated readings once you overcome the queasy feelings caused by entering Henry's subconscious.

You will also vow never to play Strat-O-Matic Baseball again.

Impossible though it may seem, I think I can agree with (or at least understand) almost all that is written in these reviews. The fact is, Coover's hallucinogenic style is not for everyone. It's not for nothing that he is omitted from the DeLillo/Pynchon/Stone pantheon; he's a cult guy. I've read The Origin of the Brunists (Coover's first, I think, and an NBA winner as I recall) and The Public Burning, and enjoyed both immensely. He takes postmodernism to its utter horrifying extreme. But all who read him will eventually have to confront the power of his writing.

The idea of this book goes well beyond baseball, but baseball followers will find it especially compelling because of the familiarity of the setting. At the core of it is a lonely, singular man who invents his own reality and plays his hand as a deity. He loses himself more and more in his artificial world as things progress, wheeling and dealing his players, arranging their movements, watching their achievements and failures. The outside world loses its attraction. At the conclusion he has to confront, and then participate in, a life/death situation regarding one of his players. With that he slips into insanity. It is truly a scary read.

If you are familiar with and enjoy Coover's psychotic forays, then you must read this one. If you are more the Barbara Kingsolver type, well, stay clear.

Like Malamud's "The Natural," Coover's "The Universal Baseball Association" uses baseball to explore mythology, religion, and the nature of belief. While Coover manages to successfully incorporate all of these, however, the novel meets the first command of great literature: the story stands on its own.

The protagonist, J. Henry Waugh, is one of modern American fiction's great creations, a lonley man who spends most of his time in a small New York apartment obsessively ruminating over his great creation: an elaborate dice/board game that serves as the playing field for his Universal Baseball Assn. Waugh plays a full season of games, keeps detailed statistics on each player, and fully documents the history of his league (including the lives and deaths of his "players").

The novel turns on Henry's (godlike) intervention into the game's natural course (ruled by the dice) after the death of a young pitcher in whom he has invested his emotions, hopes and dreams. This intervention touches off a series of questions about the nature of God, Man, and Fate. None of these discussions are divorced from the fabric of the story, however. Throughout, our eyes are clearly on Henry, as he slowly deteriorates mentally, the "game" becoming far more real than "real life."

This is a superb book. It will naturally appeal to baseball lovers, but those who don't give two figs about baseball will be caught up in Coover's sophisticated storytelling and will be impressed by his flawless narrative control and his ability to transcend the immediate subject of the novel.

This book did something that science fiction is often claimed to do, but seldom does: It accurately predicted future developments in human life. Its protagonist, J. Henry Waugh, is an eccentric hobbyist: an accountant who so deeply loves statistics, especially the statistics of baseball, that he has invented an entire fictional baseball league to compute statistics for, and a world to hold it. At the start of the novel, one of the rising young stars of his world is the victim of an improbable accident (which of course was included in Henry's tables!), and Henry is deeply shaken by the event. The reader watches as his life falls apart and as he reshapes his fictional world to reflect his concerns. Now that we have role-playing games and Internet personae, this kind of obsession is familiar to all of us; but it took an unusual kind of insight to portray it with brilliant accuracy years before Dungeons and Dragons was a gleam in Gary Gygax's eyes.

Since we see so many extremes in regard to this wonderful short novel, I thought it only fair to add my 2 or 3 cents worth. Like the others here I read UBAI in college, and it served as a opening door to another country of literature. Coover, along with DeLillo and Pynchon, is one of of our late 20th century masters taking, fiction into new realms, and exposing us to alternate ways of viewing our environment and personal relationships. Waugh creates an ordered universe that spins out of his control, moving in directions he never intended. From this, his whole (real) world falls apart; his fantasy world destroys what little relationship he has reality . J. Henry Waugh (read Jahweh) is a flawed God with a (now) flawed creation. This is a wonderful book, but not near as good as his masterpiece, The Origin of the Bruinists, which predicted modern day apocalyptic religious cults and the manipulation of media. Unfortunately this book is now out of print.

Henry Waugh is a fifty-something accountant with no family, no friends & no future at work. All he
has going for him is that he is the creator & sole proprietor of the Universal Baseball Association.
Henry has invented a Stratomatic-type baseball game & taken it to the nth degree. He has rules for
virtually every possible occurrence & potential roll of the dice. He has populated the game with
players of his own creation. These players even participate in offseason activities, like pinball
tournaments, and get involved in Association politics when they retire. There are retired players
because Henry has played out over fifty UBA seasons. Henry hasn't simply created a game, he's
created a personal Universe.

The greatest player in Association history was Brock Rutherford and now his son, Damon Rutherford,
is taking the UBA by storm. Henry's enthusiasm for the Association has waned in recent years, but the
rise of Damon Rutherford has renewed his interest. Suddenly the game is fun again and Henry's life
seems full & interesting. When young Damon throws a perfect game, Henry is so caught up in the
excitement that he tampers with his own rules and allows Damon to start his next game on one day of
rest. And, of course, when the Creator tampers with his own rules, his creations will pay the price.

The first 150 or so pages of this book are absolutely fabulous. As disaster befalls the Association &
Henry's life crumbles around him he loses the ability to separate reality from fantasy and the book too
becomes confused, but it is still a terrific read.

GRADE: A-

As others have noted, this book is the Dr. Pepper of modern novels: you're going to like it or hate it. Clearly this novel can be read and interpreted at several levels; but it is especially appropriate for those who enjoy the dice-and-chart or statistically-oriented computer baseball simulations. To Mr. Stoddard's observation about a prediction of the future, it should be added that there is currently in development a PC-based baseball simulation that, rather than reproduce the statistics of major-league baseball players, will generate fictional players and give them fictional careers in a fictional league. Coover's novel tells us that this sort of simulation can become far more powerful as an alternate reality than one in which flesh-and-blood players mediate between the real world and the fantasy. I have suggested to the developer that he not include fatalities in his injury results table.

Accept no warnings from dissatisfied customers without checking the merchandise yourself. I read this when it came out, years ago (my background, editor in the physical science field; baseball lover) and found it a marvelous sad take on fantasy fixations; the dread thing that was programmed to happen, possibly, does happens--and things then fall apart for real; enough said). We needn't like everything, that's certain, but people who warn you that something is not worth reading or hearing or seeing, based on their own dumb reactions, are not playing the game right.