Skip to main content

Nine Inches, continued: Happy Chang

Smile on Happy Chang's Face
   A little uneven.  Story is about middle-aged man, athletic, who has an effeminate son.  The story unfolds while the man is umpiring a championship LL game.  The pitcher for the "good" team is a Chinese girl whose father is watching.  Name is ironic--Happy Chang never seems happy.

As the game unfolds, reader learns that the son is gay and that Dad, (our umpire), punched his son.  Dad is divorced with limited contact, miserable.  The coach of the "bad" team is his next door neighbor who saw his arrest and who has a jock son.

Chang girl is a star.  Her team seems to be about to win.  However she has thrown inside a few times and has hit a batter.  Coach/adversary orders his boy to bean her.  The boy does; the girl is knocked out. Happy Chang comes out of the stands and fights bad coach and is arrested.

Girl (improbably) gets up and continues to pitch????  She gets two outs in the final inning when she starts walking batters.  Bases loaded, 3-2 pitch, 2 outs.  Umpire/protagonist, distracted by the muddle of his own life, doesn't really see the pitch.  He then (improbably) walks out to centerfield, climbs over the fence, and disappears from the game.

Really liked the conflict of the father/son. Nice to read something real as opposed to PC drivel. Game was also well-written--he knows his sports--until the ending.  Boxed in a corner, I'm guessing, though why he couldn't have given the girl the winning strikeout is a mystery.  Lots of nice reversals, though maybe a little pat.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Tess of the D'Urbervilles, continued 2/3rds

"To all humankind, Tess was only a passing thought. Even to friends, she was only a frequently passing thought." Angel Clare is a good character. He's "enlightened," in so many ways, but when Tess's confesses her "crime," he reverts to ancestral form . . . Tess's "confession" comes earlier than I expected, right after Angel reveals that he has had a bad moment with a woman. Tess points out the similarity in their transgressions, though his is the only true transgression, expecting forgiveness. She doesn't get it. She returns to her mother . . . realizes she can't stay with her. Thoughts to suicide. Unhappiness that divorce is not possible. Departs. Tragic in that the two, if Angel could just see clearly, would indeed be a great couple, each adding to the other.  Nature as a definite force involved in the tragedy.  It's not neutral--when things go bad, the very skies mock Tess. Tess as unaware of the power of her bea...

Napoleon 14 Amiens

"Ambassadors are essentially spies with titles."  Napoleon President of Italy . . . Peace treaty with England (Amiens) in March 1802, with Turkey in June 1802 . . . flawed peace treaty with England because there was no opening up of France for trade with England, infuriating the English who thought peace would mean trade. . . tourism, though--Brits come to Paris and admire Napoleon . . . British liberals enamored . . . Napoleon "consul for life" . . . lots of unsettled territories, Switzerland being the largest . . . Industrialization much greater in England than France . . . France in 1802 is about the same as England in 1780 as a manufacturing center . . . Napoleon is basically Anglophobic, complaining of any art work that celebrates English victories being shown in Louvre . . . peace unraveling . . . by 1803 . . .  War May 18, 1803! . . . Louisiana Territory sold, advantageous to both parties.  France gets money; USA gets land.  France avoids possible war with ...

Factual basis of American Tragedy: Wikipedia

Dreiser based the book on a notorious criminal case. On July 11, 1906, resort owners found an overturned boat and the body of 20-year-old  Grace Brown  at  Big Moose Lake  in the  Adirondack Mountains  of  Upstate New York .  Chester Gillette  was put on trial and convicted of killing Brown, though he claimed that her death was a suicide. Gillette was executed by electric chair on March 30, 1908. [1] The murder trial drew international attention when Brown's love letters to Gillette were read in court. Dreiser saved newspaper clippings about the case for several years before writing his novel, during which he studied the case closely. He based Clyde Griffiths on Chester Gillette, deliberately giving him the same initials.