Essay Questions

What famous literary work about baseball does Coover’s novel ironically invert as well as subvert and how?

Arguably, the single most well-known literary work about baseball is the poem “Casey at the Bat.” In that poem a mighty slugger becomes a metaphor for the hopes and dreams and ambitions of an entire town—and, by extension, the human race—when he steps to up to the plate with expectations being the hero of the day with a game-winning hit. Instead, he strikes out and in the process destroys the happiness of everyone in Mudville. In Coover’s novel, however, Casey is a pitcher who accidentally kills one player with a beanball and is later killed not quite so accidentally himself by a line driver back to the mound. Casey, in essence strikes out of existence Henry favorite player and in retribution is himself struck out of existence by Henry. This inversion of Casey as a batter who merely strikes out into a pitcher who fatally strikes out—and Henry’s subsequent obsession to strike Casey out in the same way—sardonically subverts the irony of the poem (and the real life upon which its emotions are based). That irony is situated in the extremity of emotion that merely losing a baseball game by Casey’s striking has on the fans of Mudville…and by extension the extremity of emotion that a player striking out and losing the big game has on fans in real life. An extremity of emotion often the equal of that felt by Henry toward players of a game that has no actual meaning relative to real life.

What is the symbolic significance of Lou Engel?

Like many of the names in the novel—including and especially J. Henry Waugh—the significance of the only other person who plays the game with Henry lies in his name. Engel is close enough to Angel that one should analyze his first name closely, too. And which famous angel is known by a name that might be familiarly shortened to the nickname, Lou? Lucifer, of course. When Lou sits down to play the game with Henry, he is effect playing the part of god, of course. And he plays the game the way he sees fit which is rather anarchically for the pleasure of it; he takes an almost devilish delight in playing to win, one might say. And, ultimately, he almost destroys Henry’s universe by spilling beer; an act which so enrages the proprietor of the Universal Baseball Assn. that Henry is forced to cast him out. Just like god cast Lou the Angel from heaven.

Coover’s novel was released the same as 2001: A Space Odyssey. Why is it fair to say that Coover’s vision was more prescient than Kubrick’s?

Two decades after the year in which Kubrick’s film predicts interplanetary travel, moon colonization and routine space shuttles between it and earth, none of those things appear to be even remotely close to coming to fruition. By comparison, Coover’s world of a man alienated from the real world who is living a full-fledged fantasy life within a virtual reality is a story of the way millions of people exist every day. Coover’s prescience is not just limited to the vast complexity of fantasy sports leagues in which real money is exchanged playing out games that never exists, but can also be seen in everything from the world of video game consoles to internet pornography. What makes Henry a freak on his own time makes him something of a legendary mythic figure in our own time.