→ September 18, 2020
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The Invention of Sound.

I was the host for Chuck Palahniuk’s live-streamed Q&A event through Midtown Scholar, an independent bookstore in Harrisburg, PA, last Friday night, discussing Chuck’s new book The Invention of Sound. I’ve just gotten into Chuck’s oeuvre, having read that and Adjustment Day and just starting Fight Club, so I was simultaneously shocked and entertained by his newest novel, which is violent, dark, often funny, and extremely thought-provoking.

The Invention of Sound pairs two narratives that we learn early in the novel are going to intersect. One is that of Gates Foster, a father whose daughter, Lucinda, vanished from his office building about ten years earlier, leading to the demise of his marriage and his own downward spiral into obsessively hunting for her image in online pedophilia and child-porn communities. The other is that of Mitzi, a sound engineer who crafts and sells blood-curdling, realistic screams to movie and television producers, a business she inherited from her father and that she has built further with the help of Schlo, a successful producer who buys some of her best screams. We’ll also meet the wonderfully-named Blush Gentry, an actress on the downside of her character who sees a chance to boost her profile with Gates’ help – and who was the actor on screen when one of Mitzki’s most potent screams was used in a B-movie many years earlier.

Palahniuk was a great interview, and one of the best answers he gave me, which I think is instructive for all readers of fiction and for would-be writers as well, was that he uses violence as a way to bring the reader into the text and make the events on the page more visceral. (He said that drugs and sex also work in the same way.) The violence here is mostly implied, at least, rather than described graphically, as it was in Adjustment Day, but it’s there, and the specter of this violence lurks on every page – it raises the tension, but I read this with a good amount of fear that I was going to turn the page and find something that would turn my stomach.

Under the veneer of violence and depravity, however, are deeper explorations of questions like grief, especially when you’re grieving without closure; and of the power of fiction to move us, for better or for worse. Gates’ methods of dealing with his grief are not exactly evidence-based, but they do tell us something about the kind of open-ended horror of losing a child without knowing what happened to them – a rare occurrence, but among the most horrifying things any parent can conceive – and serve as an explanation for some of Gates’ more irrational or just plain dangerous choices.

Mitzi’s story is less successful than Gates’, although it’s just as compelling to read; it’s just hard to understand why she carries on with this business, knowing its personal toll on her, even when Palahniuk offers us a trauma in her past that might explain some of her risk-seeking behavior. She’s on her own death spiral, almost literally, but the more we learn about her character the harder it is to fathom why, more so because she goes so far out of her way to try to save her friend Schlo from almost certain death closer to the end of the book. She’s a villain, but also a victim, which makes her complex but ultimately inscrutable.

This might be too much of my own interpretation, but if I didn’t know Palahniuk’s work or reputation, I might have thought The Invention of Sound offered a sort of condemnation of horror films and other works of art that aim to please an audience by distilling and serving up the pain of others. There’s a whole genre of horror film that I won’t watch, where the violence is itself the point and the audience is supposed to root for the killer(s); Mitzi’s screams, and the industry she serves, feel like a satirical rendering of that kind of exploitative, misanthropic cinema. Why exactly do so many people enjoy watching the suffering of others, fictional or real? Would there really be a market for screams as realistic as those Mitzi sells, where no one asks how she manages to produce them? And is there tragedy at the end of this pursuit of greater horrors?

I’ll spoil one thing that probably should be obvious from the start of The Invention of Sound – Gates isn’t getting a happy resolution to his story, although he gets … something, certainly. The pleasure of reading his narrative is the multiple surprises that Palahniuk springs on us in the last few pages, twists for which he laid clues but that I at least missed while reading. It’s brilliant in several ways, and incredibly disturbing, but I can’t quite put my finger on what Palahniuk might be trying to say.

Next up: I’m reading his Fight Club, although of course I’ve seen the movie already.

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→ September 16, 2020
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The Personal History of David Copperfield.

When word came out in mid-2019 that Armando Iannucci (The Death of Stalin, VEEP) was filming an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, I read the book in anticipation of its release, also rectifying a rather large gap in my own reading history. (I’d read five Dickens novels, two in high school and three by choice, but not this one, which Dickens himself called his favourite, and which the Guardian called the third “most Dickensian” of his novels.) The movie came out in the UK last year, but its arrival in the U.S. was delayed by COVID-19, and it just hit theaters earlier this month. It is marvelous, the best 2020 release I’ve seen so far this year, with a mostly faithful script, wonderful casting, and excellent use of the humor in Dickens’ rags-to-riches novel.

If you haven’t read the book, which I had not other than one of those Moby Books’ abridged, illustrated versions back in 1981 or so, it is the life story of its title character, from birth into straitened circumstances, through his widowed mother’s unfortunate choice of a misanthropic, controlling husband, to his indenture at his stepfather’s wine-selling business, and on and on in somewhat picaresque fashion. He encounters a host of eccentric characters, a few of whom, notably the venal Uriah Heep, have gained lasting reputation among the pantheon of literary creations, with several others providing comic relief among David’s series of misfortunes before he finally turns to writing as a vocation and finds success and financial security for the first time.

The first theatrical film version of Dickens’ classic novel in a half-century, The Personal History of David Copperfield might be most notable for the color-blind casting, although I’d argue that this choice is notable for how quickly you’ll stop noticing it. The casting itself is so perfect top to bottom that casting all-white actors couldn’t have produced a comparable result, notably Dev Patel as David himself, handling the pivotal role with aplomb, adapting to David’s changing views of the world and greater understanding of the people around him over the course of the story. Characters who are related by blood don’t share skin tone, and it couldn’t matter any less.

Many of the side characters are superbly cast as well, but none more so than Hugh Laurie as the befuddled Mr. Dick, which sees Laurie at his Woosterian best, and also gives that character a bit more to do than just to serve as comic relief. Mr. Dick’s host, David’s aunt Betsy Trotwood, is played by Tilda Swinton, who can certainly dominate a film in the wrong way when she gets to play a severe character; here, she gives Aunt Betsy more depth than the character has in the novel, making her more sympathetic and thus making it easier to understand why David is so generous to her as her own circumstances decline and he finds their relations reversed. Ben Whishaw delivers an unctuous, loathsome performance as Uriah Heep, complete with bowl-cut and affected speech that Patel later mimics to great comic effect. Peter Capaldi, the Twelfth Doctor, has a lot of fun with the shifty but good-hearted Mr. Micawber, making him a little less exasperating on the screen than he is on the page.

The movie is brisk at two hours, and spends far more time on the first half of the novel than on the second, with great length given to David’s childhood and early adulthood, including his relationship with Mr. Micawber and time in a boarding school where he meets James Steerforth (Aneurin Barnard). That choice gives us rather more prologue than David requires and rushes some of the resolutions, so that David’s marriage to Agnes is treated almost as an afterthought, and the unmasking of Uriah Heep plays out in a far less satisfying manner, because the audience has so much less time and reason to despise him, and also has less time to appreciate Whishaw’s deft portrayal of Heep’s scheming nature. The first half of the novel is important, but the second half is the payoff. The film gives you all of that payoff in the last thirty minutes, and it’s still fun, just condensed.

Iannucci and his co-writer Simon Blackwell play the story extremely straight until close to the very end. The compression of the last half of the book requires a large change to the arc with Dora, which the screenwriters handle in a way that also comments on Dickens’ original story, where David marries Dora, realizes it’s unsuitable because she’s dull and needy, so Dickens has her conveniently die after suffering a miscarriage so that David can marry Agnes. Dora here is even sillier than she is in the book, making her a great comic presence, but rather than kill her off, the writers give her the perspicacity to find her own way off the stage. The Ham/Emily/Steerforth subplot, itself rather tangential to David’s own narrative, also has a rather significant change that I would argue is less successful even though Dickens’ own handling of that arc relied too much on coincidence.

I had no trouble following the plot, because I’d read the novel recently, but I do wonder how well viewers could follow the plot, especially the last half hour or so, if they had no exposure to the book or previous adaptations. It’s the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy problem – a novel of 500+ pages is hard to condense into a two-hour film without losing something, and you’d rather lose details or exposition than plot or character development. Perhaps the Emily subplot could have gone instead, as essential as it is on the page, because so much time is spent on David’s childhood visit to the seaside hovel where she lives, to give us more time with Heep and David at the law firm so we better understand their rivalry and why Heep is so odious. (We do see plenty of Mr. Wickfield, played by Benedict Wong, in various stages of inebriation.) Yet The Personal History of David Copperfield is joyous because of what Iannucci and Blackwell retained – Mr. Dick, Dumb Dora, the Micawbers – and how well Dev Patel brings that title character to life.

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→ September 12, 2020
→ By

Stick to baseball, 9/12/20.

I had several posts for subscribers to the Athletic this week. One was another scouting notebook looking at several top 100 prospects who debuted recently, including Ian Anderson, Ke’Bryan Hayes, and Deivi Garcia. Another looked at what the planned changes to the 2021 draft might mean in practice. The third was a Q&A with our Red Sox beat writer Jen McCaffrey, discussing the state of Boston’s farm system. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Nova Luna, one of the nominees for this year’s Spiel des Jahres award. It’s a reboot of an earlier game called Habitats, rethemed and redesigned by Uwe Rosenberg (Patchwork, Agricola). It’s very good, and definitely good for family play with kids 8 and up.

I’ve resumed writing my email newsletter more regularly recently, helped by the resumption of the baseball season and a few other things that have made life a bit more normal. Also, here’s your reminder that my second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, is available on bookshop.org and anywhere you buy books.

Charles Peterson, the Cardinals’ area scout in South Carolina and Georgia, has COVID-19 and is on a ventilator. You can join me in donating to his GoFundMe here … and maybe consider what it would be like to live in a country where we didn’t have to do this to pay our medical bills.

And now, the links…

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→ September 10, 2020
→ By

Klawchat 9/10/20.

I have three new posts up for subscribers to The Athletic: a breakdown of the planned changes to the 2021 draft, a Q&A with Jen McCaffrey on the Red Sox’ farm system, and a scouting notebook (from Tuesday) on several top 100 prospects who debuted recently. I also have a new game review at Paste, looking at the Spiel-nominated Nova Luna, Uwe Rosenberg’s reboot of an earlier game called Habitats.

Keith Law: In the shuffling madness … Klawchat.

Ben (MN): How useful is this year’s data for evaluators like yourself? For example, Austin Meadows had an early case of covid and has been awful. Is that evidence that he was never as good as his numbers from last year, or can we just not tell at this point due to the small sample and the unknown impact of covid, lack of reps, etc.? For someone like Javy Baez, has his approach finally caught up with him and exposed him as a solid but not great player, or is it just a small sample and he may be a superstar again next year? Do you have any idea how to gauge this season for situations like this, where the data doesn’t confirm what we thought about the player before the year?
Keith Law: This entire season is a small, skewed sample. Not only is 60 games less than half a regular season, but schedules are far less balanced than they usually are, and we’re clearly working with less major-league caliber pitching than usual. If a player continues what he showed us in 2019, then great, it’s probably further evidence in that direction. If a player is having an outlier season in 2020, though, I’m not going to draw any conclusions either way.

Sedona: Gut feeling…Luciano take the Vlad/Soto early path to MLB?  If not, who?
Keith Law: No. Don’t think he has their idea of the strike zone.

2020 Voter: I read nearly all of your chats and in each one this year there’s a comment from someone that essentially says “how could anyone vote for Trump?” and I’d like to share my perspective.  Biden has proposed revisions to 401Ks that replaces the current taxable income reduction with flat credits.  This would greatly increase my taxes per year — despiate pledges to not raise taxes on households making <400K — and leaves our family with little extra.  Trump is a horrible embarassment, but that is a huge financial hit.  Democrats will likely control Congress, so the chances of this passing are high.  You’ll probably call this selfish, but I’m not especially political and I have young kids.
Keith Law: Yeah, that’s pretty selfish – and also extremely narrow. If the economy is worse off as a whole, what does that mean for your income, or the long-term value of your 401K? Trade wars and tariffs are terrible for the economy. So is a pandemic without a sufficient government response. Also, I’d wager a good amount of money that you’re a straight, white man, whose status isn’t particularly threatened by a Trump administration that is rolling back anti-discrimination protections for anybody who isn’t that.

Todd Boss: Given the 29-9 beatdown last night, would you support a little-league style “slaughter rule” in baseball games at some point?  We’re already experimenting with “weirder” rules (extra innings runner, 7-inning double headers, no-pitch IBB) that have existed in non-MLB leagues for a time … why not have a rolling slaughter rule; game’s over if losing by 10 or more runs 7th inning or later?
Keith Law: This year I would have.

Jason: Should Bob Woodward have released those taped conversations much earlier, is criticism of him fair?
Keith Law: Yes.

Adam: I admit to being very confused that The Burnt Orange Heresy wasn’t a documentary on the current administration.
Keith Law: It’s a great title for a good novel (I read it, it’s solid) and a bad film.

Jason: Is corbin burnes a GUY?
Keith Law: I think so. I was a year early on his breakout, as usual.

Matt: Do you believe in Austin Nola being a 120 wRC+ type bat in next couple of years or no?
Keith Law: I’d bet the under on that.

Ryan: Hey Keith love your work. What do you think an extension for Tatis looks like. Would 8 250 get it close. He could get another bite of the apple at age 29.
Keith Law: With four years of team control now, one of them essentially at the minimum salary, you’re still giving him $40 million or more for his free agent years. He should definitely take that offer.

Jon: Don’t look now but Michael Conforto is turning into a superstar.  (In my best John Malkovich voice – “Pay that man his money”)
Keith Law: Again, I don’t want to read much into the short season, but the OBP has always been there, and this is power he’s shown before when healthy. Funny how the Cubs fans who were mad I ranked him over Schwarber have gone silent.

Chuck: Any idea why Davidson or Muller don’t get at least a spot start for Atlanta?
Keith Law: I don’t know how prepared they are for that … we don’t know how much they’ve pitched, or if they’ve dealt with any minor injuries, anything like that. On the face of it I’d assume Davidson was in line, but I have no inside info here.

Mac: Have you heard how the fall league will be structured?
Keith Law: Nothing. Many ideas, no specifics.

Ken: Comparing the two who had more upside as a starter at age 22 for the yanks severing or Garcia?  Why?
Keith Law: Severino had the better arm, but I always had concerns about his delivery that unfortunately came to pass. Garcia has his own concerns but I think he’s a bit more likely to hold up as a starter.

Michael: Yesterday more than 1,200 Americans died. In Spain, Germany, Canada, Japan, Italy and the UK they lost a combined 75 even though they have 100 million more people than us.  #AmericanExceptionialism
Keith Law: Yeah, but Biden might raise my taxes a tiny bit.

Deke: Anything dumber (non-actually-important department) this year than Hosmer’s bunt and the aftermath?
Keith Law: Bunting with two strikes, even against the shift, is such a bad idea … if you are that unlikely to get a hit in that situation, you shouldn’t be in the lineup.

Jake: Keith—I’m a first time voter (just turned 18). I’m extremely progressive. As such, I obviously am not voting for trump. But I don’t know if i can betray my heart and vote joe. He has a brutal history, and won’t bring about meaningful change. How do i vote?
Keith Law: You vote for Biden. You have two choices here that matter. One might not bring about meaningful change from our history, but he will bring about meaningful change from the last four years. The other will get to keep appointing conservative judges, gutting environmental laws, killing LGBTQ+ protections, muzzling scientists, and mishandling crises. This isn’t hard. And it’s not only about you.

BirdlandBro: Hey Keith, your thoughts on the Orioles?  Do you see real positive strides being made and potentially an accelerated rebuild?  Or just small sample size?
Keith Law: Just a small sample size.

Bryan (Montclair): What do you think the impact will be on pitchers in 2021 based on this truncated season? Anecdotally, I would think that starters will have a longer time getting stretched out/pitching through a long 2021 season, at the very least. Not to mention an uptick in injuries.
Keith Law: I share your concern – and I think it’s the main reason we will see some sort of fall league, so minor leaguers who didn’t see the majors aren’t left with virtually no innings this year.

Cory: What’s the deal with Mize’s lack of command; wasn’t that supposed to be his biggest strength? Cause for concern?
Keith Law: Again, tiny samples.

Jordan: Do you see the Padres talent ever stacking up enough to overtake the dodgers for a division title? Or does LAs combination of cash and organizational acumen make SD a groomsmen for the next decade?
Keith Law: Some of it is just luck – you stay healthier one year, or you have a guy have an outlier year like Cronenworth – but I will say no large-market team would scare me more as a competitor than the Dodgers. They’re extremely strong at the major-league and minor-league levels, they keep finding high-end talent in the draft even when they draft low, and they’re exceptionally well-run.

BJ: Are you coming around on Mountcastle? All the guy does is hit. Even if the BB% boost is just a small sample, who cares? Why walk when you can rake?
Keith Law: Because when you don’t walk, pitchers tailor their approach and you don’t rake so much.

Larry: Whats your level of concern for Soroka’s future while coming back from the Achilles tear?
Keith Law: None.

Greg: Fried, Soroka, Anderson seem like logical pieces in the future Atlanta rotations. Any other internal guys who you think could figure it out and join them?
Keith Law: I would bet that one of that group of Wright, Wilson, Toussaint, Davidson would figure it out … but I am not really sure which one I’d bet on. Touki has the best arsenal, and all the athleticism in the world, and when he’s on – repeating his delivery especially – he’s the best of the quartet.
Keith Law: If he doesn’t figure it out in Atlanta, he’ll spend the next ten years going from team to team because every pitching coach will want to work with him. He could be the new Edwin Jackson.

Matt: 200K dead Americans but 2020 Voter is concerned about his 401. That’s nice.
Keith Law: I wonder if questions like that are just bait.

Adam: Is it odd that the Padres, for all their drafting and IFA prowess, have a roster comprised of only maybe 2 “homegrown” players, depending on your definition of the term?
Keith Law: They’ve used a lot of homegrown players to acquire guys on the roster. Also, you’re probably not counting Tatis Jr. as homegrown, since he originally signed with another club, but he never played an official game with any other org but the Padres.

James: Do you agree with Kershaw that the extra-inning rule is “not real baseball”?
Keith Law: It’s not my kind of baseball.

Steven: If Bart can hit .250+, is he an all star?
Keith Law: What’s his OBP in that scenario?

Matthew: All the beat writers seem to think Cleveland will decline Hand and Santana’s options and trade Lindor in a massive salary clearance this offseason. With Carrasco set to achieve 10-and-5 next May or so, I’d imagine they’ll also be eager to move his salary while they still can, without his approval. What do you think his trade value is like? Definitely a unique case.
Keith Law: I would bet it’s high. People seem to love Carrasco the person, and obviously he’s a top-end pitcher. I think they’d do very well if they trade him – multiple real prospects in return.

Guest: Would you bring up brailen marquez for the last bit of this year if you were jed/theo?
Keith Law: Assuming he’s ready & healthy, he’d be a hell of a weapon in relief.

Jon: It looks like Andres Gimenez has overtaken Rosario at SS, at least for the rest of the season.  If you’re the Mets, what do you do with Rosario next year?  Try him in CF, trade him or see if he can still become what a lot of people thought he could be?
Keith Law: My guess is they’ll end up trading him. I wouldn’t be shocked to see him succeed somewhere else.

zeke: Do you think the anti-Military comments and COVID disclosures re “Clown Hitler” move the needle at all?
Keith Law: You would think so … how any veteran or military family could hand-wave this away is beyond me.

Brian: Do you think some players perform better because of not having fans? Thinking specifically of Darvish.
Keith Law: No.

Appa Yip Yip: Are you buying Teoscar Hernandez? His good run started last year.
Keith Law: Another 2019 breakout candidate. More buying than selling, I would say, but again, 2020 is a tiny sample and I would not extrapolate any player having a strong but outlier six weeks into him doing it for a whole year.

Brian: Ian Happ is another breakout you jumped the gun on. Great power and OBP mix. Think he can be a regular All-Star?
Keith Law: I do – he was one of my bigger breakout disappointments because I was always pretty confident he’d be a strong OBP/doubles guy at the worst while playing a few positions.

Johnny Tuttle: Why did Libertarianism take such virulent root in the US?
Keith Law: Isn’t it innate? One of the original 13 states has “Live Free or Die” as its motto.

Greg P: Isn’t it scary to think 45% of Americans will vote for Trump?
Keith Law: 45% of voters will. Not the same thing. The problem is all the people who don’t vote, many of whom will see their quality of life affected quite directly by the outcome.

Adam Trask: You still think Hinch gets hired again but not Luhnow? Hinch knew about it and couldn’t control his team. Luhnow may not have known and got screwed. And he seems to have interest from the A-Rod group at least.
Keith Law: Luhnow knew. Let’s not revise history here.

Guest: Awesome to hear you’re running. Interesting to know you can do something you never thought possible. In that sense, do you have any hope that we’ll see substantial progress in climate change in our lifetime?
Keith Law: I think we will in my daughter’s lifetime, but by then it may be far too late.

Tracy: If this current administration is defeated this fall, should the Biden admin go after any of the obvious lawbreakers who’ve run amok the last four years? I’d hate to see them literally get away with murder because the new administration would deem it “ not worth it.” Sends a bad message that there are indeed two separate sets of laws that are enforced.

Keith Law: Yes. Lock them up.

Mike Trout: Another Mets SSS but gosh Dom Smith. I know you were always high on him – how good can he be?
Keith Law: He started this last year in limited time, so I’m more inclined to believe it – but I’ve also always been a believer. Funny how much grief he got after 1 HR in his first season in full-season ball. Since the start of 2019, he’s played 125 games and hit 18 homers with a .301/.371/.572 line, and he’s hitting lefties too. That’ll play.

OZ: For the guy who is going to vote Trump because of Biden’s 401K plan:  the 401K tax deduction is highly regressive, it gives a larger tax break to those with higher incomes (higher tax brackets) while providing a limited benefit to low and middle class savers.  Moving to a flat credit will provide a larger break and more incentive for middle class families.  If your taxes are raised by this plan its because you have a large income and can afford it.  However its unlikely to make much of a difference since Roth IRAs are taxed differently than 401Ks so savers can easily switch to contributing to a Roth IRA instead.
Keith Law: Well, there you go. I have voted for years in direct opposition to my own interests when it comes to tax rates, because 1) there is no reason on earth I need a tax break and 2) I am at least vaguely aware that there are other people on this planet besides me.

John: Do you think Derek fisher will have a teoscar style breakout? They share some (possibly superficial) similarities. Also, do you believe in teoscar’s breakout?
Keith Law: Fisher’s really interesting because his tools – plus power, 70 run – have long outstripped his production, and there hasn’t been a great reason why. It’s been true in the field and at the plate since he was at UVA. His 34 PA this year don’t tell us anything at all, but he’d at least be someone to watch if you are looking on the Jays roster for a player with the physical tools to be the sort of found money that Teoscar has been.

Kevin: Is trent grisham a center fielder now? A lot of people felt he couldn’t succeed there before this season.
Keith Law: I’d be shocked if he was able to play above-average defense in CF for a whole year.

Nolan: have any of these “I’m a leftist how could I possibly vote for Biden?” people ever heard of the Supreme Court? Noticed how many times RBG has been hospitalized recently?
Keith Law: The Supreme Court is where they play tennis at their local country clubs.

Ron: What would you say to disaffected leftists who see both Biden and Trump as horrendous candidates whose parties both actively stifle progressive policies? How long do we have to keep voting for the lesser of two-evils while deluding ourselves that next election will be different?
Keith Law: See all the answers above, and maybe consider the privilege in your self-definition as a “disaffected leftist” instead of someone whose livelihood or even existence is threatened by four more years of this shit.

Sedona: Is Domingo German a lock for the rotation next year?  Tanaka, Paxton, Happ should be FA’s.  Do you think Schmidt, Devei and Severino say otherwise?
Keith Law: I don’t think German or Severino are rotation locks for 2021.

Steven: I would say Bart’s OBP would have to be .340
Keith Law: If he does that, with his power and defense, he’s a star. But I’m not sure he gets there unless he continues to be a HBP magnet.

Dave: Whether or not it’s actually indicative, it’s clearly a small (and unreliable) sample size. That being said, does Bobby Dalbec have the  potential to be a big league regular?
Keith Law: I think he has a fringe regular ceiling but will likely be a good bench player.

Chamaco: The Athletic is running a special – $1 a month for 6 months.  Will that allow me to read everything you have written since starting there?
Keith Law: Yes. I don’t think it’s limited in any way.

Jason: Do you think josh lindblom could be good in relief? he clearly isnt cut for starting in MLB
Keith Law: Yes.

Luis Robert: Luis Robert is walking almost twice as often as he did in AAA. Is this SSS noise, or a positive step?
Keith Law: Everything. In. 2020. Is. A. Small. Sample.
Keith Law: If this were a regular season we wouldn’t even be at Memorial Day.

Chamaco: Any good reason why scouts can’t attend MLB games or alt. sites? Seems like there is enough room to socially distance even with players in the stands.
Keith Law: Certain owners didn’t want to spend the money to send scouts out to games, so they pushed for MLB to just ban them all.

Mike: Klaw, if Steve Cohen hired you to run the Mets, what are the top things you would tell him that needs to be done? Would you even have interest in a front office position?
Keith Law: I would actually leave a lot of people in place. They’ve drafted really well, and you’re seeing more of that this year and last year with Smith’s emergence, Conforto, Alonso, and perhaps Peterson (he should be better than this, the BB% is surprising). Their development on the pitching side has improved. Their two biggest problems have been injuries and major-league transactions.

Nelson: It’s a small sample obviously, but Braves fans have been cautiously optimistic about Austin Riley’s approach at the plate improving. Have you seen much of him this year? Quality of ABs seems vastly improved to my eyes, especially on the last month.
Keith Law: Tiny sample. And they’ve faced a lot of bad pitching in that span.

Tim KC: Hey Keith…I am afraid that all the rule changes for this experimental year is going convince Manfred to negotiate to keep changes and push for further (bad) changes next CBA negotiations (and greater possibility of strike/lock out).  (Only pro-universal DH.). Can you talk me off the ledge or is it legit concerns?
Keith Law: The union has to agree to all of it. Universal DH is a lock. Don’t see the union agreeing to many other things like 7-inning games, which would reduce the need for so many relievers.

Appa Yip Yip: Libertarianism in America also has to be put into the context of having one political party that does everything it can to make the state inept. Freedom from government interference makes a lot more sense when your government is constantly being kneecapped by the people responsible for running it.
Keith Law: Not unreasonable. Although I think there’s such a strong cultural “don’t tell me what to do” mentality here that overruns any sense of “I should care about others” that you might expect from a nation that so often likes to refer to itself as a Christian one.

Maddy: Looking at 2021 Prospect Rankings, how are you going to go about not getting a traditional season-long look at prospects? How many changes are we realistically going to see?
Keith Law: We’ll have a lot of graduations, the addition of this year’s draft, and possibly some stuff from fall baseball. That’ll make for fewer changes than in a normal year, and I’m assuming my team by team writeups will be shorter as a result of guys not playing, but there will at least be sufficient changes to make the top 100 pretty fresh.

Brent: Dylan Cease has been productive getting guys out without a high K-rate. Do you see that continuing or will he have to miss more bats to continue the success?
Keith Law: I think he needs a higher K rate, but I also think his K rate will improve.
Keith Law: Secondary stuff has shown at least flashes of being good enough to miss more bats.

Greg: Obviously small sample, but is Plesac a mid rotation guy long term?
Keith Law: Yeah, I’m buying that.

Mike Trout: I read “you’re running” as in running for office. Law 2024!
Keith Law: I don’t need to run – we’ve got progressive candidates running all over the place here in Delaware. I voted in our primary for Kyle Evans Gay, a progressive running to flip our State Senate seat (it’s been red for over 20 years); and Jess Scarane, the progressive candidate running against incumbent Senator Chris Coons. I also donated to help other progressive candidates for our state legislature, including Sarah McBride, Debbie Harrington, and Stephanie Barry.

Jason: Would the US Postal Service be in better shape if it wasn’t forced to prefund its retirees’ health benefits 75 years into the future or do they need to radically change the organization?
Keith Law: Pretty sure it’s the former.

Johnny Tuttle: I was exhilarated when players walked off the fields/courts/rinks. We need more of this leadership.

PS: Why do white people revere Jackie and MLK decades afterwards but hate LeBron now? Hang on, I think I’ve figured it out on my own.
Keith Law: Yep. Much easier to laud these guys well after the fact.

Kevin: Will the Mariners call up Taylor Trammell for some time this year? Would you? A Trammell/Kelenic/J-Rod outfield looks mightyyyyy nice in theory.
Keith Law: I would call Trammell and Kelenic up now, since it’s not like they’d be taking time away from anyone important for their futures.

Joe: What are your thoughts about contracting MILB teams? As a fan and taxpayer that built a new stadium for a team being eliminated, I’m irritated that rich MLB can’t afford to support these teams.
Keith Law: I have mixed feelings on this. Some markets just didn’t support their teams, and were more headaches for their parent clubs (due to travel, facilities, etc.) than anything else. The Appalachian League will barely be missed – nobody went to most of those games. And MLB should have more say in where MiLB franchises are located, for the convenience of moving players around, and to manage the reach of the game into better or larger markets. That said, eliminating all of short-season baseball is a terrible player development move, a penny wise and pound foolish decision that reduces jobs in baseball for players and staff alike.

Tracy: All this talk of uniting this country might backfire on the next administration. There will still be a large faction who will oppose any attempts that may help “them” (non-white people). Same reasons Biden should forget about “bi-partisanship.” It’s not going to happen. Do not waste time like Obama did. You get screwed in the end.
Keith Law: I read Ben Rhodes’ book The World As It Is, about his time in the Obama White House, and while I don’t think this was his intended message, it was the one I took away. You can’t work with people who don’t intend to work with you. Negotiating with someone who consistently acts in bad faith is far different from negotiating with someone who acts in good faith. You need a different strategy and different tactics.

Chaz: Have seen a few ups and many downs from Evan White this season. Obviously didn’t have the most experience heading into the season, but will he figure it out? Seems like a velocity problem ie: he can’t hit the hard stuff.
Keith Law: That was my take too. If you can’t hit velocity, this is not the sport for you.

The Ghost in Texas: What kind of prospect was kiner-falefa. SSS but the guy looks like he belongs has he changed anything to allow himself to be more productive than expected? And is he a starter on a winning club? (Not currently of course bc Tex is awful)
Keith Law: He didn’t start catching until he was 21, in his fourth season in pro ball, and without that he wasn’t really a prospect at all. Less than two years later, he was in the majors, so his window to appear on anyone’s lists was very short. This year is the first time (so far) he’s slugged .400+ at any stop at all, and it’s just because his BABIP has jumped 57 points. So, he wasn’t a prospect until he could catch, and his 2020 line looks like a pretty serious outlier at the plate. However, a C-IF like him has value if he can just get on base like IKF has, so I think he’s a useful player on a winning club, but not a starter.

kc: although it’s a weird season, pretty excited for the future of baseball with some of these young players
Keith Law: I am too.

Matthew: I’ve been reading these chats for too long because I remember when all the Cubs fans would come and disparage you for saying Junior Lake wasn’t a star when he was good for like 3 weeks one time.
Keith Law: Never forget. Junior Lake and Brett Jackson belong on some sort of All-Star Klaw Hates My Team’s Prospects roster.

Leftist: Your responses to leftists are emblematic of the Democratic Party’s inevitable downfall. Instead of attempting to reach out and expand the net of potential voters, you mock, ridicule, and use inconsistent logic (such as implying that Biden, who was instrumental in appointing Scalia and Thomas, has a clean record with SCOTUS). Instead of dismissing an entire movement as “privileged”, maybe consider that some of us are actually marginalized BIPOC and just don’t trust someone with as horrible a record as Biden.
Keith Law: I never implied Biden has a clean record with SCOTUS; that’s your inference, and a bad-faith one at that. I implied that I’d prefer Biden’s choice for SCOTUS, especially if it comes with a Democrat-controlled Senate, to Trump’s choice. We have clear data on the type of justice Trump would nominate, but those examples you give for Biden came 20+ years ago and were not his nominees. If you think that, as President, Biden is going to nominate the next Antonin Scalia, I’m not sure we can have a rational discussion on the subject.

JJ: Watched the Red Sox game with my dad the other night, and after a Bobby Dalbec strkeout, I casually mentioned to Dad that the Sox picked Dalbec one pick before Shane Bieber was chosen.  My dad went nuts, saying that Dave Dombrowski was an idiot who ruined the Red Sox.  My question:  at that point in the draft (4th round) do GMs have any idea of who they’re picking, or is it a 100% scouting director decision?
Keith Law: Scouting director decision – but also, Bieber wasn’t throwing anywhere near this hard when in college.

2022: Do you foresee a work stoppage in 2022? Starting to think the 2021 season might be the only full year we get until 2023 (and even 2021 could be impacted by COVID).
Keith Law: It’s a real concern, although I wonder if players would approach the talks differently after losing more than half of this season, and look for more guaranteed money even if it cuts off long-term upside. (Not saying that should be their strategy, just that it might be.)

Lyle: SSS and all but have you seen enough from Kyle Lewis to believe that he’s an everyday OF going forward?
Keith Law: SSS – and Lewis hasn’t had a huge run of health since college, either. I’m not rooting against him, but if you’re DiPoto, you have to consider that when planning the future of your roster. (Maybe that means Lewis ends up taking DH time to keep him playing, eventually.)

The Ghost in Texas: In normal times Spring Training would be going strong 6 months from now. What do u think the chances are ST 2021 will look anything similar to previous seasons. As someone that travels to Phoenix each year for a great weekend I beg u to not make me cry.
Keith Law: I would guess we get spring training but if we don’t have a vaccine it might be without fans, or with very few fans.

Nate: Hearing of any prospects at satellite sites that have made big jumps this year?
Keith Law: Yes, but I don’t take any of it seriously until they show it in games. Any team can claim their prospects look great when nobody else can watch them.

Jason: Is devin williams a future closer?
Keith Law: Yes.

Jason: As an author, where do you want to see most of your readers get your book: Amazon vs. supporting a local bookstore, ebook vs print vs audiobook or you don’t have a preference?
Keith Law: My incentives are all over the place. The more you pay for the book, the more I get in royalties against my advance, although it’s a small amount on any one book. But I also want more people to read my books, since it was so much work to write them. And I also want to be sure independent bookstores continue to exist, as I enjoy them so much as a consumer, and I believe they contribute to diversity in what gets published. So … buy my books wherever you want, in whatever format you want, and I will be grateful.
Keith Law: That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading and for all of your questions, as always. Stay safe, wear your masks, and make sure you’re registered to vote!

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→ September 9, 2020
→ By

A Memory Called Empire.

Arkady Martine, the pen name of Canadian historian AnnaLinden Weller, won the Hugo Award for Best Novel this year for her debut work A Memory Called Empire, a pretentious anachronism of a book that spends far too much time and energy on arcana like its invented language or obscure terms from poetry and semiotics, and too little on matters like plot or character development.

A Memory Called Empire takes us to the Teixcalaanli Empire, an interstellar domain at some unspecified date in the future, where we meet Mahit Dzmare, the brand-new ambassador from a remote outpost called Lsel. Lsel is independent, although its status is precarious, located in a gravity well near a significant jumpgate used for interstellar travel, and Mahit’s predecessor died under mysterious circumstances. Mahit has a neurological implant called an imago machine that contains the memories and at least some of the personality of her predecessor, although it’s from fifteen years earlier, before he left Lsel for Teixcalaan. The Empire is in the midst of several political crises – an incipient revolution, a possible invasion by an alien race, and a question around who will succeed the aging Emperor. When someone also tries to assassinate Mahit, it becomes clear that her predecessor’s death was no accident, and leads her into an intrigue that will ultimately go all the way up to the throne.

The political story here isn’t actually that compelling because Martine doesn’t earn it with the setup. There’s no reason for the reader to care about who is going to succeed the emperor, or whether the possible civil war will come to pass, because we have no idea what the current regime’s policies are, or whether the people are satisfied or even prospering. The individual personalities involved in the intrigue aren’t well-developed and there’s zero sense of whether we should root for any person or faction other than the obvious question of who killed Mahit’s predecessor and appears to now want her dead as well.

Martine commits a pair of cardinal sins common to bad science fiction or fantasy: She obsesses over fake vocabulary, making it look alien with unusual or unpronounceable letter combinations; and she wastes a ton of time on specifics about the culture or science being depicted. You can see the former in the names I listed above; most constructed words in this book have at least one x or z, often several, and have a general lack of vowels in places where they’d be welcome. The latter problem pops up all over the place in discussions of linguistics, orthography, and especially in the Teixcalaanli method of communicating through poetry or verse, much of which people in the Empire memorize as did so many educated Britons a few hundred years ago. This presents myriad problems, not the least of which is that nobody gives a shit about this stuff and it has less than nothing to do with the plot. It’s abysmal, punctuated by Martine’s use of obscure terms from poetry analysis (ekphrasis, phatic, encomiastic, and scansion among them). It’s also hard to believe that an advanced civilization would be this hung up on traditions that, in our history, fell out of fashion several centuries ago. There’s probably some sort of correlation between the development of faster-than-light travel and declining usage of anapests, although I haven’t seen hard evidence on that. The result is a book that feels pretentious from its title on through the resolution.

The imago-machines are the one truly novel element in A Memory Called Empire, but Mahit’s malfunctions early in the book and we go a few hundred pages before she gets it back again, so the exploration of what that merging of memories and personalities might mean is limited. It’s a clever idea, and the absence of the machine that Mahit expects to be there, and to help guide her through difficult situations in her new role as ambassador, is a significant plot point for much of the novel – but to us, it simply reduces Mahit to our level. The chance of real insight into what makes us us, and how the experiences and thoughts of others help change and define who we are, is largely lost by the malfunction of Mahit’s imago-machine, reducing the novel to a somewhat slow-paced spy story, and one where even Mahit is so two-dimensional that I couldn’t get concerned whether she figured out who killed her predecessor or even whether she survived.

Next up: I’m hosting a livestreamed event with Chuck Palahniuk on Friday, so after finishing his new book, The Invention of Sound, I’ve started his previous one, Adjustment Day.

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→ September 5, 2020
→ By

Stick to baseball, 9/5/20.

I had three pieces for subscribers to The Athletic around the trade deadline, wrapping up the Padres’ three moves, the Blue Jays’ and Mets’ moves, and five other trades in separate columns. I also had two new episodes of The Keith Law Show this week, one featuring Jessica Luther and Kavitha Davidson, authors of the new book Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back (which you can buy here), and another one with Will Leitch, which we posted Friday morning so you’d have it before the holiday weekend.

On Friday night, September 11th, I’ll be hosting a live talk with author Chuck Palahniuk about his new book The Invention of Sound through Midtown Scholar in Harrisburg. It’s a ticketed event, and with your purchase you’ll get a signed copy of the book as well as a link to the talk. (I just started reading the book about an hour ago.)
 
At Paste, I reviewed the tile-laying and set-collection game Succulent, and then ranked the five best tile-laying games I’ve played, which should include a few titles familiar to longtime readers.

I sent out a fresh edition of my free email newsletter on Friday, describing how I went from someone who hadn’t run in any meaningful way since 1985 to running 5 km without interruption in about four months.

And now, the links…

  • Daniel Thompson, the only full-time Black journalist at The Kenosha News, resigned his position to protest the paper’s use of an incendiary quote that cast protesters in an inaccurate light.
  • Larry Flynt wrote a “final farewell to the Falwells,” and it’s a more nuanced and thoughtful note than you might expect, with kind words about Jerry Falwell, Sr., with whom Flynt waged a very public battle over his First Amendment rights, and damning words about Falwell’s hypocritical son.
  • Online hoaxes, like the myriad ones about COVID-19, are making doctors’ jobs harder – and the blame falls primarily on Facebook and other sites that have let this misinformation fester.
  • Ars Technica reports that Facebook’s “plan” to combat election misinformation is the same as its plan for pretty much everything else that goes wrong on its site – doing nothing at all.
  • Philly Inquirer columnist Will Bunch says that Trump’s “reelection scheme of a civil war” is kicking into high gear as the election approaches. I was always skeptical of those who said Trump wouldn’t leave office willingly, but my view is shifting as his rhetoric changes, and the rest of his party continues to enable him.
  • Three mathematicians have solved a longstanding question about straight paths on the dodecahedron, one of the five Platonic solids and the only one for which this question remained unsolved.
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→ September 3, 2020
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The Burnt Orange Heresy.

The Burnt Orange Heresy adapts the best-reviewed book by pulp author Charles Ray Willeford, a short 1971 novel where Willeford took aim at the worlds of art and art criticism inside the framework of a thriller. For about 80 minutes, it’s a great ride, a long con with a handful of actors at the tops of their games … and then it flubs the ending as severely as any film in recent memory, comparable to First Reformed but with so much less to redeem it before the missteps.

James Figueras (Claes Bang) is an art critic giving a talk to American tourists about how important art criticism is when Berenice (Elizabeth Debicki) wanders in towards the end of the talk; the two strike up a flirtatious conversation and quickly end up in bed. She says they’ll never see each other again, but he seems to have other ideas and invites her along for a weekend at the country house of the wealthy art dealer Joseph Cassidy (Mick Jagger, his first film role in two decades). It turns out that Cassidy wants to involve Figueras, who has some shady dealings in his past, in a scheme to steal one of the last paintings by the reclusive artist Debney (Donald Sutherland), who lives in the guest house on Cassidy’s estate and hasn’t released any paintings in a half century. This plot has unforeseen complications, of course, leading to tragic consequences.

While the film sets up the plot, this film is as tight as any heist movie from recent years – tighter, say, than Widows, a superior film overall that also featured Debicki – and largely gets you on the wavelength of the characters. I’m not totally sold on the chemistry between Bang and Debicki, but the dialogue works and when they disagree, the tension builds slowly from within. (It helps that they are both giants; Bang is 6’4″, Debicki 6’3″, so they’re eye to eye – and it’s funny how they tower over Jagger and Sutherland.) Bang is a very convincing con man; the entire opening sequence, where he delivers his seminar to the happy tourists, is a clinic in grabbing an audience’s attention and holding them rapt. He’s weirdly charming, although I’d say his charm works more when he’s playing the art critic than when he’s wooing Berenice. Jagger, meanwhile, is clearly having the time of his life as Cassidy, hamming it up in a way that might not work for a veteran actor but here, where you can’t exactly forget who he actually is, it works to his advantage.

When this movie hits the final stretch, though, it breaks a leg so gruesomely it should be taken off the track and shot. While it may adhere to the plot of the book, it hinges here on a character doing something so incredibly stupid that it destroys any suspension of disbelief, and then robs us of a fairly critical resolution to a particular arc. That forced decision does get a series of double entendres in an I-know-what-you-did ending, but by that point, I’d thrown in the towel on the plot.

If the novel’s intent was to parody the art world, it comes through in pieces in the film – and, although I’ve seen several reviews that say that aspect of the film is pretentious, I never found it so. It doesn’t expect you to know anything about fine art, and the wry humor of its satirical elements will work even if you don’t follow that world. But for the heist arc, and the way various hints and implications don’t actually pan out in the end, turned this movie from a B+ to a failing grade.

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→ September 2, 2020
→ By

Music update, August 2020.

August rallied late to produce enough good new tracks that I ended up cutting a few from the final playlist. There were also some fairly high-profile and/or well-reviewed albums, including the Killers’ Imploding the Mirage, Samia’s The Baby, Bully’s SUGAREGG, Young Jesus’ experimental jazz/rock Welcome to Conceptual Beach, Angel Olsen’s Whole New Mess, Bright Eyes’ oh I don’t care what it’s called. I liked the Killers album, and sort of like the Young Jesus album even if I don’t fully appreciate what they’re doing, and could do without the others. Anyway, here’s my playlist for August; you can access it here if you can’t see the Spotify widget below.

Anderson .Paak – Lockdown. Therehave beenway too many songs about the lockdown, and most of them suck. This one doesn’t.

clipping. – Say the Name. That’s Daveed Diggs of Hamilton and Blindspotting, along with a pair of producers, and I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I didn’t know of this trio’s existence until a few months ago. Diggs is a clever wordsmith whose laconic style calls back to Guru and Kool G Rap. clipping.’s fourth full-length album, Visions of Bodies Being Burned, which takes its title from the sample that opens this song, is due out on October 23rd.

Lupin – May. Lupin is Jake Luppen of the inoffensive alternative band Hippo Campus, but apparently he’s been hiding his inner Neon Indian, at least based on this single from his forthcoming debut solo album, which has an incredibly funky drum machine loop and a bass line to match. No word on whether he’ll hold any concerts during a full moon.

The Naked & Famous – Monument. TNAF’s new album Recover dropped on August 8th and it’s their best and most complete LP yet, with several standout tracks including this one (which showcases Alisa Xayalith’s vocals particularly well), “Death,” “Recover,” “Easy,” and “Sunseeker.”

Space Above featuring Alisa Xayalith – Stolen Days. Xayalith also lends her vocals to her former bandmate Aaron Short, who records as Space Above and just put out a new 7-song EP Glow the same day TNAF released their own record. Maddie North, who records as So Below and has recorded with Space Above, even put out a new single, “Fear,” that same week.

Arlo Parks – Hurt. Parks just turned 20 last month but she’s the most interesting, dynamic new voice I’ve heard all year. This new single combines distinct soul and funk elements with her hypnotic vocals, the gentle nature of which belies the depth of emotion beneath them.

Killers – Dying Breed. Brandon Flowers and company returned with Imploding the Mirage, which took me by surprise as someone who was never a huge fan of their work. The record doesn’t take any huge risks, but also has quite a few strong pop melodies and immaculate production, led by this, the fourth single off the record, as well as “Caution” (with a guitar solo from Lindsey Buckingham!) and “Blowback.”

Doves – Cathedrals of the Mind. A new Doves song is pretty much an automatic inclusion on my playlists, but this isn’t quite what I was hoping to hear from the trio for a single from their comeback album The Universal Want, due out on September 20th, lacking the immediacy or the strong melodies that marked their peak output.

London Grammar – Baby It’s You. I was reasonably sure I’d listed another London Grammar song on a past playlist, but I seem to have made that up. They’re quite popular in the UK, with a #1 album in 2017’s Truth is a Beautiful Thing; I’m surprised how often commercial or critical success in other Anglophone countries can fail to translate into any notice here in the U.S. We can be xenophobic in music, too.

Lucius – Man in My Radio. This Brooklyn indie quartet can be strange, and pretentious, but Lucius seems good for one absolute banger a year, and this one-off single definitely qualifies.

BLOXX – Coming Up Short. This Uxbridge quartet have toured with the Wombats and just released their debut album Lie Out Loud, featuring this very hooky indie-pop track.

Yard Act – Fixer Upper. These guys are post-punk in the Gang of Four/Wire sense, and take it a step further with spoken-word lyrics about suburban real estate. I swear it’s not deliberate that this month’s playlist skews so heavily towards the UK.

Fontaines D.C. – I Was Not Born. These heralded Irish punks made my top 100 of last year with “Too Real,” but their singles prior to this one had missed that song’s hook, lacking something to counter the abrasiveness of their music. They’ve found the balance again here with a more melodic guitar line without sacrificing any of their signature sneering.

Ihsahn & Einar Solberg – Manhattan Skyline. So, this is the lead singer/guitarist of the infamous black metal band Emperor, perhaps better known for their support of arsons of old churches in Norway in the 1990s and their drummer’s conviction for murdering a gay man who he thought made a pass at him than for their actual music; and the lead singer and keyboardist for Norwegian prog metal band Leprous. And they’re covering a minor single from a-ha’s second album.

Gojira – Another World. This French heavy metal outfit’s 2016 release Magma was named the best metal album of the decade in a poll of musicians by MetalSucks.net and even earned two Grammy nominations. They’re often called “death metal” but they don’t have that genre’s blast beats, and the vocals here are more shouted than growled or screamed, although if you think this is a distinction without a difference I won’t press the point. Anyway, the guitar riff here is outstanding, rivaling the riff that opens “Stranded” from Magma.

Carcass – The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue. The greatest death-metal band in history will release an EP of new material, Despicable, on October 30th, featuring this brutal six-minute track that goes through what feels like a half-dozen different movements, some of which I could do without but others feature some of the incredible guitar work that has made me a fan of theirs since Heartwork.

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→ August 29, 2020
→ By

Stick to baseball, 8/29/20.

I had one column this week for subscribers to The Athletic, with scouting notes on Triston McKenzie, Sixto Sanchez, Wil Crowe, and Joey Bart. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

For Paste this week, I reviewed Succulent, a solid new game of tile-laying and set collection, and would have given it an even higher grade had I not had issues with some of the art and graphics.

My guest on this week’s episode of The Keith Law Show was Orioles reliever Dillon Tate, talking about youth baseball and overcoming the obstacles he faced on his path to the majors. You can also subscribe on iTunes – and if you do, please leave a rating and review.

You can still get my book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, where fine books are sold, like on bookshop.org. I’m also planning to send out another edition of my free email newsletter this weekend.

And now, the links…

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→ August 28, 2020
→ By

The City We Became.

N.K. Jemisin became the first author ever to win three straight Hugo Awards for Best Novel when all three parts of her Broken Earth trilogy took home the honor; she also became the first black woman to win that award at all, which is hard to believe in a field that brought us Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson, but the Hugos have had their issues with gender and especially race.

The City We Became is Jemisin’s first novel since the last book of the previous trilogy came out in 2017 (although she has written some short stories and a lauded novella called “Emergency Skin” in the interim). This new novel, which marks the beginning of a new trilogy or series, feels like a complete departure in tone and style from the Broken Earth novels, trading the dark, forbidding atmosphere of her future earth devastated by climate change and tectonic shifts for a modern New York City that’s full of life and humor, and also extradimensional superbeings.

Cities in this new novel can come to life, and express that through individual people – usually just one person for a city but, because New York is the Greatest City in the World, it gets one person per borough. When a person becomes a city, they gain powers related to that city’s identity and characteristics, or in this case the borough’s characteristics. Each borough of New York City has different demographics, and a different reputation, and Jemisin infuses the book with all of that, not least with the way Staten Island is a borough apart from the rest, and the quiet enmity that exists between it and the rest of the City.

As the novel opens, however, there’s another enemy that requires the immediate attention of the various City-humans, who also include Saõ Paolo and later Hong Kong. Something is invading New York City from an alternate dimension, although it appears to be coming up from below the ground, and it’s causing real damage even though only a few people – the City-humans and, for reasons never explained here, a few people with them – can see its physical form. The five boroughs are all ‘born’ simultaneously across the city, and have to find each other so they can team up, assuming they can work together, and try to fight their new, common enemy. She is, as you might guess, no pushover, and she comes with some serious attitude.

If the often funereal tone of the Broken Earth trilogy was an obstacle for you, you might find The City We Became a much easier go, because this book is madcap. If Zadie Smith wrote a speculative fiction novel, it would probably look a lot like this. Some of the humor is specific to New York, and maybe not everyone will enjoy Jemisin’s digs at Staten Island as much as I did, but plenty of it is situational and often laugh-out-loud funny.

That’s possible because Jemisin has put so much time and effort into creating these five main characters, giving them diverse identities, back stories, and personalities, so that each of them feels fully realized and their interactions with each other come across as natural conversations. So much of what’s funny in this book is organic, and even though the humor is entirely beside the rather serious points Jemisin is making, it also allows the seriousness to play better on the page.

And there is a lot going on under the surface, too. This is a novel of man’s impact on the environment, but it’s not anti-urban or anti-development; it’s a love letter to cities, to the life and culture they bring, and to the way they bring people together despite differences. The enemy’s tactics may make her rather unsympathetic, but, like Killmonger, she also makes some good points. When you learn why she’s so adamant about destroying New York – that the birth of a city here has dire consequences where she exists – and consider the parallels to real life, that there’s no such thing as unfettered growth without consequences, you can at least see her point, and why she might be able to convince one of the boroughs to listen to her.

Jemisin has clearly set up a larger story arc here beyond what happens in this one novel, although this story does have a concrete ending that’s more complete than those of the first two Broken Earth books. There are multiple unresolved questions, even some minor details (like what happened to Brooklyn’s townhouses), that point to a sequel. But there are also more characters in here to whom you might relate on some level, and the fact that these novels are written in the present day and in a very contemporary voice put me more into this story than I ever was in the previous trilogy, making this the best Jemisin work I’ve read to date.

Next up: Jessica Luther and Kavitha Davidson’s Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back.

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