I’ve been trying to re-read the novel The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. I first read it seven years ago and the the story and characters have stuck with me since. Its story centres around a scrawny college baseball player whose life is unravelled by a single bad throw.
As great as the book is though, I just can’t read past the bit where it all goes wrong. It hurts to watch someone go through stuff and suffer and grow, and it’s somehow worse the second time around. When you can see it all coming.
It’s probably why I only re-watch things like Frasier and Seinfeld. No one grows or learns anything and we get to stay stuck in lovely triviality. Like how, in a few episodes in season 3, George wears a green Stüssy sweatshirt. I wonder if people are talking about this on Reddit? (They are.)
Interestingly, I don’t feel any existential dread when re-watching the horrific road safety ads that aired when I was a kid in Australia in the 90s.
Maybe it’s because I’ve seen them so many times the narrative has lost its effect.
Maybe it’s because - unlike Henry Skrimshander in The Art of Fielding - the characters in these ads won’t ever get the chance to learn and grow.
Or maybe it’s because I - a contemporary ad man - watch them and think how clever the creatives were for writing that beautiful sunrise into the script. They probably got to go somewhere really nice to shoot it. Also making a kombi collide with a semi-trailer would - to be perfectly honest - be fun.