A Stone of the Heart (1990) by Tom Grimes

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

A Stone of the Heart (1990)

by Tom Grimes 

Queens, New York City

Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island: 14/28

New York: 90/105

  A theme that has emerged from the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America is the career's of the author's who have been selected.  I'm focusing on the lesser known folks, since I've read most of the canon-level or just under canon level picks that editor Susan Straight made, leaving me to actually read the lesser known books for each state and region.   One way I can identify the books at the bottom of the ladder is by publisher and the absence of either E-book or Audiobook or both versions when I go looking.  A Stone of the Heart is bottom of the barrel by those standards- published by an indie that I'm pretty sure is out of business and without an Ebook or Audiobook edition.

   And indeed I soon learned that author Tom Grimes most famous book is called Mentor, a memoir about how he flopped as a big time writer of literary fiction and mentee of Frank Conroy, who plucked Grimes from pre-fame obscurity into a role as the chosen one of the Iowa Writers Workshop, only to see his second novel, Season's End, get the most brutal review from Publishers Weekly I've ever seen in my life, reprinted in full below:

This schizophrenic second novel from Grimes ( A Stone of the Heart ) veers from sluggish philosophizing and ponderous verbosity to snappy repartee and crisp narrative. Mike Williams, a left fielder and singles hitter for an unnamed major league baseball team, chronicles the intermittently compelling stories of his marriage to his high school sweetheart and battles with his agent, manager and team owner in the seasons between 1975 and the players' strike of 1981. Proposing baseball as an anchor of sanity in the craziness of the business world around it, Grimes contrasts the sharp realities of life with ``the sweet illusions of the game.'' The first part of the novel, charting Williams's rise to stardom and its burdens, is smugly pretentious and nearly chokes the sly, sardonic humor that is its principal redeeming feature, although the rest of the book is better focused. Williams observes, ``We are ballplayers. We accept the ineffable and get on with the game.'' Grimes should have have followed suit from early on. (Apr.)

  

     I mean I can not believe Publishers Weekly did him like that.   A Stone of the Heart, meanwhile was his debut, a novella about an overweight, baseball loving teen who has an alcoholic father and out-of-touch-with-reality Mom, growing up in Queens.  Presumably it is the text which Frank Conroy plucked from the application pile and based his opinion upon.

    A Stone of the Heart is very on-brand for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America, a short novella about a lower-middle class family which exists entirely in their own reality, where reality intruding from the outside world is represented by a Grandparent or parish priest.  No one goes anywhere, and the only thing that happens in the book is a trip to see the Yankees in the Bronx. Heart pounding stuff.