As I’m joyfully reading the first few pages of The Art of Fielding, a first novel, by Chad 
Harbach, I find myself wondering about the precise setting in time. Distant past? Recent past? Present? Harbach’s novel, which he spent ten years on, has the kind of build-it-and-they-will-come baseball feel that means it could take place any time.
Henry Skrimshander is not much of a specimen, but is a wonder of short stop and as he goes off, miraculously, toward college there’s a scene with cell phones, so I’m thinking….okay, we are more or less in the present. And THEN comes a scene of waxing…for guys!…and I know we are smack dab in the present:
“’You have the smoothest back of any man I’ve ever met.’
“’I should,’ Starblind said. ‘I just had it done.’
“’Done?’
“’You know. Waxed.’
“’You’re shitting me.’
“Starblind shrugged.
…”’Can you believe this?’…He rubbed his tightly shorn scalp, which was already receding to a widow’s peak, with a huge hand. ‘Here I am battling to keep my hair, and Starblind here is dipping into the trust fund to have it removed.’”
Nothing says ‘the present’ like guy-waxing.
