Review of Bill Konigsberg's Out of the Pocket
by Katie Cortese

Bill Konigsberg. Out of the Pocket. Dutton Books, 2008. $16.99

Out of the Pocket is a book about sports. It’s a book about family. It’s a book about friends and loyalty, secrets, betrayal and trust, and love in its many and varied forms. Ostensibly though, the novel is about Bobby Framingham, a star high school football quarterback living in Orange County, California who gains the attention of the media first for his prowess on the field and later for an article published without his permission in the school newspaper announcing his homosexuality. The novel deals with reactions to this news on a national level, as well as among family, friends and teammates, most of who were caught by surprise. Bobby must deal too with the internal ramifications of his sexuality. Early in the book, Bobby reflects:

I’d known about the gay thing for a few years, but it was really over the summer that I’d put together the final pieces – that it mattered, that I was going to have to tell people, come out or whatever.

The book follows him as he does just that. Konigsberg’s first person narration allows us to view the universe of the novel through Bobby’s awakening sensibilities. Talking to the high school journalist who betrays him, Bobby

…listened to the sounds around me. Silence could sometimes be so loud. The wind hissing through the rustling trees, some chirping birds, I almost never heard any of this, because I didn’t listen.

And later, Bobby listens as the college boy who will become Bobby’s boyfriend counts a certain “sensitivity” as a benefit of being gay. A strength that comes from difference. Konigsberg employs his own narrative sensitivity to some of the book’s subplots: letting down Carrie, a long time friend, because he doesn’t like her “like that,” first measuring up to his father’s demanding expectations and then serving as a pillar of strength for his father in the face of a sudden, debilitating illness. In fact, Konigsberg draws a generous and evocative portrait of each character to cross the book’s stage, whether it’s the double-dealing journalist Finch Gozman, Dr. Blassingame, the quirky guidance counselor, or even Dennis, a boneheaded but ultimately harmless second-string member of the football team.

Konigsberg’s chapters are concise and time is measured by the progression of the football season, extending from their opening blowout game against Huntington Beach to a playoff nail biter against their arch rival, La Habra. Expert sports knowledge adds an element of useful tension to the book and gives us another reason to root for Bobby in his quest to bring his team to victory, and ultimately to participate in the world of professional sports. The book is technically written for a Young Adult audience of ninth-twelfth graders, but adults will find much to connect to in this powerhouse of a first novel. Bobby Framingham, in his vulnerabilities and driving passions has a way of garnering support from quite a variety of corners.

And even so, at the end of the book, he’s still testing the boundaries of his public and private lives, unsure how completely to embrace his difference. When his friend Carrie chastises him for not bringing a boy he is dating to a party, Bobby reflects that now there were two people, Carrie and his dad “who seemed more okay with my gayness than I was.” Konigsberg’s hero breaks our hearts not only in his struggles, but in his happiness, as when towards the end of the book he remains suspicious of living “a life where the good is so purely good that you can taste it.” By the novel’s end, we are so wrapped up in the plight of this earnest and complicated narrator, that we want nothing for him but that life, happiness in the absence of compromise.

Though a first-time novelist, Bill Konigsberg, as a former assistant editor at ESPN.com and a sports writer and editor for The Associated Press, is no stranger to the publishing world. His journalism has garnered him recognition such as a GLADD Media Award and has graced the pages of national newspapers from coast to coast, appearing everywhere from The San Francisco Chronicle to the Miami Herald. And after publishing this first novel, Konigsberg earned another prestigious well-deserved writing accolade by receiving a Children's / Young Adult Lambda Award. But in Out of the Pocket, Konigsberg does more than prove his mettle as a writer of literary fiction, introducing us to characters as familiar and authentic as they are wholly original and complex, but simultaneously he invents a universe that we as readers can only someday hope will really exist.

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