A literary superstar disappeared for a decade. Now he's back with a sequel

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Set us as preferred On the Shelf The Brightness By Chad Harbach Little Brown & Co.: 672 pages, $32If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.The author Chad Harbach just had a banner week.His second novel, “The Brightness,” hit bookstores.

A24 announced his television adaptation.And the Milwaukee Brewers, his beloved hometown team, finally won their first World Series.It was a lot all at once, considering the onetime literary superstar hasn’t made a peep in nearly a decade.In 2011, Harbach became something of a literary unicorn: His debut, “The Art of Fielding,” inspired a bidding war, a $665,000 advance and near-universal predictions as the Next Great American Novel.The hype, for once, panned out.

He toured, made a chunk of money and worked on a few projects.Then — poof.

For years, there was scarcely a sign of him online or out in the world.Until last month.Harbach, it turned out, was emerging from the woods just outside Palo Alto.

“It’s not exactly the social, cultural milieu that I expected to find myself in,” he said on the phone from his Portola Valley home.And besides, the unlikely Californian moved west a few years back.In his mind, at least, he remains a Midwesterner.When we met at the Hollywood Roosevelt in mid-October, hours before his podcast with comedian-turned-bookfluencer Anthony Jeselnik, Harbach toted an early edition of Eve Babitz’s “Slow Days, Fast Company.” He credited journalist Liz Brown with helping spark Babitz’s revival, tracing a chain of book recommendations and literary connections that reflected the inside-baseball stories he’d picked up as a co-founder of the highly influential lit mag n+1 he helped start in 2004.The 50-year-old — wearing a cotton blue sweater, skinny jeans ...