W. P . K I N S E L L A

SHOELESS JOE

WILLIAM PATRICK KINSELLA (1935- )

Life Facts

• B. Edmonton, Alberta

• “One Shakespeare play and one J. M. Barrie play was the total literature of my high school years.”

• BA, Victoria University, 1974

MFA, U. of Iowa, 1978

• English prof., University of Calgary, two years

• Field of Dreams royalties helped free him to write full time.

• 7 novels, 18 collections of short stories, 2 nonfiction, 2 poetry

• Lives in Yale, BC

BASEBALL NOVELS

1977 1986 2011

“FIRST NATION” FICTION1977 1987 1994

NONFICTION TITLES

1997 2002

FILM ADAPTATIONS

1989

1994--also basis of

“The Rez” (TV series, 1996)

W. P. KINSELLA ON

His early Indian stories: "It's the oppressed and the

oppressor that I write about. The way that oppressed

people survive is by making fun of the people who oppress

them. That is essentially what my Indian stories are all

about."

Publishing fiction today (2011): The publishing industry

today is just—I couldn’t break into the market today if I

was just starting out. The publishing industry is down to a

few dozen mainly adventure and romance writers. There’s

still some academic fiction out there, but it has an

incredibly small audience. Nobody really cares about it.

http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/w-p-on-j-d-kinsella-talks-about-writing-

salinger-into-shoeless-joe/

THE “BLACK SOX” SCANDAL

1988 Film

Chicago White Sox Lose

1919 World Series

• Eight star players

indicted for fraud, 1920

• A. Comiskey, owner of

WS, suspended them

for the 1921 season

• Grand jury found them

not guilty in Aug. 1921

• But K. M. Landis, first

baseball commissioner,

banned them for life.

J. D. SALINGER (1919-2010)

1950 Active Career 1948-1963

The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

Nine Stories (1953)

Franny and Zooey (1961)

Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963)

THE BOOK

FEATURES OF J.D. SALINGER’S LIFE

• Catcher in the Rye became a cult novel—millions sold since first published in 1951.

• Frequently taught; frequently banned in schools for Holden’s language (342 profanities counted by one outraged parent)

• As Shoeless Joe indicates, fans sought Salinger, assuming he just had to be like the protagonist, Holden Caulfield

• Salinger became reclusive, settling in Cornish, New Hampshire in 1953; rarely interviewed or photographed

• Refused offers from major studios for rights to film Catcher

• After Glass family stories (1965), quit publishing, though wrote

• Lawsuits: 1986 to prevent publication of letters; 1995, blocked US screening of Pari, an Iranian film; 2009, blocked publication of sequel, Coming Through the Rye, by a Swedish author

DAUGHTER’S MEMOIR (2000)

KINSELLA ON CREATING “SALINGER”

• First read Catcher in high school: It spoke to every

young man who read it. You may not have acted on it

but you said, yes would have liked to have done that

or I felt that way….Of course [it’s] the quintessential

book about growing up male in America.

• As a reclusive author that Kin. liked, JDS seemed a

worthy object for a character’s quest. So “what if….”

• Never met Salinger so “He’s pretty much…imagined….I

made him a nice character so he couldn’t sue me.”

• Through JDS’s lawyers, K. learned he was “offended

and outraged” to be used. Warned against using him if

the novel were transferred to other media. (Not in film.)

“MAGIC REALISM”

• Fiction that employs the style and outlook of realism: everyday language, detailed setting, naming of people & places, motivation & cause/effect in the plot.

• The difference is that it allows the fantastic into this realistic world, without treating it as fantastic or miraculous. It’s as if the realistic world is “stretched” a bit—as in a dream--to include what would seem unusual or even unnatural in our “real world.”

• Sometimes uses historic figures and events, as Doctorow did in Ragtime, with Houdini, A. Mellon, etc.

• If Jorge Luis Borges (Labyrinths) and Franz Kafka are the “godfathers” of this style, the Columbian author, Gabriel Marquez has produced its masterpiece in 100 Years of Solitude.

SO LET’S TALK ABOUT IT!