'Creating a lasting tale of dreams'

 

“Most people write a lot of autobiography, but when I came to write autobiography I discovered that nothing interesting had ever happened to me. So I had to take the situation and invent stories to go with it.” –  W. P. Kinsella

 

Born in Edmonton, Alberta on this date in 1935, William Patrick Kinsella was a novelist and short story writer whose tales focused on baseball and Canada’s First Nations people.  For a wonderful read about life on the First Nations’ Reserve in Alberta, check out his short story collection Dance Me Outside, his very first book (released in 1977).  Narrated by a young Cree named Silas Ermineskin, it is a remarkable look at Reserve life, love, sorrow and triumph.

 

But while he writes poignantly and with great detail about the First Nations, it is for his 1982 baseball novel Shoeless Joe that he gained international acclaim and a lasting spot in American vernacular.

                                                                                                                         

Mildly controversial when it was released, Kinsella’s tale uses the reclusive (and still living at the time) author J.D. Salinger as one of its main characters, even though Kinsella had never met him. "I made sure to make him a nice character, though, so that he couldn’t sue me.” Kinsella said.   

 

Primarily set in small town, rural America the story has one of the great literary exchanges when one of Kinsella’s  “spirit” ballplayers – representing players from the early part of the 20^th century – emerges from a cornfield onto a baseball field constructed by a farmer named Ray who has heard a voice saying “build it and they will come.”  Seemingly bewildered, the player asks if this is Heaven?  “No,” Ray answers.  “This is Iowa.”

 

“Most writers are unhappy with film adaptations of their work, and rightly so,” Kinsella said shortly before his death in 2016.  “But Field of Dreams caught the spirit and essence of Shoeless Joe.”