Writing the Body in Motion

A Critical Anthology on Canadian Sport Literature

Angie Abdou, Jamie Dopp

• Publisher: AU Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781771992305
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Sport literature is never just about sport. The genre's potential to explore the human condition, including aspects of violence, gender, and the body, has sparked the interest of writers, readers, and scholars. Over the last decade, a proliferation of sport literature courses across the continent is evidence of the sophisticated and evolving body of work developing in this area. Writing the Body in Motion offers introductory essays on the most commonly taught Canadian sport literature texts. The contributions sketch the state of current scholarship, highlight recurring themes and patterns, and offer close readings of key works. Organized chronologically by source text, ranging from Shoeless Joe (1982) to Indian Horse (2012), the essays offer a variety of ways to read, consider, teach, and write about sport literature.

1

Fred Mason

W. P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe
The Fairy Tale, the Hero’s Quest, and the Magic Realism of Baseball

Baseball is probably the sport most written about by fiction writers; indeed, as David McGimpsey notes, “baseball has in fact gained a highbrow, literary reputation that no other American sport, and very few objects of American culture, enjoy” (2000, 2). McGimpsey (2000, 2) notes that the genre of baseball literature has many consistent tropes: baseball is a natural, God-given sport; it allows people to be judged on quantifiable merit; it is connected to the simplicity of childhood; it brings fathers and sons together. More cynical tropes can also be found: baseball can be corrupted by its fixed monopoly at the professional level, and its “purity” is always under threat, with a nostalgic nod to “how it used to be.” W. P. Kinsella’s novels and short stories have contributed heavily to the genre of baseball fiction, beginning with Shoeless Joe in 1982 (Steele 2011, 17), and his work almost always expresses some of these tropes.

Kinsella’s fiction, especially the novel Shoeless Joe, has received much attention from literary scholars. Historian Dan Nathan suggests that “in terms of the amount of critical attention it has received, Shoeless Joe’s only rival as far as baseball fiction goes is Bernard Malamud’s [1952 novel] The Natural” (2003, 154). Among other topics, scholars have focused on Kinsella’s writing style (Boe 1983; Easton 1999; Fischer 2000), on Shoeless Joe’s connection to other literature about baseball’s pastoral roots (Carino 1994; Garman 1994; Altherr 1990), on Kinsella’s complex portrayal of father-son relationships (Hollander 1999; Mesher 1992; Morrow 2002; Pellow 1991), and on how the novel’s nostalgia for baseball’s past is overly conservative and excludes women and people of colour (Garman 1994; McGimpsey 2000, Vanderwerken 1998). However, what sets Kinsella’s work apart from that of other baseball writers, is his heavy use of the fantastical, such as ghostly ballplayers, and his tendency to slip easily between different spaces and different times on rural ball fields. Drawing on analyses of other academic writers, this essay focuses on how Shoeless Joe employs mythical elements of the fairy tale and quest story, as well as metafictional techniques (blending elements of the real world into the fictional narrative), to portray baseball as a spiritual phenomenon.

W. P. KINSELLA AND BASEBALL FICTION

In a number of interviews, W. P. Kinsella indicated that he would be happy to be described as a “baseball writer,” even though he insisted that “the best sports literature isn’t really about sports. I, for instance, write love stories that have baseball as a background” (quoted in Horvath and Palmer 1987, 186). In addition to Shoeless Joe, Kinsella wrote five short story collections related to baseball (1980, 1984, 1988, 1993, 2000) and five baseball novels (1986, 1991, 1996, 1998, 2011). What became the novel Shoeless Joe started out as the short story “Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa,” the title story of his first short story collection. Kinsella wrote the story while at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in 1978, intending to express his love for the land around him. The story became the first chapter of the novel. While he had had previous success as a short story writer, the novel established Kinsella’s career and allowed him to take up writing as a full-time profession.

Although Kinsella wrote frequently about baseball, it appears he had little involvement with the sport itself. Like the novel’s main character, Ray Kinsella, the writer grew up with his father telling him stories about baseball (Murray 1987, 39). However, the real Kinsella never played as a child and only became a fan as an adult (Horvath and Palmer 1987, 184). As his relationship with the sport developed, Kinsella came to see baseball as a place for myth and dreams. As he told Don Murray (1987, 38), baseball, unlike other sports, is not limited by time or space. A tied baseball game could theoretically go on forever: one of Kinsella’s novels, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, features a ball game that goes on for forty days and forty nights. Kinsella also noted that “on the true baseball field, the foul lines diverge forever, the field eventually encompassing a goodly portion of the world, and there is theoretically no distance that a great hitter couldn’t hit the ball or a great fielder run to retrieve it. . . . This openness makes for larger than life characters, for mythology” (quoted in Horvath and Palmer 1987, 188). Starting with Shoeless Joe, Kinsella, probably more than any other fiction writer to date, turned to baseball for mythic possibilities.

MAGIC REALISM AND THE FANTASTICAL

A marker of much of Kinsella’s writing, particularly in Shoeless Joe, is his use of magic realism, a literary technique that incorporates surreal or fantastic elements into an otherwise realistic, even mundane world (Hamblin 1992, 3). Shoeless Joe, mostly set on a small, simple family farm in Iowa, includes time travel, voices “from beyond,” and deceased ballplayers who emerge from a cornfield to display their skills again. The storyline of the novel is largely driven by commands given by disembodied voices. Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella hears a voice that says “If you build it, he will come” (Kinsella 1982, 3). Ray somehow innately knows that the “he” referred to his father’s hero, Shoeless Joe Jackson, one of eight Chicago Black Sox players banned from baseball for fixing the 1919 World Series. “It” is a ball field. Despite financial difficulties and ridicule from his neighbours, Ray plows under part of his cornfield to build a ballpark. After three years, he has only managed to create a small section of left field, but it is enough to get Shoeless Joe Jackson to appear. Over time, more players from the Black Sox appear as Ray completes more of the field. The voice also tells Ray, “Ease his pain,” which he interprets, with complete certainty, to mean that he should travel across the country, retrieve reclusive author J. D. Salinger, and take him to a major league ball game (Kinsella, 1982, 27-28). Salinger and Ray both see a vision on the scoreboard, and both hear a voice that sends them on a trip back across the country to investigate the life of Archie Graham, who played one inning in the majors. While Salinger initially has doubts, Ray never does, and the voice, as if from on high, always ends up sending those who hear it to do the things they need to do. While the voice is seemingly omniscient and otherworldly, the actions it calls people to do occur in very simple, everyday places, like a cornfield in Iowa, the outfield stands of Fenway Park, and a small town in northern Minnesota.

Chisholm, Minnesota is the site of a major plot turn that links to the fantastical through a form of time travel. While Ray and Salinger are in town, it seems that their investigations into Graham revive the town’s memory of him. While out for a midnight stroll, Ray encounters the elderly Doctor Graham, who is long deceased. Ray realizes that he has experienced some sort of time slippage:

As we walk, I note subtle differences in the buildings and sidewalks. Some of the newer houses on Second Street appear to have been replaced by older ones. There are business signs along Lake Street that weren’t there yesterday. Can it be that I am the one who has crossed some magical line between fantasy and reality? That it is Doc who is on solid turf, and I have entered into the past as effortlessly as chasing a butterfly across a meadow? (118)

They go to Graham’s office for coffee and conversation, and Graham admits that his one wish in life was to bat in the major leagues. Ray returns to his hotel room, thereby travelling forward in time to his own present. On their way out of town, Ray and Salinger pick up a hitchhiker, a young Archie Graham with bat and glove, headed out west to find a ball club. Ray tells him of his field in Iowa, and Archie agrees to go with them. When the ghost players appear after Ray and his companions get back to the farm, Graham is told that he has a contract with them, and he joins the players on the field. The ghostly Black Sox, like Graham, have a strong timeless quality: they appear in their athletic prime, despite the decades that have passed.

Rebirth and revival of characters are standard features in many fantasy tales, as well as in the origin myths of many of the world’s religions. In the novel Shoeless Joe, rebirth and transformation are central to everything. We see the rebirth of players, initially Shoeless Joe Jackson and the other Black Sox, and later others, including Ray’s father, who was a minor league catcher. However, their presence is largely limited, in space and time, to Ray’s field and to game time. One exception is Archie Graham whom Ray and Salinger meet in the world beyond the farm. Once Graham starts playing at Ray’s field, though, he transfers from one “realm” to another and exists only as a young player who comes and goes—that is, until he makes the choice to once again become Doc Graham in order to save the life of Ray’s daughter, Karin, when she is choking. Graham transmogrifies, ultimately choosing self-sacrifice in being unable to return to the field as a player, much like a mythical hero. Another central character who experiences miraculous transformation is Eddie Scissons, the die-hard Cubs fan who claims to be “the oldest living Cub.” One night at Ray’s ballpark, the usually wispy opponents are surprisingly visible as the Chicago Cubs from the 1910s. Scissons sees a young version of himself called in as a relief pitcher, with disastrous results. His younger self blows a lead and is pulled from the game. After some initial distress over this episode, Eddie comes to see it as a reaffirmation of his obsession with baseball as a fan; he delivers a speech to the players about baseball as a form of religion and truth for the world. Later in the novel, Scissons dies and we learn he changed his will to request burial in Ray’s field. His symbolic rebirth, though a disaster, enables a rebirth of his belief in baseball.

Mythical stories with fantastical dimensions and great heroes serve to impart life lessons and to create bonds and a sense of community (Schwartz 1987, 137–38). Sporting practices in our modern world often take on mythic dimensions, since sport is one of the few cultural practices that can regularly offer us heroes. In his baseball writing, W. P. Kinsella consistently tapped into the mythical potential he saw in the game of baseball. Shoeless Joe has many similarities to folk and fairy tales, and it contains a number of elements of the fantasy genre. In a classic essay originally written for presentation in 1939, J. R. R. Tolkien suggests that certain elements bring us into the “realm of the fairy-story,” a realm that includes the “real” by focusing on humans and what they do in the fairy realm but allows for the fantastical, like fairies, elves, dwarfs, and dragons—or in Shoeless Joe, reborn players and time slippage (Tolkien 1964, 15-16). Crucially, in such stories, magic must be taken seriously: it must not be satirical or comic; it must be presented as true, as part of the story frame itself; and it typically helps with human desires (Tolkien 1964, 17–19).

The plot of Shoeless Joe is propelled by magic: several times in the novel, Ray refers to the idea of feeling “the magic” growing before crucial events happen (Kinsella, 1982, 10; 115; 187; 202). But for others to participate in the magic, to see the ghostly players and the ballpark itself, they must believe in the magical possibilities of baseball. While Ray’s immediate family members, Salinger, and Scissons experience the ballpark in its full dimension—with announcers, crowds, sights and sounds—others, such as Annie’s brother Mark and Ray’s brother Richard, initially see only the onlookers, the “real” people, sitting in a ramshackle bleacher on a ballpark surrounded by corn. Richard Schwartz argues that because some characters can see the ballplayers and others cannot, readers of Shoeless Joe have to be willing to accept that the phantoms are on the same level of reality in the narrative as the other characters, or the story falls apart. He suggests that “by leaving open the question of the phantoms’ reality, Kinsella extends the opportunity for experiencing faith to the readers themselves,” requiring that readers take “a leap of faith” (1987, 145).

Writing on the importance of belief in relation to the genre of fantasy and fairy tales, Tolkien noted:

What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief rises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. (Tolkien 1964, 36)

Tolkien put the onus for creating belief on the author, the “sub-creator” of the story. Other scholars, such as Neil Randall (1987) and Donald Morse (1998) argue that fictional works with fantastical elements like Shoeless Joe make demands upon readers, demands for a willing suspension of disbelief, for cooperation in sustaining belief (Morse 1998, 352). Since readers are required to accept such things as a magical ballpark in the cornfields of Iowa on the same level as the more realistic events in the novel, they must, in some sense, become co-creators of the narrative (Randall 1987,175). Belief is multi-layered in Shoeless Joe. The novel criticizes belief in organized religion as being self-serving, and insists that characters must believe in baseball and its possibilities to become full participants at Ray’s field. Similarly, the novel demands that readers suspend disbelief in order to enter the story fully. I might suggest that some critics, such as Bruce Brooks (1983, 22–24), or other readers who do not like the novel, may be unable or unwilling to maintain the required suspension of disbelief when faced with such fantastical elements in what is ostensibly a baseball novel.

METAFICTIONAL TECHNIQUES IN SHOELESS JOE

To complicate the question of what is believable in his writing, W. P. Kinsella often enters into metafiction, where fact and fiction are blended together so that the reader has difficulty knowing where one ends and the other begins (Morse 2004, 309). Shoeless Joe includes a number of real-world people as characters (Salinger, Graham, and Jackson himself) but fictionalizes them in the narrative and places them in all sorts of fantastic situations. Kinsella also incorporates “facts” that turn out not to be true at all. The blending and blurring of fact and fiction so that they are difficult to distinguish is a key feature of the novel.

The most obvious real-world person in the book is the title character, Shoeless Joe Jackson. The Black Sox scandal of 1919, the fixing of the World Series, Joe Jackson’s implication in the events, and the subsequent banning of the eight players for life are all historical facts. However, once Joe Jackson steps out of history and onto Ray’s ball field, he becomes a fictional character. Kinsella’s version of Jackson’s past is almost entirely based on the stories told by Ray’s father, which sympathetically frame Jackson and the other Black Sox as so-called “victims of the system.” Ray’s ball field is a place where the players are all absolved of their transgressions and are known simply for their love of the game (Nathan 2003, 155–56). As Joe says, “I loved the game [. . .] I’d have played for food money” (Kinsella 1982, 8). It is notable that Ray avoids actually asking Jackson about his guilt; indeed, he on...