W.P. Kinsella is a Canadian author known for his baseball novels and stories about First Nations people. He wrote the novel Shoeless Joe in 1982, which tells the story of a farmer who builds a baseball field in his cornfield and is visited by the ghosts of Shoeless Joe Jackson and other members of the disgraced 1919 Chicago White Sox team. The novel was adapted into the popular 1989 film Field of Dreams. Kinsella also incorporated the famous reclusive author J.D. Salinger as a character into Shoeless Joe, who comes to the baseball field seeking redemption. While Salinger was reportedly offended by his fictional portrayal, the novel helped establish Kinsella as a renowned magic

1. W. P . K I N S E L L A
SHOELESS JOE

2. 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

3. BASEBALL NOVELS
1977 1986 2011

4. “FIRST NATION” FICTION
1977 1987 1994

5. NONFICTION TITLES
1997 2002

6. FILM ADAPTATIONS
1989
1994--also basis of
“The Rez” (TV series, 1996)

7. 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/

8. 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.

10. 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)

11. THE BOOK

13. 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

14. DAUGHTER’S MEMOIR (2000)

15. 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.)

16. “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.

17. SO LET’S TALK ABOUT IT!