Iowa Baseball Confederacy

W.P. Kinsella is one of my all-time favorite writers, and this is one of his better novels. If you've seen the movie, "Field of Dreams," or read his book "Shoeless Joe," which was the basis for the movie, you know what to expect from Kinsella. His stories of baseball and magic are written for readers with vivid imaginations. This is a story of a researcher looking for proof of an old league that nobody else can remember. He somehow ends up at a never-ending exhibition game between the 1908 Cubs and the all-stars from this Iowa league. As usual with Kinsella, the book is about a lot more than baseball. If you're the type of reader who can accept a story that seems totally unbelievbale, and if you like baseball, you should try this one. If you like it, he's written quite a few other books and I haven't found a bad one yet.

I first picked this up off the bookstore shelf because of that Kevin Costner movie that came out in 1989, but I knew Kinsella for his writing ability before that. What made me buy the book was the back cover's description of a baseball game that lasts over 2,000 innings and the protagonist's insistence that it really did happen.I wasn't disappointed, although I have to say that this novel doesn't offer the simple wish fulfillment of Shoeless Joe or the movie based on that novel. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy spends the first hundred or so pages describing how Gideon Clarke's father wrote a Master's thesis in History about a baseball league that noone else remembers, how the thesis was rejected and ruined his father's life, and how he (Gideon) inherited this "knowledge" of a non-existent league and this obsession upon his father's death.Gideon seems to be following the same fruitless path of trying to prove the existence of the mythical Iowa Baseball Confederacy, when the (un)expected happens: he's taken back to 1908 to see the events occur that have so far only existed in his and his father's memory.And then things get strange, in a bizarre and wonderful way: As the game stretches on, the flood waters rise higher, statues become animated, all manner of nature comes to life, love blooms, and the ballpark is repeatedly visited by Drifting Away, the Native American whose destiny is tied up with this small town in Iowa.While the plot of the novel resembled Darryl Brock's If I Never Get Back, or T. Coraghessan Boyle's short story, "The Hector Quesadilla Story," The Iowa Baseball Confederacy reminded me of nothing so much as the Magic Realism fiction by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges. Indeed, at times, I felt like was reading a shorter version of Marquez' A Hundred Years of Solitude, only this time placed in the turn of the century American Midwest.I did say that this book is not about wish fulfillment like Kinsella's more famous Shoeless Joe, but I didn't consider this a weakness. The fantastic does occur in The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, but only with the caveat that fantasy doesn't always help one's reality. Kinsella does entertain the reader with all kinds of strange imaginings, but Gideon is still searching for fulfillment in the same ways that the rest of us do. Some may be disappointed with bittersweet quality of this book, but that same quality only makes the novel true to life. In spite of all the bizarre twists and turns of plot.And by the way, the game descriptions are wonderful reminders that baseball truly hasn't changed that much over the years.

THE IOWA BASEBALL CONFEDERACY is the finest ode to the mysteries of life ever to centre around baseball. W.P. Kinsella's name has become synonymous with his love for the sport, and sometimes it can become overwhelming. His short stories have a tendency to push the sentimentality over the edge into the realm of muadlin. Here, however, the mix is perfect.Gideon Clarke has a problem. Ever since his father died, he has become obsessed with the Iowa Baseball Confederacy, a league that never existed, except in his mind. Or so it seems. Over the course of his searchings (and he does find the league), Gideon also relates the problems he has with reality, his destructive relationship with his wife, and his theories of temporal displacement and rips in the fabric of time. Kinsella here achieves a mastery of the genre of magical realism, on par with the terrific LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE. As Gideon continues on his quest, events around him get more and more bizarre, until a town is slowly flooded, a wooden Indian bats cleanup, home runs never come back down to earth, and baseball games never end.In other hands, this mixture of whimsy and fantasy would leave the reader cold and confused, but Kinsella never falters. The more strange things get, the more Gideon becomes the rock we hold onto, and his willingness to accept the things he cannot understand, his sheer joy at the absudity of his situation, ensures that the reader will follow him to the ends of the Earth, if need be.THE IOWA BASEBALL CONFEDERACY is a wonderful book, and that's something, coming from someone who rejects a typical fantasy novel from the book cover alone. Lovers of fantasy should read this. Lovers of baseball should read this. Lovers of life should read this. Lovers of great stories should read this.

WOW, that's all that can describe this book. At first I thought this book to be slow, however, once I understood it, it became one of the best books I've ever read. W.P. Kinsella is a genuis. Just read this book, and Shoeless Joe, if you get a chance.