Ray reminds Salinger he used two characters named "Kinsella" in his writing. "I've come to take you to a baseball game."įinally, an appeal to the inner child: "I've brought you a baseball." "I thought you might want to meet one of your characters." Here is how Ray attempts to coerce Salinger to get in his car once he finds him. When the voice whispers "Ease his pain," Ray does what any of us would do: He drives to Windsor, Vt., to kidnap J.D. Professional ballplayers from the past, starting with Shoeless Joe Jackson, magically appear as Ray and his wife and daughter watch from the stands. He plows up his cornfield and builds a baseball field. Shoeless Joe tells the story of Ray Kinsella, an unexceptional Iowan farmer guided by voices to do the most un-Iowan things imaginable. And I know how it ends: the subdued euphoria when the son meets his long-dead father, magically transformed into a sturdy 25-year old professional baseball player. The mystical words " If you build it, he will come" arrive early - page 1, third paragraph. I open the book, ideally outside under a sky the color of cornflowers, and enter Kinsella's literary mirage of fantasy, dreams, and fathers and sons. My copy is a beat-up paperback, thin enough to fit in the back pocket of my jeans. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe from my bookshelf and give it another read. T ime and time again, when the Northeast spring blossoms into vibrant early summer, I pull W.P. I've been trying all my life to find it.”
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