W. P. Kinsella
W. P. Kinsella was a Canadian author renowned for his unique storytelling that intertwines themes of Native American experiences and the sport of baseball. After various jobs in his youth, he returned to college, where he earned a degree in creative writing and later taught the subject. Kinsella's works often feature characters from the Ermineskin Reserve in Alberta, Canada, showcasing their wisdom and humor while navigating the complexities of life with white officials and visitors. His narrative style frequently uses the character Silas Ermineskin, who reflects on writing as a means of personal identity.
Kinsella gained fame for his baseball fiction, with his most celebrated work, "Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa," exploring themes of reconciliation and fulfillment through the game. Baseball, for Kinsella, represents the essence of the American character, merging tradition with transformative experiences. Other notable works include "The Iowa Baseball Confederacy," which creatively blends baseball lore with Native American spirituality, and continues to explore the fragility of identity. Even after a hiatus, Kinsella returned with "Butterfly Winter," reaffirming his enduring passion for baseball in his storytelling. His works resonate with readers who appreciate the intersection of cultural identity and the timeless appeal of America's pastime.
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Subject Terms
W. P. Kinsella
- Born: May 25, 1935
- Birthplace: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Author Profile
After various jobs as a young adult, W. P. Kinsella returned to college, earned a degree in and taught creative writing, and became a full-time writer. Born in Canada, Kinsella has lived in the United States and regularly travels across the country watching baseball games. His innumerable stories and occasional novels often involve either the Native American residents of the Ermineskin Reserve in Alberta, Canada, or the game of baseball.
Kinsella’s Ermineskin stories—in Dance Me Outside (1977), Scars (1978), Born Indian (1981), The Moccasin Telegraph and Other Indian Tales (1983), The Fencepost Chronicles (1986), and elsewhere—artfully convey the wisdom and stoic humor of their American Indian characters. The Indians frequently have to confront ignorant, arrogant, and sometimes oppressive white officials and visitors. Narrator Silas Ermineskin is a complex character known to friends as someone who writes and publishes stories; the series becomes a meditation on writing as a way to develop and express personal identity.
The Indian stories are noteworthy, but Kinsella’s baseball fiction made him famous. For Kinsella, baseball, with its fixed traditions, pastoral setting, and leisurely pace, embodies everything admirable in the American character, and baseball enables troubled people to achieve fulfillment. In Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa (1980), when a voice tells a farmer to build a baseball diamond, dead players return to play their favorite game, the farmer reconciles with his dead father, and a bitter recluse, writer J. D. Salinger, finds happiness when he departs with the players. Other baseball stories feature magically gifted players, divine intervention, or people transformed by a devotion to baseball.
Kinsella’s interests combine in The Iowa Baseball Confederacy (1986), in which two men travel back in time to a 1906 baseball game, while a Native American spirit watches and hopes for an Iowa victory that will return his lost lover. In this work, Native Americans and baseball embody the essential American identity, which is fragile, since the game’s end breaks the spell and erases the event from history. After a lengthy hiatus, Kinsella published Butterfly Winter in 2011, another novel with baseball as one of its central themes. Kinsella’s love for baseball is unalloyed, and the popularity of these stories proves that other Americans share his attitude.
Bibliography
Aitken, Brian. “Baseball as Sacred Doorway in the Writing of W. P. Kinsella.” Aethlon 8 (1990): 61–75. Print.
Cameron, Elspeth. “Diamonds Are Forever.” Saturday Night 101 (1986): 45–47. Print.
Horvath, Brooke K., and William J. Palmer. “Three On: An Interview with David Carkeet, Mark Harris, and W. P. Kinsella.” Modern Fiction Studies 33 (1987): 183–94. Print.
Kinsella, W. P. “Bill’s Back: An Interview with W.P. Kinsella.” Interviewed by Maurice Mierau. Winnipeg Review. Envoi, 18 Sept. 2011. Web. 25 Mar. 2015.
Kinsella, W. P. “Interview.” Short Story, n.s. 1 (1993): 81–88. Print.
Kinsella, W. P. “W. P. Kinsella, the Super-Natural.” Interview by Sheldon Sunness. Sport 77 (1986): 74. Print.
Kinsella, W. P. “W.P. on J.D.: Kinsella Talks about Writing Salinger into ‘Shoeless Joe.’” Interview by John Geddes. Maclean’s. Rogers Media, 29 Jan. 2010. Web. 25 Mar. 2015.
McGimpsey, David. Imagining Baseball: America’s Pastime and Popular Culture. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2000. Print.
Murray, Don. The Fiction of W. P. Kinsella: Tall Tales in Various Voices. Fredericton: York, 1987. Print.
Murray, Don. “A Note on W. P. Kinsella’s Humor.” The International Fiction Review 14.2 (1987): 98–100. Print.
Westbrook, Deeanne. Ground Rules: Baseball and Myth. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1996. Print.