{"id":12341,"date":"2011-11-19T11:18:40","date_gmt":"2011-11-19T11:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=12341"},"modified":"2019-11-09T21:56:49","modified_gmt":"2019-11-09T21:56:49","slug":"shoeless-joe-by-w-p-kinsella","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=12341","title":{"rendered":"Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella (First Mariner Books, 1999), 265 pages<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The 1989 film Field of Dreams is regularly cited as one of the greatest baseball-themed films of all time.<\/p>\n

Its popularity transcends an audience of pure baseball fans. The film normally even gets a couple of airings every year on British terrestrial TV (in fact it was shown on ITV4 earlier in the week), making it one of the few baseball-related things that blends into the popular culture of a traditionally baseball-sceptic nation.<\/p>\n

The iconic phrase \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcif you build it, he will come\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c normally wrongly quoted as \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcif you build it, they will come\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c has been latched on to by many Brits who perhaps don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s related to Field of Dreams.<\/p>\n

Even less will know that its true source is a novel, first published in 1982, called Shoeless Joe.<\/p>\n

I read Shoeless Joe after having watched Field of Dreams on a number of occasions and I suspect most people minded to read W.P. Kinsella\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s novel will be in the same position.<\/p>\n

Everyone will have their own view on film adaptations of novels. As someone who is much more a book person than a film person, I will normally want to interpret the novel in my mind rather than rely on a specific director\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s version. One of the joys of reading novels is the way your own imagination plays an active part in the experience and the lack of that involvement \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as I watch films, at least – is one of the reasons why that form of entertainment has never really drawn me in.<\/p>\n

Consequently, I lowered my expectations slightly before reading the novel. Not only was there the obvious obstacle of already knowing the main storyline, but the characters and scenes had already been painted for me.<\/p>\n

The first mention of the lead character, Ray Kinsella, immediately brought Kevin Costner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s appearance in the film to mind. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s difficult to say whether that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an endorsement of Costner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s casting or the fact that his portrayal of the character is familiar and therefore seems \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcright\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in a way that it might not have done had I read the book first.<\/p>\n

What I can state is that, whatever the reason, it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t reduce the enjoyment of reading the book at all. Had I been more ambivalent towards Field of Dreams then my opinion might be different; however, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m very fond of the movie and the familiarity with the characters as they are portrayed in it, and the main storyline itself, didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t prove to be a barrier at all.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure part of the reason for this is that Shoeless Joe provided me with exactly what I was hoping for, but was a little cautious of expecting. The novel takes what I enjoyed about Field of Dreams and enriches it.<\/p>\n

Field of Dreams is a more concentrated version of Shoeless Joe. It simplifies the storyline somewhat, reducing the number of characters and sub-plots involved.<\/p>\n

By reading Shoeless Joe, you meet new people and are taken down additional paths. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s basically the story you know, but with additional elements to it that allow the key themes in the book \u00e2\u20ac\u201c following dreams, holding on to memories, reaching out to the past \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to be explored further. There is a deeper background story, more detail in the main scenes to lose yourself in and the characters are more richly drawn.<\/p>\n

In short, if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve enjoyed watching Field of Dreams, you will find reading Shoeless Joe just as enjoyable, if not more so. What’s more, I borrowed my copy from the local library, so this may be a rare baseball-related book that you can find relatively easily in the UK.<\/p>\n

It’s certainly worth hunting down a copy; however easy or difficult that task may be.<\/p>\n

Have you read \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Shoeless Joe\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below. Can you recommend any other similar books? If so, let us know.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You are sure to know the film Field of Dreams, but have you read the novel that it is based on? If not, you should.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4],"tags":[79,76,553],"class_list":["post-12341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-baseball-books","category-mlb-2","tag-baseball-fiction","tag-book-reviews","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12341"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21428,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12341\/revisions\/21428"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}