I. Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa...Pg. 1

Upon finishing part one of Shoeless Joe, I find myself left with a reluctance to continue. I should probably let up on the negative expectations, as I'm only on page 17, but I can't help cringing whenever I hear a book described as "romantic" (read: sappy) and a "triumph of hope" (read: attempts at being uplifting) in the back cover copy. BAH. I'm more partial to unusual, or at least vaguely depressing, books that involve other worlds or the future or something. [digression]

I've read the Iowa Baseball Confederacy, also by Kinsella, at the urging of a friend, and found myself lolling with boredom during the drawn out baseball scenes, and I LIKE baseball. The parts I found interesting in that book were those that dealt with the wimpy main character, his nasty, confusing wife, and their tragic marriage in general. I figured that the married couple in Shoeless Joe would be at least as interesting, but I was apparently wrong. What bothers me about then is how they seem to be so perfect and so in love. I don't know why this should annoy me, but it offends my sense of cold realism. Also, I want to see the character of Annie developed past this "Oh love...if it makes you happy you should do it" (pg. 4) sort of thing. She comes off as a child ("...that girl who lives in blue jeans and T-shirts and at twenty-four could still pass for sixteen," pg. 5) who just goes with whatever her loony husband decides is a good idea. I find it hard to deal with the passage on page five that states that when she was young and her friends were choosing ambitious careers and lives for themselves, Annie instead fixated on whom she'd marry. My idea of feminism is a woman choosing what she personally wants and trying to make herself happy, but I don't understand that particular choice. What I'm trying to say in my extreme blabbering is that Annie comes off as having little personality and needs to get more explanation.

I like to think that Annie is going to turn out more interesting and a bigger piece of the story, but I doubt it. For the most part, we have no clue about what she's thinking. I guess even this makes sense in a way, because it is Ray telling the story, not some omniscient narrator who can read everyones' mind.

II. They Tore Down the Polo Grounds in 1964...Pg. 21

The opening line of part two is corny, but I like it; "We have been trading promises like baseball cards, Shoeless Joe and I." (pg. 23.) I also like "...the sawdust clinging like gold to my jeans," from the same page. To describe sawdust this way just reflects how much this ballpark is a labour of love for Ray, how even the sawdust is something precious, to be studied, noticed, and remembered. He's wistful that he won't make his home plate, that he'll buy it for $14.95 at the sporting goods store. Maybe he thinks that in doing so, he's losing an experience that he'd treasure, seeing shining golden memories in the dust all over his legs.

Pg. 31: Okay, this thing with easing J. D. Salinger's pain is batty and silly. I'm finding this book easy to read, but hard to take seriously. It's the kind of book that slips through your mind like butter, until you're reading along one day and you hit something that you can't believe belongs there. An element of realism is always nice if you care about keeping a story grounded at all, and this Salinger thing is inane. Also: when miss Annie mumbles into Ray's neck that he'd be well advised to do whatever he "has to do," is she just humouring his idiocy or what? Sorry darling, call me cynical, but I'm just not sympathetic to impractical dreamers who hear voices in their heads...and obey them. So what's she thinking? Is she figuring that if he's actually crazy it would be best if he went on some random quest for awhile, since that would keep him away from her daughter?

Pg. 35: "The interview touched my heart and made what I did next seem COMPLETELY INCONGRUOUS." (caps mine.) This Ray guy should figure out pretty soon that everything he's done in this whole novel, beginning with listening to the voices in his head, has been COMPLETELY INCONGRUOUS, i.e. strange, bizarre, absurd, etc. Thankyou for paying attention, sir.

Pg. 35-36: "I bought a gun. I have never owned a gun. Once, as a child of ten in Montana, I took my father's single shot .22 and fired into a row of sparrows...on my mother's clothesline. I watched...and one fell. ...I actually felt its heart stop beating as I carried it in to show my mother. I was proud as our yellow cat when she dragged in a snake...to prove her ability as a huntress. ...'Bring it back to life,' said my mother. ...My mouth dropped open. I was expecting praise."

THIS PASSAGE (continued below too) MAKES ME ILL. Little Ray was expecting praise? So was I! But no, this book had to tout the boring, same old "guns-are-instruments-of-pain-for-animals" junk.

"I stood dumbfounded...'I can't,' I whispered...'Well, until you can I don't think you should shoot anything unless you need it for food.' I never again fired a gun." This is all very nice for mommy dearest, but she's neglecting that the most important use of guns is not against animals but people. Meaning, one must have the right and willingness with bear arms to protect ones' self against criminals and more importantly (and often the same thing) the state. Little Ray should have gotten a rousing talk about how one day, if he practises his aim enough, he'll be able to pick off a government thug from yards away. Or something to that effect. Or...maybe not. I'm only partially exaggerating, of course. This may not have been the tack to take with a ten year old boy, but I do think that the most important purpose of guns is to protect against the state. Maybe he should have just been congratulated on his aim and given a talk on gun safety. I mean, what is democracy? Democracy is not the end (although too many people now think it is) but the means to an end, that end being liberty. Given that we have a democracy, what good is it if there's no way to make those in power obey the outcome of the vote? Anybody here who's heard of Indonesia or Burma just moo a little louder! There's a democracy that wasn't/isn't actually a democracy. (Whoa, now I'm ranting and making very little sense I'm sure.) Okay. Back to my point, given that you've got not only democracy, but liberty too, how so you propose to keep it if your citizens aren't armed??

Anyway, it irritates me how Kinsella has decided to vilify the National Rifle Association by giving his one pro-NRA character this description:

"'You're not used to handling a gun, are you?' he says, smiling as he might at a child, his large lips dry and peeling, the orange brown colour of sweet potatoes. 'It'll grow on you,' he whispers. 'It gets warm after you carry it for a while; the weight hangs right by your heart,' and he pats his stained, vertically striped shirt. 'With a gun you're never alone.' He smiles again, showing long twisted teeth." I'm utterly repulsed just typing this passage. Ugh. Sure, I like guns as well as the next guy, but Kinsella still achieves his desired effect. It's disgusting and foolish. People who say they want peace and freedom and then clamour for gun control in the same breath are shooting themselves in the foot.

The journalist asks that the reader pardon the expression.

Pg. 39: "Machines of all kinds are mysteries to me. I regard them as minor deities and attempt not to understand them but to please them."

I have concluded that Ray Kinsella is a hopeless grade A moron. Anyone who can say something like this is obviously way too far gone for me to help them. Machines are NOT deities, minor or otherwise. Machines are only as intelligent as the men who design and/or operate them. Machines (like anything else) are not to be revered but controlled, picked apart, understood, improved upon. This passage right here demonstrates much of what I loathe about the way some humans think. I am an atheist. Know why? Because I KNOW that there is no god. I can't endure the notion that there is some all powerful force that is above human understanding. Who is anyone to tell me that I can't know? What should I trust over my own reason with something that no one may know while living? I'm as qualified as anyone else to make that decision. Anyway. I must digress a bunch to make my point. Think of things this way--things don't just "happen to have" consequences...they always have consequences. And while the consequences of a given action aren't often obvious, they are foreseeable. Talk about a simple equation! Like this: [X action]+[Y situation]=[Z] where [Z] is equal to the sample space of all given consequential possibilities. See, this gives you a bunch of different possible outcomes to choose from. The tricky part comes in picking the correct outcome out from [Z]. That's the part that most people find so damned baffling. I know I think it's difficult. I think it always possible, though. I'm very serious. There IS (or will be) someone out there who has the reason enough to do it. Not through ESP but through common sense. Granted, it'd have to be a very highly developed sense of reason, but still. I'm sure it exists or will exist. I'm not sure why I'm sure, but there's just some things that you have to trust your brain on. I hesitate to call it "taking it on faith" because it isn't really "faith." Faith implies acceptance of things beyond one's mental grasp, or allegiance of some kind. That's what religion is, and that's what I can't stand. I just mean that there are certain things that it's necessary for me to believe.

Picture this: An atheist is strolling happily and godlessly along, gets a divine message, and finds out that everything they've ever believed is wrong. They are filled with despair and the desire to kill themselves, but they can't because they now know that they are going to go to hell. DUOH! ALSO, if I knew of the existence of god, that would just about blast my ideas about humankind to hell, wouldn't it? I think that all human achievements have been the sole product of human minds alone by which I mean WITH NO HELP FROM GOD/S. "Divine inspiration," my ass.

So, in my cumbersome long-windedness, I've been trying to say that in MY book of rules, everything is within human reach, there will always be a human mind strong enough to solve the world's greatest problems, and religion just has no place in my philosophies. And when this guy Ray comes along and takes the achievement of some human, the machine, and puts in on a pedestal and refuses to even try to understand it, I take it as an insult to everyone who ever put forth the effort to improve the lives of people like Mister Ray Kinsella.

Pg. 53: "The man next to me has paid a scalper thirty dollars per ticket for him and his family. His wife is surly and disinterested, his sons too small to concentrate for long. He spends the game trekking back and forth to the concessions."

This description of the man and his family conjures more sympathy than any of Ray's pseudo-tortured self pity. The man who spends so much money and time, who tries so hard and derives so little pleasure for his efforts is more tragic than Ray, who ruins his own chances at security (financial and otherwise) for his family and then bemoans his fate. My heart is weeping, pal.

Pg 68: "I comply meekly."

BAH. What does he do BESIDES that all through this book?

Pg. 72: Great description of Mark as the cartoonish villain.

Pg. 72-73: At the bottom of the page, Ray goes on about computers replacing the farmhouse and the family. This is presented in such a way as to make the reader feel sorry for Ray; I take it that we're supposed to share his indignation at the "sanctity" of real human operation vs. the "cold" machinery. It isn't working. I don't like Ray. I don't like people like Ray. I don't like people who stubbornly cling to some vague notion of "warmth" and "humanity" when faced with the prospect of having machines do their jobs better than they can. Why shouldn't a "small metallic box" replace the farmhouse and the family? This is efficiency. This is progress. I haven't any sympathy for a simple whining farmer who can't pay his mortgage.

Pg. 85: "Watch the game." --J.D. Salinger.

The tastiest line in the book.

Pg. 87: "But don't you owe your public something?" --Ray, to Salinger.

Of course not. Isn't this patently obvious? Salinger "owes" his public nothing, just as his public owes him nothing. Salinger is a man whose books have inspired and affected perhaps millions of people. The only tangible benefit that Salinger receives is money. There is also the adoration of his fans. It's the ultimate in free trade. Salinger has given his talent to the world, in exchange for cash and recognition. I do not see how he could owe anyone anything. Why should Salinger, or anyone else, recognise the stupid mob's right to one second of their time?

Pg. 88: More of the same. "...why deprive all the people who love you of hearing your voice on the page?" asks Ray.

You can't "deprive" someone of something they never had a claim to. You can withhold it, but you cannot dispossess it. The word "deprive" connotes taking away something that someone has. No one can stake claim to Salinger's talent.

III. The Life and Times of Moonlight Graham...Pg. 103

Pg. 144: "Doc turns on the square white hotplate, and when the coils burn a tomato colour he sets a badly chipped bluish enamel coffeepot on the burner and cooks a pot of coffee. It arrives black and scalding. I do little more than blow on mine--I like much cream in my coffee..." I like the passage in which Ray sits drinking coffee with Doc. This one particular moment is described very well.

IV. The Oldest Living Chicago Cub...Pg. 155

The opening part of part two has a scene I like, where in Jerry and Ray look at each other, trying to figure out what to make of Archie Graham.

Pg. 160-161: The passage about the strange things that supposedly happen during a full moon is crazy! How is any of this relevant?! Docile winos? Vomiting businessman? Housewives shredding underclothes in the blender?? WHAT?? Chalk it up to Ray's insanity...I'm convinced that Ray Kinsella IS W. P. Kinsella. By that I mean I'm sure that Kinsella's values and opinions are Ray's...and that is why I worry. When I make generalisations, I assume common sanity.

Pg. 193: "...all clean and neat and heartless."

Ray, strangely, equates coldness with perfection. He actually disdains perfection. I can't conceive of an intelligent being that would actually hold perfection in contempt. Perfection is by definition excellence! Ray can't see how ridiculous he sounds because his knees are too busy jerking off in a random direction. To Ray, "human" mistakes and foul-ups are somehow more desirable than "cold" and "heartless" efficiency and flawlessness. Perhaps this dysfunction of the brain could be traced back to a traumatic childhood experience?

Pg. 203: "I'm almost certain it was Richard with the gun that day... You must be mistaken, dear." -- Ray's mother.

This is very sad, for reasons I can't fully explain. Part of it is the idea that he has carried this important memory for so long, and built his personality on it, only to have it forgotten and disregarded by the person who ingrained those events into his mind.

Pg. 209: The carnival story Ray recalls from his childhood is vividly depicted and enjoyable to read. It's like reading a separate short story. Having finished the book, I see that this six page childhood memory is really irrelevant to the plot, but I'm glad it's in here because it provides an interesting aside from the exhaustingly flat main story.

Pg. 230: "I heard someone say once, 'Success is getting what you want, but happiness is wanting what you get.'"

I like this, but I think it needs to be amended. Success is getting what you want, and happiness is a) having the drive to go for it; b) the determination and the skill to get it; and c) the fulfilment that comes with achieving one's goal. Happiness is not a) having whatever you say you want given to you; nor is it b) a complacent acceptance of one's surroundings and general situation.

V. The Rapture of J.D. Salinger...Pg. 257

I like how Salinger admits in this section of the book that he did give the interview wherein he talks about playing baseball at the Polo Grounds (pg. 262-3). It adds a nice twist at the end of the story and is a good connective element with earlier parts of the book. I do wonder if he actually gave the interview, or if we're supposed to think he's just saying that he did to ease Ray's mind, though I don't think the distinction is very important.

Pg. 261: "...I am not at the moment interested in logic." I'd like someone to point out a single instance in which Ray has been interested in logic.

Last notes

The ending of this book was satisfying in a very strange way. I think it's good that Salinger was asked to go "out" with the ghostly players after the final game, and not Ray. Ray has his own kind of heaven waiting for him on the visible side of the baseball diamond; his ardent wife, and his daughter.

The way Ray approaches machines mirrors the way he approaches the rest of his life, particularly Shoeless Joe Jackson. I'm sure that Joe Jackson, the human being, was not an especially profound, or spiritual person. He was a baseball player, not a philosopher. In Ray's delusions, he sees Shoeless Joe as someone who speaks eloquently and plays perfectly; he sees the grand poo-bah of baseball and life. I don't think he tries very hard to understand the way these invisible baseball players came to be, nor the reasons for picking his particular farm to appear in. Ray doesn't really want to think for himself. He instead listens to and obeys the voices in his head, thinking that wonderful things will happen. One argument is that this whole book is an account of one man's fantasy, and that none of this happened to Ray at all.

Ray Kinsella is not the hero of this book. I'm not sure this book has a hero (Shoeless Joe--simply for being the idealised perfect man? Salinger?).

Ray is an antihero. Ray possesses many of the qualities that I hate in human beings. He is irrational, immature, and he uses his mild insanity as a substitute for thinking and trying to function in the "real world." This is the sort of person whom is rolled over and crushed under the wheels of the world. Thinking men and women will push these detestable vermin aside and continue with their own lives.