The Iowa Baseball Confederacy [Paperback]

W.P. Kinsella (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (1988)
• ASIN: B002AXOYUW
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent, December 2, 1999

By 

Baseball Fan (Nebraska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Iowa Baseball Confederacy (Paperback)

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.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Midwest Magic Realism, March 2, 2001

By 

B. PERKINS (Denton, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Iowa Baseball Confederacy (Paperback)

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.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Spirit of the Game Brought to Life, November 26, 1999

By 

Quintus Rex "Quintus Rex" (Princeton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Iowa Baseball Confederacy (Paperback)

This is a magnificent book, in so many ways. I've never been a sports fan of any kind, but after casually picking this book up -- without being able to put it down until far into the night, when I finished it -- I became entranced with the essence of the game which Kinsella captures so well.

This is one of the best fantasy novels I've read. It has something for everyone -- time travel, turn-of-the-century Americana, humor, mysticism, moments of High Weirdness, and, throughout, the power, mystery and symbolism of America's Game.

I loved "Field of Dreams", the film adapted from Kinsella's "Shoeless Joe" [another must-read], and I can only hope to see IBC follow the same path. One reading, however, will engrain the characters and plot in your imagination as no film can.

And guess who became a brand-new baseball fan? :)