The Iowa Baseball Confederacy: A Novel (Paperback)

~ W. P. Kinsella (Author) "MY NAME IS Gideon Clarke, and, like my father before me, I have on more than one occasion been physically ejected from the corporate offices..." (more)
Key Phrases: Iowa City, Big Inning, Iowa Baseball Confederacy (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

On the day he met his true love, a carnival performer named Darling Maudie, Matthew Clarke was literally struck by lightning and magically imbued with the knowledge that in 1908 the Chicago Cubs had traveled to Onamata, Iowa, to play a seemingly endless game against an all-star amateur team, the Iowa Baseball Confederacy. He spends the rest of his life trying to prove this fact to the worldeven writing a dissertation on itbut no one else remembers the Confederacy or the game. When Matthew commits an imaginative suicide (by allowing himself to be hit by a stray line drive), his son Gideon, the hero of this tale, inherits his father's obsession. With the help of an old family friend who has a glimmer of memory of the game, Gideon and a friend, Stan, travel back through time to 1908, to witness the event and to learn about the mysterious forces that caused a memory lapse in those who witnessed it. In his first novel since Shoeless Joe, Kinsella returns to the magical turf he created there: a loving mixture of baseball, life and fantasy, in a world where dreams don't have to come true, because they have a validity all their own.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"A memorable addition to the literature about the summer's game...A riveting mystery with a host of fascinating characters, a first-rate ghost story, and the tale of a quest that ends not with the object of desire, but with the realization of love. Kinsella has another hit on his hands. He's still batting one thousand."

-- the Detroit Press

"Freighted with mythical machinery, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy requires the leavening of some sprightly prose. Kinsella is equal to it. His love for baseball is evident in the lyrical descriptions of the game."

-- Chicago Tribune

"Whether or not you like baseball, read the Bible, play a musical instrument, like Indian folklore, time travel, or the Chicago Cubs, you will like The Iowa Baseball Confederacy."

-- USA Today


From the Trade Paperback edition. -- Review --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (March 14, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618340807
• ISBN-13: 978-0618340804
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #130,894 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent, December 3, 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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Spirit of the Game Brought to Life, November 27, 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? :)