Going the Distance: The Life and Works of W.P. Kinsella by William SteeleMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’ve been a big Kinsella fan since I read his novels mixing magic realism and baseball, with locations very near to where I grew up. I read all his baseball books, and most of his Silas Ermineskin books. Certainly his characters were interesting, but the thought of local baseball becoming folklore really was the draw for me. Hearing stories about the irascible Kinsella added to the allure. What an interesting author to follow. In this biography, you learn about Kinsella’s life, including the many years he was not foremost an author. You learn of his youth, living with just his parents in remote rural Canada, lacking friends and likely building a strong imagination. Kinsella had a strong personality, and perhaps not surprisingly becomes a good salesman early in his career, then owns a pizzeria. Though writing throughout his life, he focuses on writing after profiting from his pizzeria. The book follows his career through his award-winning years and until his death.
On reflection, what you notice in this book is the extreme level of detail. The biography author had access to the author and was able to write in great details about things like classes, high school girlfriends, a substantial lovelife with quite a few partners, and book reviews. While I enjoyed this rare level of personal detail to some extent, there was quite a lot on his love life, more than I wanted to know. And he wasn't what I'd call a nice guy - he seemed to hate the people he worked for, especially college administrators. Describing him as a curmudgeon might by putting too light a touch on the subject, at least when it came to some areas like authority. I was also left with the feeling that the author used very few sources. Kinsella kept track of his life and his business of writing, and his wives (at least one of them) created substantial biographic and bibliographic references, including tracking book reviews and media mentions, many of which are discussed in this volume. What I didn’t notice was a lot of third party interviews related to the subject, and it feels like something is missing. If I had to guess, the author is an introvert, and this impacted the story he told, using Kinsella-provided written sources to an overwhelming extent. Despite that, this tells the story of a unique author. I found the story so varied that it kept my interest throughout. I liked the subject, and that kicked up my rating of the book.
A bonus to me is that the small college my daughter is attending, Augustana in Rock Island, hosted Kinsella during the summer after he wrote the novel that Field of Dreams was based on. Nice comment, and I missed it when it happened.
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