Shoeless Joe is a novel from left field: a unique left field on the Iowa farm of Ray Kinsella. One night Ray hears a voice say, "If you build it, he will come," and knows that "it" refers to a baseball park and "he" to Shoeless Joe Jackson. Most prominent of the Chicago Black Sox, Jackson in 1919 was banned for life from baseball for throwing the World Series.

W. P. Kinsella pursues baseball, most literary of sports, to the anagogic and still manages to write a humane and comic book. His manner recalls Marquez, Jack Hodgins and, not accidentally, J. D. Salinger.

Ray builds his magic stadium and while watching Shoeless Joe and others play ball, hears the voice again, this time saying, "Ease his pain." The mission clearly means kidnapping J. D. Salinger and taking him to Fenway Park for a Red Sox game….

A clipping that Ray carries extols Salinger's ability to make readers love his characters: "They are so real, so vulnerable, so good, that they remind me of that side of human nature which makes living and loving and striving after dreams worth the effort." Kinsella shows the same ability in Shoeless Joe. His novel celebrates imagination and effort, wittily posits serious theses on the role of baseball and other art forms and provokes various kinds of laughter.

I'm not, like Ray and W. P. Kinsella, sentimental about baseball, but Shoeless Joe makes me wish I were.