He revealed that in fact the publishers had substituted “Shoeless Joe” for the title that he had originally wanted – The Dream Field. The title of the film was also new, but this turned out to meet with Kinsella’s approval. The producers judged that omitting Salinger was no great risk since research showed that most readers of the book did not know that he was a real person. The author of The Catcher in the Rye was outraged at this liberty, and Kinsella admitted he had portrayed the notoriously reclusive Salinger positively so as not to be sued.Īccordingly, in the film the writer that Ray Kinsella seeks out is called Terence Mann, played by James Earl Jones. Kinsella had made one of the main characters in it his fellow writer J D Salinger. Its producers decided, however, to make several changes from the novel.
When it was filmed seven years later, with Kevin Costner as Kinsella and Ray Liotta as Shoeless Joe, it became a huge box-office success and gathered several Oscar nominations. The book’s redemptive theme appealed to readers and it won awards in Canada after its publication in 1982. The extent of Jackson’s involvement has been much debated, and in the novel he is given the chance to play the sport again. Jackson’s brilliant career ended when in 1919 he was caught up in the sport’s most notorious scandal, an agreement by other players on his team, the Chicago White Sox, to fix the World Series. In the story’s most famous line, it urges: “If you build it, he will come.” When Kinsella ploughs under the crop to make a baseball diamond it summons the shade of his hero, Shoeless Joe Jackson. It tells of a farmer in Iowa, Ray Kinsella, who hears a mysterious voice in a cornfield.
W P Kinsella, who has died aged 81, was a Canadian author whose novels included Shoeless Joe, later adapted for the screen as Field of Dreams.
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