SOURCE: Jenkins, Clarence. “Kinsella's Shoeless Joe.” Explicator 53, no. 3 (spring 1995): 179-80.

In the following review, Jenkins explores the theme of resurrection in Shoeless Joe.

In W. P. Kinsella's sports novel Shoeless Joe, Ray Kinsella's visit with his twin brother's girlfriend Gypsy does not serve merely as a digression from the economic dilemma in which Ray finds himself. While at the carnival with which Gypsy travels, Ray tours the “strange babies” sideshow, where the careful reader is able to encounter a microcosm of the novel's action. It is in the ill-kept trailer that Ray notices “about a dozen glass containers,” each containing a faded black-and-white photograph of a deformed fetus (175). These photographs provide a specific reference to Ray's mythical powers exhibited throughout the text.

Prior to this visit, Ray resurrected eight ballplayers who died scandalously in the fetal stages of their dreams. These eight members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox...