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Red Wolf Red Wolf
This collection of short stories includes "Evangeline's Mother," in which Henry Vold must cope with, and is changed by, his teenaged daughter's sexually precocious friend; and "Elvis Bound," in which the singer disrupts the love life of a ballplayer and his wife
- GenresFictionShort Stories
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1987
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About the author
W.P. Kinsella
56 books233 followersWilliam Patrick Kinsella, OC, OBC was a Canadian novelist and short story writer. His work has often concerned baseball and Canada's First Nations and other Canadian issues.
William Patrick Kinsella was born to John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton, Alberta. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years-old at a homestead near Darwell, Alberta, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his mother and taking correspondence courses. "I'm one of these people who woke up at age five knowing how to read and write," he says. When he was ten, the family moved to Edmonton.
As an adult, he held a variety of jobs in Edmonton, including as a clerk for the Government of Alberta and managing a credit bureau. In 1967, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia, running a pizza restaurant called Caesar's Italian Village and driving a taxi.
Though he had been writing since he was a child (winning a YMCA contest at age 14), he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria in 1970, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing there in 1974. He travelled down to Iowa and earned a Master of Fine Arts in English degree through the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978. In 1991, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the University of Victoria.
Kinsella's most famous work is Shoeless Joe, upon which the movie Field of Dreams was based. A short story by Kinsella, Lieberman in Love, was the basis for a short film that won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film – the Oscar win came as a surprise to the author, who, watching the award telecast from home, had no idea the film had been made and released. He had not been listed in the film's credits, and was not acknowledged by director Christine Lahti in her acceptance speech – a full-page advertisement was later placed in Variety apologizing to Kinsella for the error. Kinsella's eight books of short stories about life on a First Nations reserve were the basis for the movie Dance Me Outside and CBC television series The Rez, both of which Kinsella considers very poor quality. The collection Fencepost Chronicles won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1987.
Before becoming a professional author, he was a professor of English at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Kinsella suffered a car accident in 1997 which resulted in a long hiatus in his fiction-writing career until the publication of the novel, Butterfly Winter. He is a noted tournament Scrabble player, becoming more involved with the game after being disillusioned by the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. Near the end of his life he lived in Yale, British Columbia with his fourth wife, Barbara (d. 2012), and occasionally wrote articles for various newspapers.
In the year 1993, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of British Columbia.
W.P. Kinsella elected to die on September 16, 2016 with the assistance of a physician.
William Patrick Kinsella was born to John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton, Alberta. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years-old at a homestead near Darwell, Alberta, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his mother and taking correspondence courses. "I'm one of these people who woke up at age five knowing how to read and write," he says. When he was ten, the family moved to Edmonton.
As an adult, he held a variety of jobs in Edmonton, including as a clerk for the Government of Alberta and managing a credit bureau. In 1967, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia, running a pizza restaurant called Caesar's Italian Village and driving a taxi.
Though he had been writing since he was a child (winning a YMCA contest at age 14), he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria in 1970, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing there in 1974. He travelled down to Iowa and earned a Master of Fine Arts in English degree through the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978. In 1991, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the University of Victoria.
Kinsella's most famous work is Shoeless Joe, upon which the movie Field of Dreams was based. A short story by Kinsella, Lieberman in Love, was the basis for a short film that won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film – the Oscar win came as a surprise to the author, who, watching the award telecast from home, had no idea the film had been made and released. He had not been listed in the film's credits, and was not acknowledged by director Christine Lahti in her acceptance speech – a full-page advertisement was later placed in Variety apologizing to Kinsella for the error. Kinsella's eight books of short stories about life on a First Nations reserve were the basis for the movie Dance Me Outside and CBC television series The Rez, both of which Kinsella considers very poor quality. The collection Fencepost Chronicles won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1987.
Before becoming a professional author, he was a professor of English at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Kinsella suffered a car accident in 1997 which resulted in a long hiatus in his fiction-writing career until the publication of the novel, Butterfly Winter. He is a noted tournament Scrabble player, becoming more involved with the game after being disillusioned by the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. Near the end of his life he lived in Yale, British Columbia with his fourth wife, Barbara (d. 2012), and occasionally wrote articles for various newspapers.
In the year 1993, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of British Columbia.
W.P. Kinsella elected to die on September 16, 2016 with the assistance of a physician.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 24, 2019
Attracted by the cover and its university press imprint, I picked up this collection of short stories at an honesty bookshop for 50p (80¢). I am glad I did not pay more.
W.P. Kinsella is a Canadian author with a fondness for writing fiction about baseball, but fortunately only a few of the 13 stories in Red Wolf, Red Wolf head off in that direction. Most are whimsical, often teetering on the brink of sentimentality. In “Butterfly Winter” and “Mother Tucker’s Yellow Duck”, they lose their footing and slide right in. Even the title of the latter story makes me feel queasy. In "Red Wolf, Red Wolf", a gorilla-suited Flannery O’Connor character materializes on her doorstep and takes up residence, earning his keep as a mail-order taxidermist. Sounds quite fun, but the summary is pretty much it. “Billy in Trinidad” involves a bank clerk meeting Billy the Kid. They play baseball together. And so on.
I have certainly read worse, but these stories are pretty lightweight and unambitious, told in an easy-going tone of voice that doesn’t vary much. They are simple to read and apparently simple to write, since Kinsella claims to have published over 200 of them. That’s enough to fill another 15 volumes...but for me this one volume was more than ample.
W.P. Kinsella is a Canadian author with a fondness for writing fiction about baseball, but fortunately only a few of the 13 stories in Red Wolf, Red Wolf head off in that direction. Most are whimsical, often teetering on the brink of sentimentality. In “Butterfly Winter” and “Mother Tucker’s Yellow Duck”, they lose their footing and slide right in. Even the title of the latter story makes me feel queasy. In "Red Wolf, Red Wolf", a gorilla-suited Flannery O’Connor character materializes on her doorstep and takes up residence, earning his keep as a mail-order taxidermist. Sounds quite fun, but the summary is pretty much it. “Billy in Trinidad” involves a bank clerk meeting Billy the Kid. They play baseball together. And so on.
I have certainly read worse, but these stories are pretty lightweight and unambitious, told in an easy-going tone of voice that doesn’t vary much. They are simple to read and apparently simple to write, since Kinsella claims to have published over 200 of them. That’s enough to fill another 15 volumes...but for me this one volume was more than ample.
April 26, 2023
Brilliant!
I loved this author's ability to tell 13 different stories using such a wide variety of unique characters (writers, baseball and Elvis Presley fans, a land developer, widows, students, rooming house tenants, even a guy in a gorilla suit) acting in the most unusual situations with settings in Canada and the United States.
He has a great ear for dialogue and a wild imagination! For example, in his introduction, he states, "I use little autobiography in my fiction; I always maintain that my life is too dull to write about." (p. 4) How he manages to get inside his imaginative characters' heads is magical.
Picture this scene from the story "Something to Think About": "Mrs. Barson pushes open the screen door and steps out on the verandah of her house, which is tall and square like a five-gallon gas can."
Picture this character from the story "Zoltan Who Sings": "The first doctor who interviewed me had a face as red as a radish." Not the cliched 'beet' but a 'radish'! I ate it up!
Rich in language and details. Bravo!
I loved this author's ability to tell 13 different stories using such a wide variety of unique characters (writers, baseball and Elvis Presley fans, a land developer, widows, students, rooming house tenants, even a guy in a gorilla suit) acting in the most unusual situations with settings in Canada and the United States.
He has a great ear for dialogue and a wild imagination! For example, in his introduction, he states, "I use little autobiography in my fiction; I always maintain that my life is too dull to write about." (p. 4) How he manages to get inside his imaginative characters' heads is magical.
Picture this scene from the story "Something to Think About": "Mrs. Barson pushes open the screen door and steps out on the verandah of her house, which is tall and square like a five-gallon gas can."
Picture this character from the story "Zoltan Who Sings": "The first doctor who interviewed me had a face as red as a radish." Not the cliched 'beet' but a 'radish'! I ate it up!
Rich in language and details. Bravo!
January 29, 2018
✭✭✭½
“Red Wolf, Red Wolf” ✭✭✭✭✭
“Something to Think About” ✭✭✭½
“Lieberman in Love” ✭✭✭✭
“Driving Patterns” ✭✭✭
“Elvis Bound” ✭✭✭½
“Oh, Marley” ✭✭✭
“Truth and History” ✭✭✭½
“Evangeline’s Mother” ✭✭✭✭
“Billy in Trinidad” ✭✭✭½
“Apartheid” ✭✭✭½
“Butterfly Winter” ✭✭½
“For Zoltan, Who Sings” ✭✭✭✭
“Mother Tucker’s Yellow Duck” ✭✭✭✭½
“Red Wolf, Red Wolf” ✭✭✭✭✭
“Something to Think About” ✭✭✭½
“Lieberman in Love” ✭✭✭✭
“Driving Patterns” ✭✭✭
“Elvis Bound” ✭✭✭½
“Oh, Marley” ✭✭✭
“Truth and History” ✭✭✭½
“Evangeline’s Mother” ✭✭✭✭
“Billy in Trinidad” ✭✭✭½
“Apartheid” ✭✭✭½
“Butterfly Winter” ✭✭½
“For Zoltan, Who Sings” ✭✭✭✭
“Mother Tucker’s Yellow Duck” ✭✭✭✭½
January 17, 2020
Kinsella claims to have left the baseball diamond with this group of stories but fortunately not completely. A quirky group of characters in quirky situations make this an enjoyable read.
August 29, 2020
This collection is a dud and the worst Kinsella I've read.
"Billy in Trinidad" is the only worthwhile selection. Most of the stories take a typical Kinsella approach of unique characters in one-of-a-kind situations, but that's where it ends. Kinsella is depressing by nature, but these writings are reflective of an author going through the worst kind of self-inflicted punishment. Red Wolf, Red Wolf does not uphold the ease of prose of his baseball-themed or Indian-themed stories. It is as if Kinsella had a deal with his publisher to publish a certain amount of books, was out of trustworthy material for the final installment, and decided to pick a grouping of formerly-rejected stories.
Had this been another author I would have given 1 star. However, as a few of these held my interest at least a trace, I decided it did not belong in the cellar of terrible books. Nonetheless, I would never recommend this collection to anyone which is sad because this is one of my top 5 favorite authors. I encourage all to read a collection of Kinsella short stories, just not this one.
"Billy in Trinidad" is the only worthwhile selection. Most of the stories take a typical Kinsella approach of unique characters in one-of-a-kind situations, but that's where it ends. Kinsella is depressing by nature, but these writings are reflective of an author going through the worst kind of self-inflicted punishment. Red Wolf, Red Wolf does not uphold the ease of prose of his baseball-themed or Indian-themed stories. It is as if Kinsella had a deal with his publisher to publish a certain amount of books, was out of trustworthy material for the final installment, and decided to pick a grouping of formerly-rejected stories.
Had this been another author I would have given 1 star. However, as a few of these held my interest at least a trace, I decided it did not belong in the cellar of terrible books. Nonetheless, I would never recommend this collection to anyone which is sad because this is one of my top 5 favorite authors. I encourage all to read a collection of Kinsella short stories, just not this one.
June 7, 2009
I used to read short stories quite often, but haven't much lately, and enjoyed the change. Some short stories are like little novels, with lots of plot and changes and climax and so forth. These are more of the vignette variety; little word pictures about a situation or a slice of time, often, as the author says in the introduction, featuring some change driven by a visitor or some other event. Nicely done.
November 22, 2015
Canadian author WP Kinsella writes interesting short stories, mostly set in British Columbia, an area we love to explore. What happens between and among his characters could happen just as easily in America, but it is fun to have a brief cultural exchange in imagination.
October 28, 2024
Very unique stories.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews