Box Socials

by W.P. Kinsella

Here's the story of how Truckbox Al McClintock, a small-town greaser whose claim to fame was hitting a baseball clean across the Pembina River, almost got a tryout with the genuine St. Louis Cardinals -- but instead ended up batting against Bob Feller of Cleveland Indian Fame in Renfrew Park, Edmonton, Alberta.

Genres: Fiction, Baseball, Sports, Canada, Humor, Literature, Literary Fiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

William 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.

Reviews

[Howard · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a big disappointment.

Look at the cover; read the publisher's blurb. Wouldn't you guess that this is a book about baseball. You would be wrong, just as I was. Both-- cover and blurb-- are flagrant cases of false advertising.

W.P. Kinsella wrote Shoeless Joe which was adapted for the screen under the title Field of Dreams. The result was a great novel and a fine movie.

Instead of baseball, however, Box Socials is about small-town life in Alberta. Instead of another Field of Dreams, we get 222 pages of news from Lake Woebegone, which is at least 220 pages too many.

I would demand my money back, but since I paid fifty cents for the book at a library book sale I am willing to, grudgingly, absorb my losses.

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 2023 baseball World Series started yesterday with the Arizona Diamondbacks vs. the Texas Rangers. This is kind of an underdog series where both teams were not expected to make it this far. The team I usually root for, the Atlanta Braves, had the best record in baseball this year but were eliminated in the playoffs by the Philadelphia Phillies who then lost to the Diamondbacks. I often root for the underdog in the series if one of my favorites is not playing but this year both are underdog teams and so I really don't have a preference. Oh well, maybe next year.

Anyway, this time of year, I try to read something related to baseball. In years past I have read two of Kinsella's other novels, SHOELESS JOE and THE IOWA BASEBALL CONFEDERACY. Both of these were great baseball stories (Shoeless Joe was made into the movie Field of Dreams) that I enjoyed very much. So this year I decided to read another one by Kinsella, BOX SOCIALS, which I thought would be another great tale of baseball mythology. I was a little disappointed, however, because baseball is very tangential to the main story of life in the small rural towns of Alberta, Canada in the 1940s. Kinsella actually grew up in this area about 60 miles west of Edmonton so he knew of the location and people which were all very colorful. The novel starts out talking about Truckbox Al McClintock who had managed to hit 5 home runs across the Pembina River and as a result got put on the Alberta All Stars in an exhibition game against some major leaguers including Bob Feller and Joe DiMaggio. The locals think Truckbox has a shot at making the major leagues. This is during the war and thus Major leaguers are brought into local parks including Edmonton mainly to keep the troops happy who are busy building the Alaska highway.

But then the novel strays from Truckbox's story to tell of the eccentric people populating the area called six towns where most are illiterate and considered hillbillies. The story includes tales of weddings and box socials, and includes various ethnic groups who populated this area including Ukrainians, Scandinavians, and native Indians. Box socials are where young men bid for lunches packed by the mothers of eligible young women and then eat with the young lady as a means to socialize and get acquainted.

A lot of this was quite amusing but where is the baseball story? Eventually at the end of the novel we get back to Truckbox and what happened when he faced Bob Feller. Well, it was somewhat anticlimactic. I would mildly recommend this for its humor and its look at rural Alberta during the 40s but it really wasn't what I would consider a baseball novel.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was given to me by my mom who told me not to expect much because she didn't really care for it. I LOVED IT.
It's a beautiful way to describe a short period in time. The social interactions back then are just as true today. There's humor and heart put into this novel.
It took a little bit to get into it, simply because the writing style is different from the modern style that I've been mostly reading recently. But once I let myself accept the difference I just loved getting immersed in it.
I would recommend it for someone who enjoys reading historical pieces and doesn't read for simply "mind candy"...you do need to use your brain to enjoy this novel...not that it isn't fun.
My only other caveat is that if you are a dyed-in-the-wool city person, you probably won't enjoy this book because it is very rural in its nature.
If you find Lake Wobegon tedious...this will be just as bad.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Box Socials is an engaging ode to rural community life set in rural Canada in the early 1940s. The main story of Truckbox Al McClintock is set aside for almost all of the book in favor of descriptions of the many events, both repetitive and unique, that characterize the relationships between individuals and families in the Six Towns area. Through these many stories, Kinsella captures the essence of the personal connections within the community through the mostly lighthearted viewpoint of a young boy.

Kinsella's writing style was annoying at first, until I imagined that the story was being told to me by a talkative old man recalling his life as a boy; tangentially describing his entire community as he recalled the tale of Truckbox Al McClintock. Kinsella's writing is always beautiful and purposeful, even if it doesn't appear so at first.

[Art · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's supposed to be the story of Truckbox Al McClintock and the year he almost got a try-out with the St. Louis Cardinals but it's really about the Norwegian and Ukrainian families who live in the Six Towns area (there are really seven but not all are towns) near Edmonton, Alberta.

Truckbox Al and baseball feature prominently (it is, after all, a Kinsella book) but this is the story of Jamie O'Day, his first life memory and his family and friends.

There are touching vignettes and memorable characters along the way as Truckbox slugs five home runs across or into a river in a single game, earning his chance to bat against Bullet Bob Feller in an all-star game.

But it's also a time of loss and hard times as the Depression is ending and World War Two is breaking out.

And it's a time of simpler customs, like the adult and children's box socials that give the book its name.

But there are also some real feelings hidden among the stories and Kinsella's clever sing-song repetitive prose. You'll feel a bit for Truckbox Al but you will be moved by Jamie O'Day.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most people are more familiar with Kinsella's book Shoeless Joe, which the movie "Field of Dreams" was based on, but I prefer Box Socials. In fact, it is probably one of my favorite books of all time.

[Corinne Wasilewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

This delightful book almost reads like a collection of short stories all connected by locale and crisscrossed with repeating characters. I loved the whimsical writing style which is unfused with humour, engaging description and colourful characterizations. The young boy is a great narrator with his eye for detail and his candid albeit innocent voice. It would be an entertaining book to read aloud.

[Heather(Gibby) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have read other books by W.P. Kinsella which were much better than this one.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never written a review on here before, but this book was so unexpected that I felt the urge to share my thoughts. I picked this book up at the library because I enjoyed reading "Shoeless Joe", the inspiration for the movie "Field of Dreams", and this book is by the same author. The library lists the subject of this book as "Baseball - Fiction", which I enjoy, but that doesn't begin to do justice to the subject matter it covers.

The thing that stood out most to me about this book was the style of narration. I think I can't properly review this book without including a sample, so here's the first...uh...sentence(?): "This is the story of how Truckbox Al McClintock almost got a tryout with the genuine St. Louis Cardinals of the National Baseball League, but instead ended up batting against Bob Feller, of Cleveland Indian fame, in Renfrew Park, down on the river flats, in Edmonton, Alberta, summer of 1945 or '46, no one can remember which, though the date in question has brought on more than one disagreement, which turned first to a shoving match, then to an altercation, and finally a fist fight, though not a brouhaha, the general consensus in the Six Towns area being that it takes more than two people to staff a brouhaha, the fist fight though, usually resulting in bent cartilege of someone's proboscis, and blood spots on a Sunday shirt."

That style of narration carries on throughout the book, although not always running on to that degree. Because I didn't know it was coming, it definitely took some getting used to. Once I got into the book, however, it was very enjoyable. I thought the narration added a certain charm, and often humor, to the story.

As far as what the real subject of the book is, I would describe it as a book about the lives of people in the Six Towns area of rural Canada in the early 1940s. It is told from the point of view of a young boy who has since grown up and is recalling a year or so of his childhood. The conclusion of the book tells the story of Truckbox Al's game against Bob Feller, so you will eventually get your baseball. Leading up to that point, you get to meet a number of people who live in and pass through the Six Towns area and find out about how they lived.

I liked this book. I thought Kinsella's use of "stream of consciousness" narration (for lack of a better term) added wit and humor to the book. It was an effective way of putting me inside the narrator's head. I also enjoyed getting to know the colorful characters who lived in Six Towns and reading about their lives. If you're looking for a baseball book or another "Shoeless Joe", this probably isn't it. What is is, however, is a fun, quick, novel.

[Sylvester Olson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes a tale's telling serves merely as the delivery of plot (as is the case of most airport novels). And sometimes the telling itself completely overshadows the plot. Box Socials fits into the latter category. The narration is disarmingly hilarious. I imagine it was quite difficult, a bit of a nightmare, for W. P. Kinsella to write. The narrator uses (what I assume is) language and sentence structure to capture the rhythm of the gossip that one would encounter in rural, small town Alberta. He does this by adopting a set of descriptors and situations that are endlessly repeated throughout the novel, each repetition becoming funnier and funnier. Character Grunhilda Gordonjensen is bulldog-faced, and the reader will be reminded that bulldog-faced Grunhilda Gordonjensen is bulldog-faced every time she's mentioned. Alberta has terrible winter storms, or as the narrator explains, are "good old freeze-the-balls-off-a-brass-monkey" Alberta blizzards. Every time a terrible winter storm is mentioned, the narrator will stop and detail how it would be better to call it a "good old freeze-the-balls-off-a-brass-monkey" Alberta blizzard. I'm going off-topic here, but ya know how everyone describes Baroque era classical music as "math"? If you've ever played an instrumental piece, even an easier version of an instrumental piece, by the likes of J. S. Bach, or sung the Alleluia Chorus by Handel, you'd understand what they mean. Baroque music is patterns, patterns, variations of patterns, all intricately woven in such a way that it's never uninteresting to the ear. In a weird way, the narrative style of Box Socials strongly reminds me of this. It's Baroque music, except that the notes are gossipy descriptions and the overall piece is absurd.

On a personal note, the Canadian setting was a little lost on me, but I enjoyed and related to the Norwegian Lutheran-ous of the characters. It's not as on-target as something you would expect from Garrison Keillor (Kinsella confuses Lutheran liturgical forms with the fire-and-brimstone of other Protestant groups), but it was still fun to read.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

As far as I can remember this is the first W.P. Kinsella book I have read and it was a recommendation from my nephew. I very much enjoyed it, not only because it was set not far from where I was raised but because Kinsella is a good writer. I liked the repetition of certain phrases: "for slighting her, even snubbing her, which everyone knew was worse than slighting"; "Truckbox Al McClintock had been chosen to play for the unimaginatively named Alberta All-Stars, against a team of Major Leaguers, including Bob Feller, Hal Newhouser, and Joe DiMaggio himself, of a Sunday afternoon, at Renfrew Park, down on the river flats, in Edmonton, Alberta." and "We're hillbillies, but we know we're hillbillies, and we won't always be that way, unlike some we know". etc.

[Michele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made me cry.

[Frank Murtaugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the movie "Field of Dreams." So felt some pull to Kinsella (haven't read "Shoeless Joe"). He has a distinctive writing style, to say the least. This book will stick in my memory more for the way the stories are told than the strength of the stories or characters themselves. Repetition is the coin of Kinsella's realm. You'll develop affection for "Mary Gullickson, who married badly but put up a good front" and "good old bring-on-blindness, logging-boot-to-the-side-of-the-head home-brew." A nice escape read, pleasantly short.

[JMM · Rating 4 out of 5]

The narrator sets out to tell the story of Truckbox McClintock and his shot at the Majors but really shares a coming-of-age tale of his own life in rural Alberta during the Depression. There are poignant and painful moments and many joyful and hilarious ones, as he describes his family and the other Norwegian and Ukrainian immigrant families of the small community. It took me some time to get used to the repetitive style of the narrator’s language but once past that hurdle, I found this a really enjoyable novel.

[Judson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read a few of W.P. Kinsella's stories, he tends to ramble and talk about everything but what you'd expect. The story is ostensibly about baseball, but in reality is just a story of a small town. He gives rigorous details about the people, sometimes funny and sometimes sad.

It is really slow and doesn't really pick up until the end. The actual box social is hilarious. But it is a book I would recommend to an older, more patient audience.

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is at once, touching and hilarious. It tells of rural very small towns in Alberta, Canada in the early 1940s. Although it is allegedly about a would be baseball player, it is so much more about the various families and characters that make up the small towns. The language, so repetitive it is humorous, really portrays the rural feel of the story. The author did a great job of providing the flavor of an era that existed at one time.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books ever, and a recent visit to Alberta has me thinking about it. This book is meant to be read aloud, and is storytelling at its finest. There are certain repeated phrases and scenes that make the book feel like a place where you used to live, peopled with old friends and acquaintances.

[Shawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Have read most of the Kinsella library but this one just didn't do it for me.
The story-lines were kind of all over the place and didn't keep my interest.
There were way too many characters to keep track of and none of which I had any interest in.
I usually enjoy the author's works but this one might have been his weakest.

[Peter B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Baseball is a side story to this one as Kinsella tells tales of his youth in Six Towns, a collection of small communities. It is a tribute to loving and caring parents and to a youth fostered by that community. American soldiers, Truckbox Al McClintock, his first love who died of pneumonia are all part of the story.

[Andy Pandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of his best. He has been derided after death for many things. A lot of that is probably fair. However, Kinsella was a voice for rural Canada in a way that was truly uncommon. When he stuck to his strengths he was a wonderful, whimsical (perhaps overly, but there I nitpick) storyteller. Unique to some extent. Who else describes a good-old Prairies blizzard like him?

[Pete Papagiannis · Rating 3 out of 5]

"With the moon as bright as a peeled peach"

Now this was a light, breezy, slice of summer reading! Canadiana at its finest -- immigrant families getting by in the great province of Alberta whilst having to interact with characters who simply cannot be contained by the present times. Aye, a warm hug.

[Diane Anderson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sorry Mr. Kinsella, but the endless repetition and run-on sentences drove me to put down the book at page 18. And I only made it that far because I thought I should persevere due to the author's reputation. So many books to read and so little time.

[Michael Paquette · Rating 3 out of 5]

A whimsical tale reminiscent of the storytelling of Garrison Keiller and the satirical humor of Red Green. A humorous look at small town Canada with endearing and memorable characters.

[Eric Berg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, a very interesting writing style and quite difficult to read at times. I’m still not sure how I feel about the style, however the narrative was very entertaining.

[Chip Rickard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whimsical semi-autobiographical book by Kinsella about the are where he grew up. If you're looking for a baseball book, this isn't it except for the last chapter.

[Kevin Kurhajetz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Man this book was hard to continue. The repetition of phrases is absolutely painful but got bearable by the end. Not a ringing endorsement from an author I enjoy.

[Matt Black · Rating 2 out of 5]

Box Socials is not so much a baseball book, but a story of the people in a small Canadian town in the early 1940s. The story I thought the book would be about, baseball player Truckbox Al McClintock, is not really told till the very end of the book. But to me that wasn't even the most annoying thing in the book.
I love the book "Shoeless Joe." And this book, also written by W.P Kinsella was totally different. Kinsella's writing style is very annoying in this novel. It is so repetitive to me, the book was hard to read. It could have been a 112 page book instead of 224. The story was told by an old man recalling his life as a boy; and maybe he had memory issues because the same things are said on the same pages over and over. If you would cut out the repeating sentences and phrases, I think this book would be much better.

[B · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book runs on repetition and overt foreshadowing, but works anyway. There's a line over which this could cross into full-blown "so it goes" territory.

Also, the book runs on Ukranians are this way and Norwegians are that way and the narrator (whose ethnicity is uncertain) is the model citizen. I kept thinking that it wouldn't be written that way if it were written more recently, but it was written in 1991. There's a certain good-naturedness about these streotypes, except as to the poor who are, with one exception, morally reprehensible. Everyone is stupid, so it's not quite a stereotype. I think it works and is not offensive, but perhaps I'm wrong.

Fun rhythms, cute, intertwining stories.

[Patti · Rating 1 out of 5]

I disliked the constant repetition of entire paragraphs of thought, over and over and over again. I believe that in his desire to write in the voice of a pre-teen in "1945 or 1946 - no one could remember which", he padded what could have been a beautiful and poignant short story into an almost unreadable mess.

I literally found myself telling the book to "shut up already" and move on with the actual story. When that did in fact happen, I discovered little nuggets of gold hidden in a mountain of rocks.

If you are looking for a book filled with baseball - this is not it, unless you do not mind having the same vignette repeated word for word numerous times.

This is not a recommend. I did not find the result worth the effort.

[Andrew Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Box Socials is quite different from Shoeless Joe and Iowa Baseball Confederacy. It is a quirky story of small town Alberta in the 1940's. People who were dead poor but did things together like Box Socials. Along the way we are brought to 6 day Ukrainian wedding, Baseball games, Whist drives and Box Socials. The author creates a witty look into this world. He repeats over and over again descriptions of characters everytime they are introduced. This is amusing at first but becomes annoying after awhile. I think he does it to create the atmosphere where characters are known not just by their names but what they do, how they behave, or certain characteristics. The story did not go anywhere for me. It was an intersting look at small towns in the 40's- a time and place lost forever.