Today, the Deccan Herald carried my review of John Grisham's 'Calico Joe'.
Beanball as sin
John Grisham, “Calico Joe”,
Hachette India, Rs.350
It is the 70s. Baseball fans, like those in Calico Rock,
Arkansas, tune in to the radio to follow the game. Televised games are few.
The people of Calico Rock usually root for the St. Louis Cardinals.
Naturally, they hate the Chicago Cubs, the long-standing rivals of the
Cardinals. But when the Cubs beat their favourite team, the locals celebrate
the loss, for their local boy Joe Castle is on the winning side.
‘Calico’ Joe is the boy next door who becomes a sensation
without losing his taste for home cooked food. In a game against the Giants, Joe
celebrates with dignity after rewriting the record books. The lone tear he
sheds only endears him all the more. By the time the Cubs take on the New York Mets
at Shea Stadium in New York City many records have taken a beating from his bat;
the fans are hungry for more.
Pitching for the Mets is Warren Tracy. In contrast with Joe,
whose star is on the ascent, Warren’s career is flickering towards an
unremarkable end. His sole entry in the record books – as the pitcher who has
hit the most batters – is, obviously, not a happy one. His bland career on the
plate is made only worse by his foul temper. He has an ego disproportionate to
his meagre accomplishments. He acts pricey when requested for autographs. At
home he often drinks and abuses his wife and kids; womanises too. In short,
Warren is a foul tempered loser and a bad man.
Little Paul Tracy is like any American kid who is mad about the
game. He memorizes every statistic worth noting, he collects every picture and
story of every baseball star worthy of adulation. He even plays the game in the
Little League, that is, until one day when his father takes it out on him for
being sissy enough not to hit a batter. Not surprisingly, while he is proud
that his father plays for the Mets, Joe Castle is Paul Tracy’s true idol.
The boy is in the stands in Shea Stadium, waiting for that
moment when his hero faces his father. That moment arrives, only to result in
tragedy and trauma. Joe’s career ends abruptly. Warren Tracy becomes a toxic
name, though he stoutly denies he did any wrong. Only Paul knows for sure that all
along his daddy meant to do what he did.
Seguing between the early 70s when the ‘incident’ took place
and sometime thirty years on in the present, John Grisham’s ‘Calico Joe’ is the story of how Paul
Tracy seeks redemption for his father’s deed most foul. Taken at face value, it
is a light, pleasant read. The baseball primer at the beginning of the book is both
educative and enjoyable, and in the context of the novel, a must-read even before
starting the story.
However (there had to be one). It may not be too far-fetched
to read ‘Calico Joe’ as the
quintessential Christian parable. After all, John Grisham was raised a devout
Christian and continues to abide by the faith, teaching Sunday School at
Oxford, Mississippi. He has acknowledged that his Christian upbringing may
influence his plotlines sometimes. ‘Calico
Joe’ is certainly one such time and this is the problem with the novel. As
with all plain vanilla morality tales, there is no greyness to the characters. Joe
Castle is virtue personified. Warren Tracy lives in darkest sin until, thanks
to terminal pancreatic cancer, he sees the light. Paul is the good shepherd who
saves his father’s soul by taking him on a road trip to redemption. Like the
truly noble, Joe gets boring after a while and is promptly consigned to the
margins of the plot. Like most of the fallen, Warren Tracy has much more to say
and do in the story. And like most insistent moralisers, Paul Tracy is
nauseously self-righteous and heartless.
It all depends on how we read.
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