Sayles, who is 75, was in the area to promote his new historical novel Crucible which is set in both Detroit and Brazil. The novel documents Henry Ford's failed efforts to union bust and to build a rubber plantation in Fordlandia, a town in the Amazon rainforest which bears his name amid Prohibition, The Great Depression and WWII.
Yet when Sayles read a passage from the book, the focus was on baseball. Of course, given that Sayles is best known for directing Eight Men Out, a film about the 1919 Black Sox scandal and his appearance in Ken Burns' Baseball, that he would make baseball a part of this story does not come as a surprise.
In the context of Crucible, the focus was on his protagonists Rosa and Ira Schimmel, a Russian Jewish sister and brother, attending a game at Navin Field (later rechristened Tiger Stadium) between the Detroit Tigers and Boston Red Sox in 1933.
Sayles noted that the 1933 Tigers weren't very good with a wink in his eye. That year, the Tigers went 75-79 finishing fifth in the American League 25 games back of the Washington Senators who would win their third and final AL pennant. In case you're wondering, the Red Sox were worse finishing ahead of only the lowly St. Louis Browns. However, in 1934, the Tigers would win their first AL pennant in 25 years and their elusive first World Series title in 1935.
The passage focused on Ira and the fans surrounding him trying to teach Rosa about the subtleties of baseball. While Rosa could not understand the difference between the infield fly rule and a double play and didn't understand why the umpire didn't send automatically send the batter down the first base following an intentional walk, she considered Hank Greenberg a hero. So, too, did many other Jews whether or not they lived in Detroit.
Following the excerpt, Sayles opened up the floor to questions. I relayed my experiences growing up rooting for the Tigers in Northwestern Ontario once our TV signals switched from Duluth to Detroit and recounting my experience at Tiger Stadium in August 1999 only a few short weeks before it shuttered. I asked Sayles if he had ever been to Tiger Stadium. He replied that he had not but had been to Fenway Park many times when he lived in East Boston and recounted how he enjoyed seeing the fans on the Blue Line en route to Fenway. His passage is the mark of a great writer. Although he was writing about Detroit baseball in the 1930s, one could easily picture Sayles having sat in the bleachers himself.
Among the other questions directed toward Sayles focused on his writing process for a historical novel, the difference between writing a novel and a film/TV screenplay and his views on Henry Ford. He also spoke briefly about his next novel which he has also completed writing called God's Gotham which is an account of the point shaving scandal at CCNY involving the school's basketball team in the late 1940's.
At the end of the evening, Sayles signed books including my own. I told Sayles that my favorite film is Matewan which I saw when I was a teenager not long after it was released. Nearly 40 years after the movie was released, the scene where the hillbillies rescue the unionized mine workers thrown out of the company town still sticks with me.
When I told Sayles this, he mentioned that the hillbilly elder had been the editor of the local paper in Charleston describing him as an intellectual. But he also noted that this same man had grown up in a mining town. Upon hearing that, I told him how my maternal grandfather spent 43 years as a coal miner in the Crowsnest Pass in Alberta from the time he was 15 to the age of 57 and how he lived to the age of 84. He told me that my grandfather must have had strong lungs. That he did.
With other people waiting in line and not wanting to monopolize his time, I bade Sayles farewell. Trying to balance my book with my bag and my laptop, he gently told me to watch my step which struck me as a thoughtful and considerate gesture. It was a fitting conclusion to a pleasant evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment