The Natural | Bernard Malamud | The Defining Work

The Natural | Bernard Malamud | A must for any literate baseball fan

books:

The Natural

	The Natural Bernard Malamud Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003 - 248 pages average customer review:based on 100 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

The classical novel (and basis for the acclaimed film) now in a new editionIntroduction by Kevin BakerThe Natural, Bernard Malamud?s first novel, published in 1952, is also the first?and some would say still the best?novel ever written about baseball. In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material?the story of a superbly gifted ?natural? at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era?and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work. Four decades later, Alfred Kazin?s comment still holds true: ?Malamud has done something which?now that he has done it!?looks as if we have been waiting for it all our lives. He has really raised the whole passion and craziness and fanaticism of baseball as a popular spectacle to its ordained place in mythology.?

for more information click here

The Defining Work

The Natural is the very best that baseball novels has to offer. As a reader, one follows the sordid life of Roy Hobbs as he tries to rebound from an indiscretion of youth that has derailed his career for many years. Just as in Frank Nappi's novel The Legend of Mickey Tussler, [[ASIN:0312381093 The Legend of Mickey Tussler], you find yourself cheering and rooting for this phenom to attain all sorts of baseball glory. But regrettably, there is something about the character -- a flaw or imperfection if you will -- that holds him back from grabbing the glory that by all means should be his. This great work reminds us that we as humans are all flawed and vulnerable, despite our physical skills and prowess. Frank Deford's novel The Entitled [[ASIN:1402208960 The Entitled]does the same thing on a more modern level. I found myself is all three cases, but mostly with Malamud's work, frustrated but riveted to the idea that these baseball stars just could not get to the level that their ability seemed to portend.

for more information click here

A must for any literate baseball fan

My father was an English teacher who also happened to be a baseball fanatic, and I still have his marked-up copy of "The Natural" somewhere in the basement. He actually built an entire English class around baseball fiction, with this book as its centerpiece.

You can't help but appreciate the humanness of Hobbs as the book moves along, picking up steam much like the locomotives that are often used as a metaphor.

My favorite character is probably Pop - what a great, colorful caricature of a crusty old manager who lives and dies with every batted ball and terrific throw.

"The Natural" is the standard by which all other baseball novels - including mine, The King's Game - are judged. And that's how it should be.

And other reviewers are right - you'll never see the book's ending coming if you saw the movie first, but that's a good thing. This ending feels more real, more true, more human.

A classic!

-- John Nemo, author of the baseball novel The King's Game

for more information click here

Not so sugary sweet

I thought the movie "The Natural" was great. The story the book tells is even better. I think that each of the different tellings works for the different medium in which it is presented. I won't ruin it for readers by giving it away, but it's worth a read.

The only criticism I have with the book is I'm not a huge fan of Malamud's writing style. I have read several of the reviews stating that's the best thing about the book, but I don't see it. I sometimes felt like the writing got in the way of the story, rather than moved it along.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

products you might be interested in