The Natural
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Description
Introduction by Kevin Baker
The 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."
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Roy Hobbs wants to be the best of the best. He craves superiority. His career was swept out from under him too soon, but he ends up back on the baseball field. When it comes to the sport, he's perfect. When it comes to how he is as a person, he's reckless, impulsive, and deeply flawed. He gives up chances at having what he wants and better to act on superficial impulses. He eats compulsively even though he should be fulfilled, he can't pick between Memo and Iris, and he fights with Pop. I thought the prose was beautiful and moving. My appreciation for Malamud has been reaffirmed and resolidified. There is no satisfied redemption arc in this story. "...cocoanut..." I didn't know you could spell it this way up until now. "There was no end to her tears. They flowed on as if she had never wept before. Wherever she turned she cried, the world was wet. Her thoughts dripped on flowers, dark, stained ones in night fields." "We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us towards happiness." [Iris]
Description
Introduction by Kevin Baker
The 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."
Book Information
Posts
Roy Hobbs wants to be the best of the best. He craves superiority. His career was swept out from under him too soon, but he ends up back on the baseball field. When it comes to the sport, he's perfect. When it comes to how he is as a person, he's reckless, impulsive, and deeply flawed. He gives up chances at having what he wants and better to act on superficial impulses. He eats compulsively even though he should be fulfilled, he can't pick between Memo and Iris, and he fights with Pop. I thought the prose was beautiful and moving. My appreciation for Malamud has been reaffirmed and resolidified. There is no satisfied redemption arc in this story. "...cocoanut..." I didn't know you could spell it this way up until now. "There was no end to her tears. They flowed on as if she had never wept before. Wherever she turned she cried, the world was wet. Her thoughts dripped on flowers, dark, stained ones in night fields." "We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us towards happiness." [Iris]