Status
Available
Call number
Call number
F Mal
Genres
Collection
Publication
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.
Description
Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bernard Malamud�??s first novel is still one of the best ever written about baseball. His story of a superbly gifted �??natural�?� at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era is invested with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work. First published in 1952, this novel has since become an American classic. Five 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 i… (more)
Subjects
Original publication date
1952
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User reviews
LibraryThing member robinamelia
Having read Malamud's "Magic Barrel" I knew to expect a degree of magic realism, so was not too surprised when Roy performed hits that literally ripped the cover off the ball, etc. Nevertheless, I was so caught up in the story, I didn't catch the mythic symbolism, until I read a few web sites after
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concluding the book. I figured there was symbolism, a foot, Pop Fisher being some kind of father figure, but Of course, he is the Fisher King! Roy's is the mythic quest, which, alas, fails because he longs for the skinny woman, rather than the plump one (yes!). I have read that the movie, in typical Hollywood fashion, tacks on a happy ending, and that is a shame. Perhaps now more than ever we need to be able to sit with our failure, and with how our gluttony is destroying us. Show Less
LibraryThing member bongo_x
I was pretty blown away by this and I want to read it again already. It's dark, mysterious, and is more about life and human nature than baseball.
The first thing you need to do is forget about the movie. It can't help but color your perception as you're reading, and the movie is completely
Although I've always been a fan of the movie, I feel a little let down and think I probably like it less now that I've read the book. This is a much deeper, complex story than the movie.
One thing I've noticed with the reviews is that some people just don't like books that aren't "feel good" stories. It seems to me that people can read and watch stories of murder and horrific acts all day, but give them something that actually shows the pain of everyday life and they get irritated and/or angry. This is not a "feel good" story.
The first thing you need to do is forget about the movie. It can't help but color your perception as you're reading, and the movie is completely
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different from the book in tone. There are few likable characters in this book and no angels. That can sometimes really put me off a book, but these are not Snidely Whiplash moustache twirlers either. They are just real, flawed characters.Although I've always been a fan of the movie, I feel a little let down and think I probably like it less now that I've read the book. This is a much deeper, complex story than the movie.
One thing I've noticed with the reviews is that some people just don't like books that aren't "feel good" stories. It seems to me that people can read and watch stories of murder and horrific acts all day, but give them something that actually shows the pain of everyday life and they get irritated and/or angry. This is not a "feel good" story.
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LibraryThing member whitewavedarling
I enjoyed this book for the story, but at the same time I wanted more. I never felt close to the characters, or even that they were real, so I was never really able to escape into what the author had given me. At the same time, while I also enjoyed the arthurian allusions, they were a bit
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heavy-handed at points, and I found myself thinking that Malamud was trying to hard as he wrote. Show Less
LibraryThing member abirdman
Read this in the summer, during baseball season. This was made into a movie (I haven't seen it, but it stars Robert Redford), but reading it is better than a movie. It's a baseball novel, about a pitcher (I think). You'll never look at a ball game the same way.
LibraryThing member J.v.d.A.
It's been a very very long time since I read this and I only did so after having watched the movie. One of those rare, very rare, instances where the movie could actually be better than the book it is based on.
LibraryThing member tzelman
Very strongly told baseball yarn with a theme of personal achievement
LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
Despite being only 180 pages long Bernard Malamud packs a lot of action into the plot of The Natural. Roy Hobbs is a rookie baseball player on his way to try out for Chicago's pro team, the Chicago Cubs. Just as he arrives in Chicago he is shot by a serial killer, a woman bent on killing
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professional athletes. Fastforward 16 years and Roy has survived being shot and is now playing for the New York Knights. He has made it to the big time only to have to deal with a mid-season slump, a crooked co-owner, Judge Banner, an infatuated woman who says she is carrying his child, Iris Lemon, and his unresolved relationship with the fans. When Hobbs is bribed to throw the game, he counters with a bigger bribe and the deal is done. The book ends with a newspaper boy confronting Hobbs after the game, asking "Is it true?" and Hobbs cannot reply. Show Less
LibraryThing member maggie1944
Finished reading The Natural and gave it four and one half stars. This is a better than average rating for me to give a book and I think I chose to do this because Malamud hooked me despite the fact that I am not a big baseball fan. I am a fan of American cultural history and found the period
I recommend the book to baseball fans as it does include some wonderful game descriptions. I also think American history buffs will enjoy this book. I also recommend it to any one who enjoys reading fine writing and an interesting take on the "novel" as a form. Malamud has fallen a bit in popularity I think but he deserves to be rediscovered.
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details fun, and the mood of the book seems to suit baseball's early relationship with the shady side of life.I recommend the book to baseball fans as it does include some wonderful game descriptions. I also think American history buffs will enjoy this book. I also recommend it to any one who enjoys reading fine writing and an interesting take on the "novel" as a form. Malamud has fallen a bit in popularity I think but he deserves to be rediscovered.
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LibraryThing member jasonlf
I've read several Malamud novels but had never quite gotten around to this one. And it is really astounding. From the first scene with the amateur Roy Hobbs striking out one the leading sluggers in a fairground bet to the tragic ending. It is an all-too-frequent cliche about baseball novels, but
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The Natural really expands into the mythic, with large timeless figures, all of them tragically flawed. Plus the baseball scenes themselves hold your attention with all of the suspense and interest of a good sports novel or movie. Show Less
LibraryThing member mscongeniality
The story is excellent, if somewhat darker than Barry Levinson's depiction of it in film. In many ways, I prefer this darker, more edged tale of loss, pain and morality to the triumph of spirit we are given on the silver screen. It has certainly earned its reputation as a modern classic.
LibraryThing member SethAndrew
In my opinion, the best fictional baseball book. Everyone has seen the Redford film, and the film stays fairly true to the book, but Malamud's story is a must read for lovers of the film or not. He writes beautiful descriptions of the baseball action as well as making the reader believe that our
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hero's bat just may actual possess "supernatural" powers. A classic that stands up over time, a baseball book, but also to be enjoyed by everyone, fan or not. Show Less
LibraryThing member FKarr
Roy Hobbs faces the demons of baseball (and loses)
LibraryThing member nosajeel
I've read several Malamud novels but had never quite gotten around to this one. And it is really astounding. From the first scene with the amateur Roy Hobbs striking out one the leading sluggers in a fairground bet to the tragic ending. It is an all-too-frequent cliche about baseball novels, but
Show More
The Natural really expands into the mythic, with large timeless figures, all of them tragically flawed. Plus the baseball scenes themselves hold your attention with all of the suspense and interest of a good sports novel or movie. Show Less
LibraryThing member pussreboots
The Natural is an oddly written metaphysical examination of baseball. It has some strange turns of phrase and even weirder similies and metaphores. It's trying to be a Flowers for Algernon sports novel and it just isn't. Roy isn't a likeable or honerable enough of a character for me to care whether
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or not he succeeds in his career. Show Less
LibraryThing member Stahl-Ricco
A pretty good read! I've seen the movie adaptation many times, and was surprised how closely it followed the plot of this book. The main difference is the ending, which is pretty dang different! I liked that in the book, Roy Hobbs is not the perfect seeming, clean-cut guy that he was in the movie.
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He seems much more real in the book. Malamud uses some flowery language at times, but this is a good baseball story! I'm glad I finally read it! Show Less
LibraryThing member ffortsa
Malamud's first novel and an attempt to use the motif and story of the Fisher King in a fallen world.
That world, for him, is baseball, and for many years it was truly America's game. The Black Sox scandal was so painful to the country precisely because it broke the sweet image of the boys of
Roy Hobbes is a magical rube when we first meet him, and awful things happen to him almost immediately as he travels from private kinds of dysfunction to the dysfunction of sports. 15 years later, he comes back to baseball as if to reluctantly fulfill a destiny, and for a while we think he might do it. His skill, his determination, the way he seems to inspire a cellar team and the public mix with huge appetites, and a terrible misjudgement of the people around him.
Malamud's writing takes unexpected mystical, surreal flights as he describes peoples' dreams, events on the field and off. His women are not so much stereotypic as iconic in the manner of legend, dangerous, deceitful, inspiring, a test of Roy's purity and faults. Will he, at the end, ask the right question and save the world?
That world, for him, is baseball, and for many years it was truly America's game. The Black Sox scandal was so painful to the country precisely because it broke the sweet image of the boys of
Show More
summer, and revealed baseball as a business as open to corruption as any other. So it must have seemed the perfect environment to explore purity and failure.Roy Hobbes is a magical rube when we first meet him, and awful things happen to him almost immediately as he travels from private kinds of dysfunction to the dysfunction of sports. 15 years later, he comes back to baseball as if to reluctantly fulfill a destiny, and for a while we think he might do it. His skill, his determination, the way he seems to inspire a cellar team and the public mix with huge appetites, and a terrible misjudgement of the people around him.
Malamud's writing takes unexpected mystical, surreal flights as he describes peoples' dreams, events on the field and off. His women are not so much stereotypic as iconic in the manner of legend, dangerous, deceitful, inspiring, a test of Roy's purity and faults. Will he, at the end, ask the right question and save the world?
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LibraryThing member chicjohn
Moving and funny
LibraryThing member m.belljackson
The Natural has many great introspective scenes and a true love of baseball,
but ultimately is too boring due to Roy's obsession with the truly odious Memo.
His sellout did NOT ring true to his deepest Wonderboy character.
but ultimately is too boring due to Roy's obsession with the truly odious Memo.
His sellout did NOT ring true to his deepest Wonderboy character.
LibraryThing member languagehat
I'm not particularly impressed with this novel. Malamud had no business trying to write about baseball. But it's infinitely better than the movie.
LibraryThing member weird_O
Communication between Bernard Malamud and me doesn't seem to exist. Oh, he talks, and I hear…well, something. But I don't comprehend him. What exactly does he mean?
[The Natural], Malamud's first published novel, is a baseball story. It's about a gifted athlete whose hopes and dreams are
Time passes, fifteen years to be exact, apparently without notice. Even a sleazy sportsgossiper, who witnessed Hobbs' three-pitch strikeout of The Whammer, can't place him. But he's been gifted with a contract to play for the sub-basement dwelling New York Knights. Curiously (to me), Roy's first brush with greatness was as a pitcher. Now, he's a hitter exclusively employing a homemade bat. It has a name, Wonderboy, and a home, an old bassoon case. As a hitter, he displaces the Knights' big star, and he goes on, despite a couple of worrying hitting slumps, to carry the Knights into a one-game playoff for the league-championship pennant (and a trip to the World Series).
Throughout, it seems to me, Roy is his own worst enemy. He trusts only Sam Simpson, a baseball outcast and a sneaking drinker, and Sam dies during the awesome three-pitch strike-out of The Whammer. In his second run at greatness, he goes it alone. It reminds me of a line: "I'm not saying you're stupid, I'm just saying you have bad luck when it comes to thinking." He holds virtually everyone at arm's length. Though he wins the hearts of fans, they are fickle. He certainly didn't win the heart of this reader. And so I ask, what exactly does the author mean?
[The Natural], Malamud's first published novel, is a baseball story. It's about a gifted athlete whose hopes and dreams are
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derailed. Twice. As a teen from nowhere, being shepherded to a big-league tryout, Roy Hobbs gets a unique opportunity and strikes out—in only three pitches— professional baseball's Top Hitter. That gets him the attention of a seductive seductress, who invites him to her hotel room, accepts his claim that he will be the best player EVER, then shoots him. With a silver bullet. Before killing herself.Time passes, fifteen years to be exact, apparently without notice. Even a sleazy sportsgossiper, who witnessed Hobbs' three-pitch strikeout of The Whammer, can't place him. But he's been gifted with a contract to play for the sub-basement dwelling New York Knights. Curiously (to me), Roy's first brush with greatness was as a pitcher. Now, he's a hitter exclusively employing a homemade bat. It has a name, Wonderboy, and a home, an old bassoon case. As a hitter, he displaces the Knights' big star, and he goes on, despite a couple of worrying hitting slumps, to carry the Knights into a one-game playoff for the league-championship pennant (and a trip to the World Series).
Throughout, it seems to me, Roy is his own worst enemy. He trusts only Sam Simpson, a baseball outcast and a sneaking drinker, and Sam dies during the awesome three-pitch strike-out of The Whammer. In his second run at greatness, he goes it alone. It reminds me of a line: "I'm not saying you're stupid, I'm just saying you have bad luck when it comes to thinking." He holds virtually everyone at arm's length. Though he wins the hearts of fans, they are fickle. He certainly didn't win the heart of this reader. And so I ask, what exactly does the author mean?
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Pages
231