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The Natural
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List Price: $14.00
Our Price: $11.20
Your Save: $ 2.80 ( 20% )
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Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780374502003
ISBN: 0374502005
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 248
Publication Date: 2003-07-07
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Editorial Reviews:
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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.”
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A must for any literate baseball fan
Comment: 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
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not so sugary sweet
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A hideously BAD book
Comment: I love books. I collect, preserve, protect and treasure books. After reading this one, I immediately threw it in the trash.
This may well be the most badly written book in the history of the planet. Should there turn out to be alien civilizations elsewhere in the universe, and they've written books, this would also be far worse than anything they ever wrote.
The language, sentence structure, plot development (or extreme lack thereof), pacing and narrative could not possibly be worse. The 'author' should have been jailed for fraud and crimes against humanity.
Customer Rating:
Summary: order never arrived
Comment: The book I ordered never arrived. I checked tracking and DHL passed it off to USPS who delivered it somewhere on 12/28/07. The end result is "Sorry Charlie"
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Defining Work
Comment: 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.
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