Good book about baseball

Perhaps the author and I were at cross purposes. Taking on a baseball book just before the season began, I expected to be renewed. Instead, this book was actually creepy. If that was the author's objective, to create an air of mystic forces that drown out innocent even in baseball, then he succeeded.

What an interesting book! It took so many unexpected twists. It was about so much more than baseball - as many baseball books are - but it was also less about baseball than I had expected, less about baseball than you think.

Also, what is it about baseball and magic? This book is "realistic" except for the bat, Wonderboy. Baseball books seem to me, more and more, to have a special affinity for magic realism, highlighting this idea that some of the things that happen in the game are so unlikely that they can only be explained by magic. The way the bat is personified, they way it moves and seeks and searches, is not the way inanimate objects usually work. It makes me wonder about baseball books as magic realism - to some extent they seem to have this trait often.

The ending was not what I expected. The characters were not what I expected. How nice that some things weren't explained - it seems in contemporary literature that everything needs to be unpacked. This book went more for a "life is unpredictable" approach and reflected that in the writing. The way characters pop up and take unexpected turns... Really interesting. And somehow it stayed away from being moralistic.

And the language! The rich, slang-y, creative, unique, verbal language of this book is wonderful. The characters talk like working-class heroes, which in a way they are, and it's full of weird turns of speech and all-but-forgotten baseball jargon.

This is definitely a book I'll be thinking about for a long time.

RTC. So slow but beautiful writing....

This is the first book I've read of Malamud and I'm not sure why I liked it.

I'm not interested in Baseball, I'm not interested in jocks, as a type of person, and I really don't care for the gamey, earthy, baseball talk that Malamud provides his characters with.

But I did like it and I found the characters interesting.

Roy Hobbs is a young man from some small town and he's traveling on a train to Chicago to get signed up with a professional team. On the way he meets a professional player called the Whammer. When the train stops over for an hour near a baseball field, the Whammer bets Roy he can slam any ball pitches out of the park. Roy roundly strikes the Whammer out.

A girl on the train that had been flirting with the Whammer now transfers her attention to Roy. When he arrives in Chicago he finds he's checked into the same hotel as her. She beckons him to her room, he comes hither. Once in her room, she shoots him with a silver bullet. She turns out to be a serial killer who stalks athletes. By striking the Whammer out, Roy inadvertently saved the man's life.

Fast forward fifteen years. Roy is back, now thirty-five and signing on to a professional team that is in sore need of a good player. Roy is it. He can still strike batters out and hit balls out of the park.

But he's hard to get along with and he won't say why he's taken so long to become a pro. Along the way he meets a woman, Memo, whom he desperately wants. She, however, has eyes only for Bump, another player on the team.

Bump dies through an accident on the field but Memo still remains distant to Roy.

Why Roy wants her is beyond me. She's shallow, vain and greedy. She doesn't hide the fact and it is what eventually leads to choices he makes that ruin his career and his life.

The is a story about a man who basically lives according to his appetites and how those appetites ultimately lead to his downfall. His appetite took him to the Serial Killer's room. It took him to Memo and it also took him to a brief affair with a woman named Iris who believed in him during his slump, even though every one else, including Memo abandoned him.

Iris wants a normal life. To marry Roy and settle down with a family. Roy is not adverse to this, even when she admits that she had a child out of wedlock (this is 1952). But when she tells him she is also a grandmother, he recoils and returns to pursuing Memo.

Memo tells him that she would like to marry him, but she must live in style and he doesn't make enough. Soon the owner of the baseball team, the Judge, approaches him with a proposition. If he would throw the game that would disqualify the team from the world series he would pay him enough to make him rich.

Roy at first refuses, but finally, for Memo, he decides he will. He loses the game for his team, destroying the careers of the coach and assistant who had taken them under their wing. Roy then hates himself and takes the money and throws it at the judge. He finds the Judge with Memo and a bookie collecting the money they won betting on the game. Roy realizes he's been duped all around.

A news journalist discovers that Roy threw the game and reports it. The end of the story shows Roy reading the front page of a paper exposing him while the newspaper boy looks at him and begs him to say it isn't true.

Roy gives back the paper and walks down the streets a wreck of a man.

I still cannot explain why I liked the story. It drew me into the lives of people who are not likeable or moral, yet there was something of the human problem that spoke to me.

It is a sad case study. My heart broke for Roy by the end.

Malamud's prose is elegant and evocative, and made this novel a pleasure to read. So different from the film! Roy Hobbs is larger than life, and not just in the way he swings the bat; his story is a charming, if occasionally repugnant, fable that doesn't turn a blind eye to human nature. The characters are well-drawn and familiar types, and the plot rushes you along like the ghostly train of Roy's nightmares. It was hard to put down. Thanks, Elizabeth!!

Hm. Apparently, I do not have a shelf for this book. What sort of shelf would that be? Baseball fiction? Books That Use Baseball as an Interminable Metaphor? Books that Express Disillusionment with the American Dream? Because it definitely belongs on those shelves. But I think the shelf this book fits best on is "I Liked the Movie Better."

Because the movie was awesome.

There were times I considered ruthlessly ripping out all my hair and using it as thread to sew my eyes shut just so I could stop reading this book. If this is considered an example of "The Great American Novel" I fear for the US.

What is this book about? Baseball and lots of stupidity. The plot is minimal. Essentially Roy wants to be the best baseball player in the world, but he was shot because of his own stupidity and has to rise to the top as one of the oldest rookie players in the game.

Roy Hobbs, the protagonist, is the most aggravating, bumbling, oblivious, selfish, and moronic characters I've ever had the misfortune of meeting. Imagine Holden Caulfield's social and romantic ineptitude, a snotty little kid who wants to be a baseball player and bites anyone who doesn't do what he wants, and a soggy piece of white bread and I think you'll have a good understanding of Roy. I've never seen such a bland person in real life OR fiction. Besides Roy, there was a creepy one-eyed bookie, two annoying and poorly conceived femmes fatales, an even creepier miser presiding over the story like a vulture, and a bunch of clueless people who enable Roy's stupidity. The only characters with any redeemable qualities are either ignored, killed off, or dragged into annoying soap-opera plot lines.

I can't even praise the writing! Malamud evidently believes good writing is judged on by the numbers of unnecessary metaphors and digressions you can fit on a page. I also hated (chooo chooo) his overuse (a siren with shimmering red hair) of (wouldn't I like to believe they served a purpose?) parentheses. Random, unnecessary (tell me what you really think), and downright annoying.

At least I got to look at Robert Redford's face on the cover.

The Natural has always been one of my favorite baseball movies, and I decided to finally read the book, with the season opening and all. I've read some reviews of people saying that the book is much darker than the movie, and... it's true. Although that is not really a bad thing. Roy is gruffer, grittier, and a little bigger than what Redford puts on the screen. He's also a bit nastier in terms of personality... not nearly as affable as Redford's Roy. Again, not a bad thing. The highs in the book are high and get your blood pumping and adrenaline going, and the lows are low... so low you don't want to know whether or not they're actually happening, and again, this is a good thing. The Natural is a classically brilliant book. The characters, the descriptive, the language, everything about it rings out mid- 20th American Lit, and I love that about this book. Not to say it's one of the best baseball stories out there. For a feel good story do the movie, if you want to question the choices humans make in certain circumstances, do the book. It's truly a great read.

Courtesy of The Literary Snob

There are few reasons why I'd pick up a book about baseball. As I compile a mental list, I find that nearly every possibility is due to either necessity or wit. Yet I did pick one up and even read it in its entirety for one very good reason: Bernard Malamud.

I read The Assistant a couple years ago and since I have been a great fan of Malamud. He infuses the subtlest hints of poetry and magic into his otherwise simple stories; the result—a fast, effortless read which peels away to reveal an elegant tale rich with gorgeous imagery.

I had some uncertainty about whether The Natural would be easily admitted into Malamud's canon having two possible strikes against it from the onset: its subject of baseball, and it was the author's debut novel. While these factors may have been a slight hindrance in this book's full potential, The Natural is still a home run—the best in its league.

Within pages, Malamud comes out swinging with a back story that is mysterious and engaging. Quickly, my worries of a tedious read melted away—this was Bernard Malamud.

The Natural follows Roy Hobbs, a man whose dreams of being baseball's greatest name is detoured and, with the passage of many years, find his chances slipping away. Naturally, as one would expect from any American story about baseball, Hobbs is given his opportunity. What one may not expect from Malamud's treatment of the subject is the brutal literary depth applied. Make no mistake, The Natural is literature.

Despite its beauty and tightness, The Natural does sometimes miss the mark. At times Roy Hobbs reminded me of Jay Gatsby, and I wondered if Fitzgerald's novel was not in mind as Malamud penned his first work. Some may welcome such a comparison, but as I find The Great Gatsby to be the most overrated work of literature I have personally read, I did not.

The average baseball fan would probably hate this book, especially in its conclusion. While at times it may feel like Field of Dreams, ultimately it is not. For a literary snob like myself, however, I believe this is the best that baseball has to offer.

I am really torn between It was OK or I liked it, so I bumped it up. I liked it better than I did not like it. Why? Because I think it really is a piece of classic baseball writing. It was really told like it probably was, and the characters, although less than likeable, were ball players first, and human beings, second. From a dirt poor farm to the big leagues - every little boy's dream. Money, fame, girls, and baseball. Forget the constant train travel, heckling fans, mean opponents and on the road, meh meals. Little boys, doing what they have always wanted to do. I loved the play by play and the descriptions of pitches, and umpires, and fans. Baseball, during a time when you did not have to come up with the mortgage on a house to have a great night in the stands and route your team on.

Even after reading the introduction, I was not prepared for the end of Roy Hobbs' last game.

I read this book because I have always loved the movie of the same name. I will continue to love the movie. Read at your own risk, if you want to know why.

This is one of my all-time favorite books. I have gotten to teach it twice now, and each time I read it, I'm more and more impressed with Malamud's spot-on perspective on American heroes, the dreams we create for ourselves and how they change and diminish as we age, and the inevitable failure that we all have lurking inside of us. Despite the fact that Roy Hobbs is an utterly frustrating character -- does he ever make the right choice? -- it's hard to be too down on him because it's easy to see ourselves in his bad choices. There is something so human about this book, and I adore anything that portrays humanity in all its beauty and messiness.