One of the most over-rated novels in all of American Literature. Malamud cannot write. Or he writes like a 13-year-old boy would write. It baffles me -- baffles me! -- why this book is considered a classic and why on earth we would teach it to high school students. It must be because it's about baseball. Big farkin' deal. Do yourself a favor -- skip the book and watch the movie. Redford is excellent in the film and gives the story more depth than the author ever could.

Forse avevo troppe aspettative per questo romanzo e ne sono rimasta delusa. Dopo aver letto quel piccolo gioello che è "il commesso" dello stesso autore, ero sicura che avrei ritrovato quello stile nel raccontare i personaggi con cui entrare in sintonia, la descrizione di un contesto in cui i personaggi sono inseriti. L'ho trovato molto superficiale. Ero preparata a leggere di cronache di partite di baseball che potevano annoiare ma in nessun momento mi sono sentita coinvolta nella trama; del protagonista poi, sono stati inseriti i fatti salienti che hanno condizionato la sua vita, le relazioni deludenti che ha intrattenuto ma senza mai approfondire davvero, neanche quando sembrava potessero esserci delle svolte.

This was a bit of a tough read because I really don't know that much about baseball and I don't really understand the rules of the game beyond my rudimentary knowledge of schoolgirl softball. But the book had good pace and a good story. I didn't warm to Roy that much - despite his age, Iris had pegged him perfectly when she had asked 'when are you going to grow up'? His obsession with Memo, from the outside, was more than just damaging to him - it all but destroyed him. And sadly, for much of the book, I felt that it wasn't any more than he deserved. The tragic ending just showed what a waste it all was. This isn't exactly an uplifting book.

I knew it was different than the movie but I didn’t realize how much. Not that that is a bad thing necessarily. Movie is much better. The Roy in the novel is not someone you should root for. Terrible person. Pop and Red are the only likable characters. I was happy Roy ended up with nothing. I was on the verge of not finishing this many times.

Say it ain't so.

I was aware of this novel for quite some time, as I saw the film years ago, but I never realized how far removed the book is from the 1984 film with Robert Redford. In my opinion, this is one of those rare cases where the film is volumes better than the book. I know that the author intended his book to have ties to mythology and the Arthurian legend, but, even at that, the way tries to incorporate the telling of Roy Hobbs’ story into some sort of allegory is clunky and uneven at best. What we get is a superficial –laden tale with various unsympathetic characters throughout.

The odd thing about this book is that it doesn’t succeed as an allegory or a realistic story. Even if the characters and situations are meant to be symbolic, there isn’t enough emphasis to what the major theme of this book is, which is the downfall of a “supposed” tragic hero. Instead, there are some bizarre occurrences that just come out of nowhere and have little to do with any allegorical context or central theme.

What I’ve come to realize is that The Natural is less about baseball, more about human frailty, Roy Hobbs front and center as its poster child. With his aspirations to be the “best there ever was” dashed with a bizarre incident that puts him out of baseball until his mid-30s, he returns to the New York Knights to try again.

However, once Hobbs gets to the try out, the novel really ventures off here into some wild fantastical allegory. Instead of actually trying to be a good ballplayer, Roy spends time chasing women around, whining to his coaches, constantly comparing himself to Bump, and demanding higher pay. In short, there really is nothing to Roy Hobbs: he’s moody, shallow, uninspiring, and mostly a pathetic jerk. There are seldom moments of pathos or emotion to Hobbs’ story of trying to make it in the big leagues, but these are fleeting and minimal.

I think the author was trying way too hard to take this whole symbolic, Arthurian legend to a new level and it just came out a rather flat, superficial story I could care less about.

People label this often “the best baseball story.” I would beg to differ. If you want to read a much better book, I would suggest “Eight Men Out”, which deals with Shoeless Joe and the Chicago White Sox (Black Sox) scandal of the 1919 World Series.

I wavered between 2 and 3 stars, but I’ll go with a very low 3.
Also, on another note, I’m not sure why this book gets labeled as young adult. I don’t think it fits this genre at all, as much of the content is probably unsuitable for younger readers.

It is rare that a movie stays so true to the core plot points of a book (With occasional, but significant exceptions), but so wholely alters the main character as to be almost unrecognizable. The film The Natural is such an iconic baseball film that it is difficult to not compare the two and to examine the book on its own merits. In many ways the film completely ignores the subversive nature of what Malamud was trying to accomplish. While the book attempts to pick apart the mythotholgy of the baseball hero, the movie eliminates all of the darkness from its main character and instead plays up the cliches, ultimately turning the "mighty casey" into the hero.

As a character Hobbs is not entirely unsympathetic. It took some time to rid myself of the nostalgic and tender view I had held of Hobbs from my fond memories of his character in the film. In the film he seems to be a pillar of principle and purity being tempted by corruption. He is somewhat unnatural as a person. The film also paints an idealized portrait of his youth with a loving father who taught him the game. However, this appears, couldn't have been farther from the truth according to the book. While Hobbs is certainly no 40 yr old virgin in the book he

As a person Hobbs is probably a realistic portrait of a ballplayer. He is numbers driven, not at all humble and overly concerned with his place in the game. However, as his status grows so does his interest in the bussiness of baseball, and as it becomes clear to win Memo's love he will need plenty of cash. His sense of loyalty to the game and its purity is true, but with his playing days numbered he understands that he needs to cash in on every last penny even if it means, ultimately sacrificing his place in history and betraying the game he loves.

I give the book 2 stars not because it was bad. At times the writing style was overly wordy and long winded, but the descriptions throughout are wonderful. The writing captures all the wonderful intricacies and nuances of the game all the while poking fun and keeping the seedy underbelly near the surface. I gave the book two stars because in the end it just wasn't an enjoyable read. I wanted badly the climatic hollywood ending of the bursting lights and one last home run to stick it to the man, and despite Hobbs' shortfalls I pitied him when he realizes that his actions have once again cost him everything he ever wanted.

Although Bernard Malamud is one of the authors I collect as part of my rare-book dealership at eBay, I've never actually read him before; and since I was about to watch again the 1984 Robert Redford film adaptation of his most famous book, I thought I'd start with his 1952 debut novel, The Natural, then start slowly making my way forward from there over the next couple of years.

The movie made a big impression on me in high school, back when it first came out, because of its Reagan-era sunlight-kissed somber elevation of baseball into literal National Myth; so imagine my surprise when reading the book and realizing that Malamud doesn't present the story in this way at all in the original novel, but rather as his own tongue-in-cheek, rough-and-tumble attempt at writing a Paul Bunyan tall tale to be told around campfires and small-town barber shops, a slangy folk story about a mysterious baseball player who one day shows up out of nowhere, performs a series of almost magical feats that will leave people debating their veracity for years to come ("He did not literally hit the cover off a baseball!" "He did too literally hit the cover off a baseball!"), then after a heartbreaking end to his single season as a professional player, slinks off and is never seen by anyone again.

In the movie, Robert Redford presents our hero Roy Hobbs as a cross between Jesus and...well, Robert Redford, an angelically beautiful wunderkind who sort of floats his way through his year as a pro player to the stirring strings and anamorphic twinkling of a Hollywood movie; but now that I've read the book, I've discovered that I much more prefer Malamud's portrayal of him as a barely literate meathead, a small-town lunk who's had a singular obsession since childhood with one day being "the best ball player of all time," to the point of even creating his own bat from scratch as a child that he is still using as a middle-ager getting his last chance at greatness. And indeed, this book makes even more sense when you look at what was happening in Malamud's real life at the time of its writing; the son of Russian Jewish immigrants who lived in Brooklyn from birth until the age of 35, it's no coincidence that Malamud's first exposure to America at large was in 1949, when he accepted a cross-country professorship at Oregon State University, and that he then wrote this ode to "the rest of America" just one year later, eventually being published in 1952.

Given this timeline, it's easy to surmise that Malamud meant for this to be a boozy, slangy reflection of the non-Brooklyn US he was exposed to after his trip across the country, especially welcome at a time right after World War Two when America was shaping up for the first time to be the world's leading superpower; and I suppose we'll forgive him for this also being the kickoff of the disturbing "Academic White Guys Ruin Everything That Used To Be Fun" trend that eventually culminated 40 years later with the Ken Burns 14-hour documentary that finally ruined baseball for good. (But for more on academic white guys ruining formerly fun things, see jazz, whiskey, comic books, beer, and a lot more.) The book's not without its faults -- the entire unexplained subplot about a woman who shoots Hobb at the very beginning of his career is like a knife stab into the usual three-act structure of literary novels, an off-putting moment that throws the rhythm of the entire rest of the story off -- but in general I was pleasantly surprised at what a more rollicking and ramshackle book this turned out to be than what I was expecting, a fantastic relic from the Mid-Century Modernist era that would be difficult to replicate in our own American Downfall times. It comes recommended specifically to those who think they might like it; and in the meanwhile, stay tuned for my review of my next Malamud read, 1957's The Assistant, which with its focus on Russian Jewish immigrant life in Brooklyn is much more in Malamud's natural wheelhouse.

A well written, good baseball themed story from the 1950's. This one has a conflicted hero who is also an anti-hero as well. Beware, if you are familiar with the movie, the book is quite a bit darker than the movie....

Read for book club. Not a fan of the style of writing. Having an interest in baseball made this more tolerable.

I don't know: parts of the novel were worthwhile, the basic premise is interesting enough, but the whole thing is so freighted with Meaning. I can't help thinking of the episode of "Northern Exposure" in which Chris Stevens deconstructs "Casey at the Bat", only to conclude that the real meaning of the doggrel is that somebody had three fastballs blown by him. Baseball doesn't really need added Meaning; each season is a novel unto itself, which is why Laurence Sterne would have made the only great baseball novelist. And why the New York "Knights", when the other seven teams in the National League keep their own names? And why a night game at Wrigley? I will say that the book is lightyears better than that stupid movie with Robert Redford.

Si tratta del primo romanzo di Bernard Malamud, e il baseball la fa da padrona. Io, di baseball, ne so veramente poco, ma il libro rimane comunque godibile. Il personaggio principale, tale Roy Hobbs, è un promettente battitore. La sua vicenda sportiva si intreccia con quella della sua vita, il suo corpo dovrebbe rispondere in modo perfetto a ciò che, con la mente, egli vuole fare. Ma non sempre è così.
Roy è un personaggio, in fondo, solitario – come molti dei personaggi di Malamud. Egli ha una voglia matta di primeggiare, di essere ciò che sente di essere, di volere quella e soltanto quella donna. Ma, forse, per essere il migliore bisogna capire ciò che davvero si è, e non ciò che si pensa di essere.

Ps. il ricordo di Philip Roth all'inizio del libro è struggente, la capacità di una scrittura di acciaio che si ritrova anche in queste brevi pagine.

Bernard Malamud's first novel, published in 1952, is one of the best baseball books I've ever read, despite Roy Hobbs' being an antihero. None of the characters are likeable, from the owner to many of the fans, but the story of a hardscrabble, gifted ballplayer is hard for a seamhead (baseball fanatic) to put down.