I grew up not being much of a sports fan, mostly because I was pretty bad at them. While my reflexes aren't terrible (commuting every day through the densest state in the US is sort of like being in a video game on your last life) my hand-eye coordination leaves something to be desired, ensuring years of sheepish apologies from friends who would choose literally everyone else first when dividing teams in school before me. I played Little League for two years, but don't ask me about any memorable plays I might have made, because there weren't any. My most vivid memory from time is taking a ball first in the stomach and in the next season in the chest while at bat . . . I quit after that season figuring that the pitchers were working their way up and my head was next.

Later in my life after I got married I had to learn something about them as my wife is all the sports fan I am not. Her interest in baseball led me to read more about it and I became fascinated with the history of the sport, the colorful figures in the early part of the last century, and all the mythology that goes along with. Watching the entirety of Ken Burns' massive documentary on the sport didn't hurt and even now on dinner breaks at work I've been making my way through several collections of Roger Angell's "New Yorker" essays on baseball, which aren't half-bad (I've also apparently learned that if you want to call attention to yourself without really trying, pull out a book in a break room of people looking at smartphones . . . I get a lot of questions!). There's something about the sport that lends itself to a combination of lyricism, nostalgia, sentimentality and myth that I find appealing for some reason, despite not having any anecdotes in my life of the day my father took me out of school and took me on a subway to Ebbets Field where we paid a nickel apiece to watch the Dodgers play while I ate a hot dog and watched him become a kid again. That never happened but somehow my childhood wasn’t terrible, I promise.

Now, I bought this book before I was married or even met my wife (if you haven't figured it out, I went and purchased every Malamud novel so this got caught in the sweep) so it just happens that I read it after I developed an appreciation for baseball. Had I not discovered some of its history in the years since I bought it I don't know how I would have felt about this book. I like to think I still would have perceived it as an above average novel but maybe all those Little League memories would have come back to haunt me (seriously, I was pretty bad) and colored my perception of things.

If you've ever heard of Bernard Malamud in this day and age, this book may be the reason why, mostly because of a little thing like it being made into a movie in the early eighties starring Robert Redford. Even people haven't seen the movie (I've only seen parts of it) can probably recall the famous climatic scene that involves Redford causing massive stadium property damage (why is anyone still on the field?) in the cause of being extraordinarily uplifting.

That scene, needless to say, is not in the book. Nor, in fact, is anything else that's remotely uplifting. However, Malamud's daughter once noted that her father felt the movie "legitimized him as a writer" and while I don't know if that's the same as liking it, it doesn't sound like he hated it the way Stephen King hates the movie versions of his books.

Its Malamud's first novel and one of the few where none of the major characters are prominently Jewish. It concerns the story of Roy Hobbs, who we first meet as a baseball prodigy at the tender young age of twenty traveling to Chicago for his big league tryout. He's young, he's confident, he's ready to go in and break all the records and after an encounter with a fictional analogue for Babe Ruth, its clear he possibly has the talent to back up that confidence. However, a tragic incident derails all of those plans and when we next see him again its fifteen years later and he's not just breaking into the Major Leagues with the Knights, a team that's been faltering so badly that its probably going to get manager Pop Fisher fired. They need a miracle. What they get is someone . . . natural?

Malamud allegedly didn't have much interest in baseball so he's not coming at the sport from a slavishly worshipful attitude. Instead he does his best to capture the overall atmosphere of baseball in the times when day games were more predominant (so, before 1935), bringing to life the more rough and tumble antics of players who weren't polished professionals making millions of dollars for giant sports corporations. Here, we get glimpses of the more circus-like behavior that could be found at the old ballparks, with the rowdy fans and the player superstitions. Baseball, with its long pauses alternating with quick but short bursts of action, is not an easy sport to bring to life on the printed page but Malamud pulls it off with some highly poetic prose, not just the grace of the players in motion but the grace that appears in the silences, that moment before pitcher releases the ball, the held breath of the outfielder tracking a ball all the way to the wall in the hopes he can snag it, the waiting that comes with knowing your chances are dwindling even when the game seems to stretch into infinity.

Shed of the need to tell a true story, he takes all the early myths of baseball and casts them liberally all over the page. Hobbs might remind you of Ted Williams in his fixed obsessions and disregard for the press but Malamud sprinkles in Joe Jackson and Babe Ruth into his portrayals, not the literal truths per se but what's become embedded in the collective folklore about the sports. He seems to understand how legends are made and that sometimes the legend makes a bigger impact on the way down as opposed to the way up.

One of the biggest surprises of the book is how the hero of the book isn't much of a hero at all. Roy Hobbs is an excellent player but as the book goes on it makes clear that he cares about nothing else but playing and his record, not noticing how it affects the lives around him (note his repeated reaction to being reminded about an aspect of someone's past) or that it might come back to affect his own life. It gives the book the feel of a someone resolutely and consistently working from an upside down map, making all his route decisions based on where he thinks he is and still utterly certain he can get where he needs to go before he runs out of time. You'll see where its heading maybe before he does but even so you can't but hope that its all going to turn out okay, that the team will win the pennant, the manager will keep his job and Hobbs will get carried off the field in triumph to play for all the seasons he wants to and eventually take his place in the Hall of Fame besides the immortals.

But there's the difference between what you want, and real life. Malamud doesn't shy away from the game's temptations, the appetites it encourages, the callousness that fame can engender and the corrosive effect that money from good or illegal sources can have on people. They all combine to force pressure on a man we hope can overcome it all and rise above but in the end he's only good at one thing and that's baseball. In the end, it may not be enough and while in the movie we get glorious fireworks here its more abrupt and somber, a moral victory in a sense but with such a harrowing price attached to it that its impossible to tell if it was worth the cost. By taking fragments of what we know and thought we knew about a sport that for a time defined American life, Malamud creates his own legend that is just as much part of the fabric of the game as all the records. If there's one perfect thing he does in the novel, he illustrates the two contradictory sides of baseball, the war between the eternal and the ephemeral. Go to a game and listen to a crowd boo a player they were just cheering the week prior. Walk into the Hall of Fame Museum where the plaques line the walls and note that Shoeless Joe still isn't in there, a hundred years since he's been banned. Consider both and think of the lesson that perhaps Roy Hobbs learns at the end, maybe too late for it to do him any good: baseball has a very short memory, but it also has a very long one, too.

This was such a heartbreaking story about a baseball player with an ending I didn’t expect at all. I kind of felt like there should have been more to the story. I feel like if I read this again I wouldn’t regret it. I really loved that the characters were down to earth. One of the characters was 33 which I liked!

Content warning: medium amount of bad language. Semi explicit sexual scenes which I didn’t picture. In other words I saw things the way I wanted to. Hardly any violence.

I haven't seen the movie, but other reviewers mention that the movie is sparkling and upbeat, while the novel is rather dark. And that is true; this is not an altogether "happy" story. It seems like Roy Hobbs will be a fantastic pitcher, able to strike out batters without their even seeing the ball. But that is quickly cut short ... no, I am not going to spoil the story here. Roy Hobbs' career as a baseball player is shut down before it really gets started. And he does not return to the game for fifteen years, when most people consider players to be near the end of their career. He becomes a very talented baseball player, but not a superhuman one; he has his superstitions, and he undergoes slumps occasionally, and sometimes has to be kicked out of them. Hobbs does not make the best choices when it comes to women. He ignores the wonderful woman who is right under his nose, and goes for one who is simply wrong for him.

Unlike his stories about Jewish life, here Bernard Malamud portrays a slice of middle America. The book portrays the baseball players, the club owner, the reporter, and the bookie with realism. I enjoyed the style, and sometimes felt myself wanting to yell, "You dummy Roy! Do the right thing!"

I didn't read this book; I listened to the audiobook. Christopher Hurt is an excellent narrator, and helped me to gain more enjoyment out of the story.

Abbiamo due vite. Quella in cui impariamo e quella che viviamo dopo .

Storie, storie, storie: per me non esiste altro. Spesso gli scrittori che non riescono a inventare una storia seguono altre strategie, perfino sostituendo lo stile alla narrazione. Invece io sono convinto che la storia sia l’elemento di base della narrativa, anche se questo ideale non gode di molta popolarità tra i discepoli del nouveau roman. Mi ricordano quel pittore che non riusciva a dipingere le persone, così dipingeva sedie. Le storie ci accompagneranno finché esisterà l’uomo. Lo si capisce, in parte, dall’effetto che hanno sui bambini.
Grazie alle storie i bambini capiscono che il mistero non li ucciderà. Grazie alle storie scoprono di avere un futuro .

Bernard Malamud

The Natural (Il Migliore) è la prima storia di B. Malamud .
La storia di una seconda chance ,
una storia sul coraggio di ricominciare e di continuare ad inseguire i propri ostinati desideri .

"Ho sbattuto la testa un sacco di volte e sono stato ferito in tante maniere. Ci sono stati momenti in cui ho pensato che non sarei mai arrivato da nessuna parte, e mi ci sono mangiato il fegato, ma adesso è tutta acqua passata.
So di avere la stoffa e ci arriverò".
"Dove?"
"Dove voglio arrivare".

Appassionante e crudele .
Ah, sì , ed è anche un'avvincente storia di baseball

PS. La prefazione al libro scritta da Philip Roth è ... qualcosa di più di una prefazione ,
mi è piaciuta tantissimo e davvero, impreziosisce questo primo romanzo di Malamud !
è più un omaggio ,un ricordo molto intimo , dell'amico Bern, pieno di stima, affetto ,rispetto...
mi ha commosso :)

Ok I finished this 1,000 years ago and forgot to say anything; it was ok. 50s style sexism fairly prevalent, but the worst of it is definitely punished. Ending was the best part, Roy Hobbs is an arsehole

I'll admit up front that part of my problem with The Natural is that the movie casts a long shadow. For those who encountered and fell in love with the book first, I can see why the movie would be absolutely infuriating. Major (and I mean MAJOR) differences in both Roy's character and the novel's plot--including a complete 180 on the climax--turn them into wholly different animals with little more than shared DNA: a talented kid, a tragic shooting, an old rookie, a struggling team, a girl named Memo. Reading the novel after my familiarity with the film felt like stepping into an alternate reality.

But credit where credit is due, Malamud's world is as fully fleshed and full of iconography as anything in the film. It just also happens to be a darker, sadder place, full of disappointed heroes and missed opportunities. Roy Hobbes is a harder to character to like here than in the movies. He is both more Godlike in his prowess and more frail in his weaknesses, and thus somehow harder to connect to than a Sandy Koufax pitch. I wanted to like him, but I also wanted him to be better, and that's part of the genius of the story. As the novel progresses, we become like the boy Roy encounters on the final page, pleading "Say it ain't so, Roy," even as we see him stumble and fall to his knees. He may be a natural, Malamud tells us, but he is also fallible, and sometimes we, like Roy, wait too long to make up for past sins.

Is this a Greek myth? A classic tragedy? A biblical allegory? It's all of those things, and it's the story of Shoeless Joe Jackson, and it's a crackling 30s noir, and its about America's fall from grace. It is whip-smart writing, full of the lingo of the baseball diamond and the chalk and dirt of legends. It's good. It really is. It's just . . .

It's just that I love the movie, for all its cheese and schmaltz. Despite the facts that it goes for the syrupy sugar when the novel goes for the jugular. Despite the fact that it's clearly dumbing down the complexity of Malamud's novel. Despite the fact that it doesn't want to question our myth-making so much as codify it. Despite all that, I look back on the movie the same way that Redford and Levinson seem to be looking back on the golden age of baseball itself--with rose colored glasses that somehow seem able to forgive a lot of obvious flaws. It reminds me of being a kid, and of my brother, and of being filled with hope. And it reminds me of the present, and showing it to film students and seeing them jump when Harriet Bird fires that gun, and of getting a little misty-eyed when those lights get blown apart.

So even if the novel came first, it feels a little like it's kicking at a piece of my personality that is good and optimistic and full of life. So I can respect the book, but at least for now, I can's say I love it. Icons and heroes fall--I know they do--and yet I don't have to love it when they do.

Sorry, Judge, but I still believe in the goodness of man. I can respect the tragedy here. But I can't love it.

After reading Doris Kerns Goodwin, “Wait Until Next Year” which was absolutely fabulous, and watching the movie “Field of Dreams” for the tenth time and then reading the magnificent, lyrical novel, “Shoeless Joe” which the movie was based on, I decided to try my luck with Bernard Malamud’s “The Natural.” In truth, I had never read anything by Mr. Malamud (a sad reflection on myself) and I didn’t know what to expect. I had seen the movie many of years ago, and what I remember of it was that I was not thrilled with it. As a big baseball fan, it just didn’t do it for me, yet all my friends seemed to love it.

Mr. Malamud’s novel is another story altogether. It is a novel whose hero, Roy Hobbs, is in many respects its anti-hero. Only a writer with extreme courage and brilliance can pull this off and Mr. Malamud’s novel is a testament to his courage and brilliance as a writer.

Roy Hobbs, the natural, is an extremely, once in a lifetime slugger, whose promotion to the big leagues is halted in its tracks when he is the victim of a shooting at the age of 20. At the age of thirty-five he suddenly shows up in the dugout of the last place NY Knights as a rookie. The manager and ballplayers don’t know what to make of him. After all, most ballplayers have retired at the age of thirty-four (the book was published in 1952) and here is this rookie at thirty-five. From the time of the shooting, until he shows up 15 years later in the dugout, the writer tells you nothing about what Roy has been up to.

Once Roy is given his chance to play, he is naturally this phenomenon the likes of Babe Ruth, but better. In lyrical, breathtaking dream and flashback sequences, bits of his past are revealed to us but never the whole picture. In fact, except for the manager, Pop, none of the magnificent characters in this novel are fully explained and described to the reader. Their past, like in real life, is scrawled in mystery.

Baseball is at the center of this novel, but at the heart of this amazing book is the struggle, despair, failures, regrets, accomplishments, dreams and the part that pure chance and luck play in all our lives…Day after day, year after year, over a lifetime… Whether that lifetime is short or long. Like Roy Hobbs none of us can be the hero all of the time.

Written in a surreal manner. DTB. This sum that would happen to the mariners

SOGNI E INCUBI

Terminata la lettura di questo romanzo, quello d’esordio del grande narratore americano, si viene ancora una volta sorpresi e dalla capacità narrativa dell’autore e dalla sua particolare originalità che, per chi ha già letto parte importante della sua produzione, stupiscono essere presenti in un’opera prima.
La narrazione è incentrata su un uomo solo, annientato, piegato ma non ancora sconfitto, inutile dire, per chi già conosce la poetica dell’autore, che allo status di vinto si avvierà, come tanti suoi antieroi della produzione successiva: l’ebreo della Russia zarista vittima di un errore giudiziario, l’ebreo americano votato al suo umile commercio , il professore di letteratura alla ricerca del suo riscatto come individuo, o ancora l’artista fallito costretto ad un eterno apprendistato. Sono Mendel Beilis, Morris Bober, Seymour Levin e Arthur Fidelman e il loro antenato è Roy Hobbs, giovane promessa del baseball americano.

Roy Hobbs è un personaggio impreziosito da una serie di caratteristiche che lo elevano agli occhi del lettore in una dimensione quasi epica: è dotato di un talento naturale per il baseball, è uno sprovveduto, ingenuo e sognatore, è accompagnato dalla sua inseparabile mazza Wonderboy che lui stesso ha ricavato da un albero colpito da un fulmine, ha un debole per le donne, è purtroppo anche uno che non si accontenta mai. Mentre si avvia, ancora giovanissimo, ad una brillante carriera, diviene la terza vittima di una pistolera che sta sterminando a suon di pallottole d’argento il fior fiore degli atleti americani. Colpito al ventre si salva ma subisce uno stop di quindici anni durante i quali si arrangia a far di tutto per sopravvivere e riacciuffare il suo sogno. Ormai superati i trenta riesce a farsi accogliere da una squadra sull’orlo del collasso e tenterà di far vivere col suo riscatto personale quello di un’intera squadra.
L’ambiente sportivo è realisticamente rappresentato e regala un’ambientazione sobria, viva, verace, dove il lessico sporco non stona mai e si addice perfettamente al mondo restituito. La specificità relativa allo sport , anche quando non conosciuto, è facilmente dribblabile e non mina la comprensione globale. Alle basi, alle linee di foul, alla casa base, allo strike, si accompagna una vicenda umana che fa palpitare tenendo incollati gli occhi alle pagine, suscettibili come non mai se si viene interrotti nella lettura e bramosi di saper che ne sarà di questo ragazzone. L’alternanza di sogno e realtà, Roy è vittima di incubi ricorrenti e di sogni ad occhi aperti, contribuisce inoltre a tenere desta l’attenzione sperando sempre che il realismo dell’incubo dissolva e l’evanescenza del sogno si materializzi.
Non posso anticipare niente della trama, aggiungo solo due belle donne, l’una l’antitesi dell’altra, gli allibratori dello sporco mondo delle scommesse, un antagonista morto il cui fantasma si impone prepotente, i sogni di gloria, la volontà di riscattarsi e la capacità di non tradirsi.
Leggetelo!

1 settembre 2016

Well, after watching (and loving) the movie lots of times, I thought I’d read the book. Really disappointing. Whereas I really like and root for the Roy Hobbs of the movie, I did not like the book version. Not much redeeming about him. And the book doesn’t even end on a hopeful note. The writing was pretty good, which made the book finishable for me.

Gloomy and full of sadness, yet lacking any real lessons or even a real heart.

What's striking about THE NATURAL is that critics love the IDEA of the book -- a Jewish-American writer certifies his "American" identity by writing the Great American Baseball Novel. Yet almost nobody who reads this book ever remembers any of the ball games -- or any of the characters -- or any American scenes or situations or dialogue. It's full of shadowy sureallism and all seems to be set in some twilight world devoid of real human interest, appetites, satisfactions, and needs.

Roy Hobbes is not an All-American hero in this book. Nor is he a tragic hero. He's just a chump. He eats too much and gets sick to his stomach. He falls for a whore with a heart of ice who is hands-down the most offensive anti-woman stereotype I have ever read. He cares for nothing, learns nothing, and experiences no real change or growth at the end.

As much as I respect the idea of tragedy, I can't pretend this book is the real article. And as much as I hate to admit it, golden boy Robert Redford actually improved on his source material, turning an unreadable piece of crap into a fairly entertaining family film.

By the way, if you're looking for a great baseball novel by an "important" Jewish-American writer, THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL by Philip Roth is a much better book. None of the characters are especially sympathetic. But it's funnier, scarier, and far more attuned to the real issues in American life.

This tale of a 35-year-old baseball player with extremely gifted talent for the game paints a mostly dark picture of a flawed man. Bernard Malamud’s 1952 novel about Roy Hobbs and his time playing for the New York Knights is considered to be a classic baseball fictional story and was also adapted onto film in the 1980’s, with Robert Redford starring as Hobbs. I will add a disclaimer that I have never seen the film, so this review and the opinions within are based only on this book.

I found Malamud’s development of the main characters in the story very good, even though there wasn’t a single character in the story that I could say I felt was a protagonist or a “good” guy or lady. Hobbs has several character flaws which I believe portray him in a less-than-favorable light, such as always seeking out intimate relations with any woman with whom he is in contact. One of these women, Memo, was taking a fancy to a teammate of Hobbs who died on the baseball field, Bump Bailey.

Bailey’s untimely demise is the reason Hobbs became a started on the Knights and he immediately tries to court Memo, whose own character flaws are revealed later. About the only character who seems be able to evoke sympathy from a reader is Iris, and the reason she is initially not Hobb’s type of lady is that she is a young grandmother. This doesn’t sound like the typical baseball hero in a fictional story – but Roy and all the other main characters are well developed by Malamud. Maybe the reader won’t like them, but the reader will believe that he or she knows them.

The story moves along well both on and off the diamond. The baseball scenes are written well for the time depicted, which was when there was no night baseball and the game moved along at a quicker pace than today’s sport with many pitching changes. There is one big leap of logic, however – how does Roy become such a great pitcher at 19 to strike out the mighty Whammer in a duel, yet later becomes such a great hitter and outfielder at 35?

I must also mention one other character that is baseball-centric, Wonderboy. That is the name Roy has given to his bat, and he treats Wonderboy better than he treats the ladies, with special polishing and storing. If there is any character who deserved pity - even though this character is an object – it is the ultimate demise of Wonderboy. The fact that Roy made sure to bury Wonderboy on a baseball field says a lot about Roy’s relationship with his favorite bat.

The audio version of the book was narrated superbly by Christopher Hurt, who did his best to make the listener feel like he or she is on the field or in the hotel with Roy and company. While the ending is dark and leaves the reader feeling down, the book certainly does earn a place in the library of classic baseball novels.

http://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/201...