Read this one for boiz virtual book club — a classic baseball novel, one that centers on Roy Hobbs, a lights-out natural ballplayer who is on the track to stardom when a bullet in his gut derails his aspirations to be a star.

Years later, he’s back on the scene, this time as a 34 year-old unknown, with a mysterious past, but with just as much talent and ambition as the opening scene. That ambition defines the novel and the character of Roy Hobbs, more than any other trait: “His self, his mind raced on and he felt he hadn’t stopped going wherever he was going because he hadn’t yet arrived.”

And it carries us through the novel, speeding us along the journey, as if we are running out of time, wrapped up in both professional ambitions (baseball) and emotional ones (the manager's niece, Memo): “He was gnawed by a nagging impatience — so much more to do, so much of the world to win for himself. He felt he had nothing of value yet to show for what he was accomplishing, and in his dreams he still sped over endless miles of monotonous rail toward something he desperately wanted. Memo, he sighed”

Along the way, Malamud paints a portrait that almost reads more like a legendary folk tale than a down-and-out ballplayer, grinding to make it in the big leagues. From striking out the Whammer beside the train and outside a circus to using his bat named Wonderboy which he craved out of a lightning struck tree to playing for the New York Knights manager Fisher and his famous flop.

Eventually his talent wins out as he becomes one of the premier players in the league, breaking so many records and having writers and fans alike wondering what if he had broken through years ago?

And like a classic baseball novel, those record-breaking streaks are juxtaposed against an evenly powerful slump, one that breaks Roy’s mind and spirit: “What if the slump did give way? How much longer could it go on without destroying him?”

Roy, if sometimes misguided, especially in his pursuits of women and his narrow-minded ambition to be the best ever – ”If you leave all those records that nobody else can beat — they'll always remember you. You sorta never die” — is a classic tragic hero, one whose attempt at greatness is matched by a dark past and countless obstacles along the way.

“His fate, somehow, had always been the same (on the train going nowhere) — defeat in sight of his goal.”

And this tragic hero arc is probably what makes this such an iconic baseball book: A tale surrounding a sport, sure, but more importantly, a flawed everyman’s quest to become great against all odds. Like Sisphysus, he is constantly searching for answers that when he gets them he remains oddly unfulfilled, “wondering, now that he was famous, if the intensity of his desires would ever go down.”

Returning to that folksy theme, Malamud borrows from some legendary stories, like Babe Ruth’s homer for a sick child and the White Sox’s throwing of the world series,to give us the dramatic conclusion involving him making a deal with the Knights owner to throw the book’s final game.

It is perhaps the inevitable conclusion to our tragic hero, one that casts him permanently among the rascals and not the king, and one that, perhaps most significantly, ensures his suffering continues long beyond the final page.

Those who have seen the movie but have not read the book will be surprised. Bernard Malamud paints a much darker picture of the odyssey of Roy Hobbs. The book takes the arc of one person's career--Roy Hobbs--and weds it to a couple grim episodes in baseball's history: Eddie Waitkus and the Black Sox.

The Hobbs of the novel is wonderfully talented--but very human. In the movie, there is a prolonged slump after Hobbs links up with Paris Memo. In the novel, he sometimes simply has a slump. In the novel, he appears to have supernatural powers; in the novel, he is very talented but very human.

The movie's uplifting ending works. The novel's darker ending also works. Each version of "The Natural" works well in its own right; the momentum in each moves toward the closing.

Malamud writes well and creates characters that seem to have life to them. He also captures the very human--and vulnerable--traits of the characters.

Even if you liked the movie and its view of Roy Hobbs, you will find the book gripping in its own, very different way.

A great novel and perhaps the greatest baseball novel of all time, The Natural is not without its flaws. First and foremost is Roy Hobbs, our protagonist, and his lack of likable traits. Roy is stubborn, shallow, and selfish. Everyone and everything in his life seems to only serve the purpose of appeasing his voracious appetite. For what does he hunger? For greatness, on the surface. To be the best at what he does. To fulfill his potential. To have it all.

I struggled at times to get behind the thirty-four year old rookie, the latest sensation to break onto the scene in the major leagues. We are supposed to feel for him as the victim of circumstance, his career postponed by a tragic event in the book's introductory chapter. But to truly join Roy's team, we need to see a little bit of good from him to counter the crummy things he does, the poor way he treats people, and the bitter loner attitude he portrays to the world. I often found myself frustrated with Roy when I felt I should feel sorry for him.

Despite these problems, Malamud's poetic language and magical realism paint a vivid backdrop for Roy's saga. Pitchers and batters huff and puff like steam engines while the New York Knights run the basepaths like Mississippi steamboats. The team's reclusive owner sits in the darkness, the ash at the end of his cigar the only thing lighting the room. Roy's legendary bat Wonderboy exists as an entity of its own, its magic clearly understood by the characters but never fully acknowledged. It's a tremendous conceit and goes well with a number of story elements seemingly beyond the realm of reality yet accepted by the story's universe as 'just there.'

There's a lot of great stuff about heroes, manhood, retribution and fulfilling one's destiny in The Natural, and it's a pleasant, vibrant read for most of its 215 pages.

Important book on baseball, rife with fun clichés (essential to our nation nonetheless...?). A cool view from the top of that profession, with social drama going by at a largely brisk pace. I am not compelled to see the film, though...

The Natural by Bernard Malamud is not the typical sports hero novel. The protagonist, Roy Hobbs, a talented baseball player being scouted by the Chicago Cubs, hits rock bottom after being shot in the stomach, possibly ending his baseball career. Fifteen years later, Roy returns to the game and joins the fictional New York Knights. He slowly works his way to becoming the baseball player he used to be, but never quite gets there. Roy has conflicts with many people, including love interests and team management, but primarily he has conflicts with himself. He allows his pride to affect his success. Roy is a complex character - at times the reader will pull for him and at others the reader will want to scream at him for making dumb mistakes.
Malamud’s writing is skillful. He uses clever symbolic names for other characters. For example, the player Bump Baily dies from a bump on the head, and sportswriter Max Mercy shows no mercy when writing stories. He weaves into the plot several allusions to baseball stories, including the conspiracy to throw the 1919 World Series.
The Natural is a sports-drama with a little humor. It uses the themes of romance, sports, success, failure, and tragedy. The novel has a great storyline, a sort of rags to riches to rags tale, much like that of the Steve Martin movie “The Jerk.” Above all, there is a lesson to be learned, one Roy realizes too late. As Iris Lemon tells him, “We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that.”
I gave the book four stars because of its captivating storyline based on a sport I enjoy. I didn't give it the full five stars because the author tends to ramble sometimes, using long descriptive sentences that include several thoughts. Overall, it was well-written and interesting, and I highly recommend it.

It was very like the movie, which I love. But the 1950s vernacular was a bit distracting for me. At first charming, I grew tired of it by the end.

Still the story is a good one, and Roy Hobbs’ story is a baseball classic. I just wish there was more about Harriet Bird, the obsessed sports fan who shot him. She was fascinating.

This was an interesting book. Roy Hobbs, the 35-year-old rookie, was a complex character. At age 19, he was on his way to a Major League tryout when tragedy struck. His life was diverted onto a different trajectory and his baseball career halted for 16 years. Roy Hobbs was a likable guy tormented by his own demons and I wanted him to be the hero. But sometimes I thought Roy was self-destructive as a result of his past.

I think Roy's past and unknown 16-year-period became a barrier for him. His interpersonal relationships (with teammates) and intimate relationships (with the two love interests) all derailed because of his surface-level choices and interactions. Overall Roy had a guarded, cold, and stoic personality. He ends up blinded by his pursuit to be the best only to walk away from the game a nobody. The book ends on a somber tone without redemption.

Overall I enjoyed it. The film differs greatly from the book (as to be expected). The film had a cheerful, positive, and even magical element to it. The book, however, was darker with a wide spectrum of emotions. I would recommend the book if you enjoyed the film but expect lots of differences. Thanks!

Bleak, cynical noir meets a baseball underdog story. A fascinating combination, and the end result is something I couldn't put down until the very end.

sexist undertones and the main character was such a loser

Bernard Malamud's classic debut novel remains such a potent blend of myth, tragedy and irony, filtered through America's obsession with individual achievement in the realm of baseball, its national pastime, all these years later. It's a shame that the vast majority of people associate The Natural with the hokey Robert Redford movie rather than Malamud's book, which takes a far darker, more critical perspective on the hero worship of athletes, and eschews the simplistic pandering of the film and its cornball ending in favor of a more ambiguous conclusion that gives us a deeply flawed Roy Hobbs' whose ultimate victory looks a lot like defeat, and shows us the amount of sacrifice that often comes with choosing at last to preserve one's dignity. Throughout, Malamud's famously perfectionist craftsmanship is in abundance in his unusual, poetic phrasing, rich with darkly vivid symbolism and mixing the gritty reality of midcentury sport with dreamlike allusions to Arthurian Romance.

“We have two lives . . . the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness. . . All it taught me was to stay away from it.” — Bernard Malamud, The Natural

“He remembered how satisfied he had been as a youngster, and that with the little he had had - a dog, a stick, an aloneness he loved (which did not bleed him like his later loneliness), and he wished he could have lived longer in his boyhood. This was an old thought with him.” ― Bernard Malamud, The Natural

Player succeeds but then ruins his new life.