This is a novel version of a movie I saw a million times as a kid. I feel like at some point if you have a white American dad, he’s required by law to show you The Natural, talk to you about Robert Redford, and point at the screen a few times throughout. Maybe dads of other racial backgrounds do this too, I can’t say, but my white-ass dad made us watch it.
It’s kind of a magical movie and prefigures Field of Dreams for a lot of people.
The book has SOME magic in it, but it’s not nearly as magical a novel. Partly because I root for Roy Hobbs as a protagonist, but not as a man. He’s not the great lost hope of the MLB in the novel. Instead, he’s a good ballplayer who’s worked his way back into a real shot at a small career. He’s got some magic to him, but so too did so many other players at the time. He’s as much a Lou Gehrig/Jimmy Foxx character as anyone else.
What is good about this novel is that Malamud is a class above so many other writers who write these kinds of stories. What’s not great about this novel is that it’s not Malamud at his best. He’s an emerging talent in a lot of ways, but this book is mired with some anti-Semitism at times, some misogyny at times, and some boringness at times. It’s a solid novel, and I am good that I read it, but it’s not going to become anything remotely like a favorite.
That first edition though is tremendous.
(Photo: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/508977195356838028/?lp=true)