The natural of the title is Roy Hobbs, a promising young pitcher headed to a tryout with the Cubs who has a little run-in with destiny along the way. 16 years later, he is finally signed to a major league team, the lagging New York Knights, and becomes not only its box-score salvation but the great batting hope for the sad-sack team manager. Not everyone on the team is happy about his success, though, particularly erstwhile star Bump Bailey, who's dating the manager's niece (with whom Roy is also in love). He finally has his chance at the major leagues, but it may be shorter than even he feared.
It's hard for me to pinpoint exactly what I didn't like about this book, but I'll start here: We don't see enough of Roy's abilities to really understand why he's such a big deal. Except for one quick burst in the prologue (if you will), the guy acts like a brat in the dugout and keeps proclaiming how good he is. When the turnaround comes and his "powers" (such as they are) are evident, I didn't really want to root for him after all that.
The relationship between Roy and Memo, the manager's niece, I found pretty off-putting overall, mainly because Roy acts like an entitled jerk around her and expects her to give up her other interests and serve him. Yet I don't think Malamud was trying to make the point that talent corrupts; I think we're supposed to understand that Roy has had a long and difficult life and is on the uncomfortable bleeding edge of greatness. But when there comes a time when Roy has to, ah, choose between divergent paths and his conscience comes into play, I didn't really empathize with him. (More on this tomorrow, when I talk about the movie.)
And there's all this Mystical Stuff With Girls. This book was actually mentioned in passing in THE BOYS OF SUMMER because it came out when Kahn was with the Dodgers, and he talked up its sex scenes to one of the players, but they aren't "sex scenes" per se, more like Totally Weird Interludes. Especially the one by the lakeshore -- anyone want to explain that to me?
Despite all this I did want to find out what became of Roy Hobbs, or maybe I was just waiting for something spectacular. In the end, I was underwhelmed.
Tomorrow, I'll talk about the 1984 movie, "The Natural," based on the Malamud book.
Previously:
Baseball Week: Roger Kahn, A Boy Among Boys
NATURAL Notes
- Play By The Book calls THE NATURAL "not your typical sports book." I concur, although this reviewer from the Peabody Institute Library liked it more than I did.
- A current MLB player named Josh Hamilton is compared to The Natural in the book, although I'm not sure the lesson is the same for both. Hamilton was a promising player who got hurt, got addicted, got clean and returned to hit 28 home runs in this year's All-Star Home Run Derby.
- I don't know much about Malamud at all, but apparently he's fallen out of favor; "Malamud's themes, his passions and his style do not come across as old fashioned: on the contrary, they seem fresh and alive," writes the Guardian. Uh, sorry to heap on, sir!
- Listen to the Malamud story "A Summer's Reading" at newyorker.com.
2 comments:
1) Josh Hamilton is amazing. A god among men, really. The story behind him is cool, but his play is fantastic.
2)The Summer reading of USM's Senior English (for Dummies) was the power-packed duo of The Natural and Field of Dreams. The rationale was that we spend so much time reading about "women" that they wanted to throw a bone to the boys. It was a bunch of BS and two pretty-meh books to boot.
White men have been so overlooked and exploited in Western literature, it's just shameful.
I mean, take a look at that staple of Senior English, Hamlet. Not a single interesting male character in the entire thing. Just all these strong and complex female characters controlling the story: the men are completely overshadowed by their relationships to the women.
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