Roy Hobbs, the protagonist of The Natural, makes the mistake of pronouncing aloud his dream: to be the best there ever was. Such hubris, of course, invites divine intervention, but the brilliance of Bernard Malamud's novel is the second chance it offers its hero, elevating him--and his story--into the realm of myth.



"Malamud [holds a] high and honored place among contemporary American writers."


From AudioFile
Malamud's remarkable first novel about the brief glory and ruin of Roy Hobbs explores the mythic world of baseball. This fine audio production retains the flavor of the world of professional sports circa 1940 though no explanation is needed for the contemporary listener. Christopher Hurt's vaguely Midwestern voice is wonderfully matched to the characters--the seedy agents, the other players, the "dames" Roy gets involved with, the greedy owners and Roy himself. Hurt's voice has the perfect combination of flatness and emotion common to the finest sports announcers. This production is essential for collections of serious American fiction and great baseball novels. B.V. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

ANNOTATION

The author's first novel, a story about the baseball hero Roy Hobbs. "He possesses a gift for characterization that is often breathtaking." -- The New York Times

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Natural, Bernard Malamud's first novel, published in 1952, is also the first--and some would say still the best--novel ever written about baseball. In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material--the story of a superbly gifted "natural" at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era--and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work. Four decades later, Alfred Kazin's comment still holds true: "Malamud has done something which--now that he has done it!--looks as if we have been waiting for it all our lives. He has really raised the whole passion and craziness and fanaticism of baseball as a popular spectacle to its ordained place in mythology."

SYNOPSIS

Biting, witty, provocative, and sardonic, Bernard Malamud's The Natural is widely considered to be the premier basebal novel of all time. It tells the story of Roy Hobbs—an athlete born with rare and wondrous gifts—who is robbed of his prime playing years by a youthful indiscretion that nearly consts him his life. But at an age when most players are considering retirement, Roy reenters the game, lifting the lowly New York Knights from last place into pennant contention and becoming an instant hero in the process. Now all he has to worry about is the fixers, the boss, the slump, the jinx, the fans...and the dangerously seductive Memo Paris, the one woman Roy can't seem to get out of his mind.

FROM THE CRITICS

AudioFile - Barbara Valle

Malamud￯﾿ﾽs remarkable first novel about the brief glory and ruin of Roy Hobbs explores the mythic world of baseball. This fine audio production retains the flavor of the world of professional sports circa 1940 though no explanation is needed for the contemporary listener. Christopher Hurt￯﾿ﾽs vaguely Midwestern voice is wonderfully matched to the characters the seedy agents, the other players, the dames Roy gets involved with, the greedy owners and Roy himself. Hurt￯﾿ﾽs voice has the perfect combination of flatness and emotion common to the finest sports announcers. This production is essential for collections of serious American fiction and great baseball novels. B.V. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner ￯﾿ﾽAudioFile, Portland, Maine

Harry Sylvester

Back in the thirties the baseball writers making the swing through the West with the major league teams occasionally wondered whether one of their number would ever produce a serious novel about baseball. That novel has finally been written-- and if the author does not come from the ranks of baseball reporters, at least he hails from Brooklyn and there are those who feel that qualifies him ex officio. It's an unusually fine novel, too although I don't know how the professionals are going to take it. For Bernard Malamud's interests go far beyond baseball. What he has done is to contrive a sustained and elaborate allegory in which the "natural" player--who operates with ease and the greatest skill, without having been taught-- is equated with the natural man who, left alone by, say, politicians and advertising agencie, might achieve his real fulfillment...

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING