The Natural - Bernard Malamud

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 takes on the story of a superbly gifted natural at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era--and invests it with the hardscrabble poetry, grand and believable, that runs through all his best work. n nThe classical novel (and basis for the acclaimed film) now in a new editionn nIntroduction by Kevin Bakern nThe 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.n