The Natural (1952)
Retro Review #63: The feel-bad novel that gave birth to the feel-good film.
The Natural (1952)
+ Novel🎖️by Bernard Malamud ⭐, 206p
+ 1️⃣/2 works in The Natural multiverse ⭐
B ^
GPA: 2.65 (B ^) [n/a] / HOF: 3 [n/a]
EQ 👍A | 📖A 👥B 📽️A+ 🎼A-
DW 🚫0.5 | 🌚10 🌝0
POPCAP 💯n/a 🍿n/a 🧢n/a
L-R 💻⬇️1️⃣ 👀⬇️3️⃣ 🛐⬇️4️⃣
The review scheduled for today was for my all-time favorite sports movie, The Natural, a 1984 film starring Robert Redford.
I watched it again in preparation for writing the review, and while lamenting to myself that I had never read the book on which it was based, I suddenly realized that I had the time and energy to read it and squeeze an extra review into my schedule. So the movie review will be released tomorrow, and, for an appetizer, here’s a bonus review of the novel.
The 1952 novel, The Natural, was the first published novel by Bernard Malamud, a notable Jewish American 20th century author. It’s the story of a gifted baseball player, whose life takes a wrong turn and doesn’t work out the way he expected it to unfold.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Malamud became a teenager at the beginning of the 1927 baseball season. It was the year that Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig led the New York Yankees to the pinnacle of success, winning the World Series and gaining recognition as the best baseball team ever for decades to come.
Babe Ruth was just one of the many real-life baseball stories that Malamud clearly drew from in writing The Natural. The lead character Roy Hobbs is loosely based on Eddie Waitkus, a major leaguer who played for the Cubs and Phillies. A misfortune suffered by Waitkus after being traded to Philadelphia serves as the basis for the turning point in Hobbs’ life. Both the Ruth and Waitkus parallels contribute to as dramatic an opening for a novel as any I’ve ever read.
There’s no doubt in this novel that Malamud loved baseball. His descriptions of games and a dramatic pennant race are epic. His prose is powerful, both when describing on-field or off-field events.
If, like me a few days ago, you have seen and loved the movie, but never read the book, you should now be wondering why I’m giving the novel merely a high B grade. What went wrong?
Well, Malamud’s love for baseball is apparent, but his love for humanity is in doubt. Most of the characters are unlikable, with Hobbs considered to be an example of the literary antihero.
While the 1984 film based on this novel has a generous amount of Whimsy, it’s all sucked out of the novel. What little Whimsy it might have had is reduced to naught by a generous amount of adults-only content, including lots of profanity and sex.
If you are saying to yourself that you aren’t a prude and adult content won’t bother you, fine. But let me point out that when the Whimsy goes, so does the fun, the joy, the happiness and the hope of the movie. What is left is a depressing tragedy with no light at the end of the tunnel.
All Dark, no Whimsy. That’s not my favorite stylistic choice in fiction, but it can be a powerful way to tell a story and a great way to deliver a serious message. I’m not sure that happens here.
Perhaps, one wonders, the author means the story as a bad example—a cautionary tale warning us to make better choices. Perhaps. There is some evidence that might be true. But most of the time, it comes across instead as a tale of despair, covered with a sports frosting. Life is horrible, and we are merely its victims, but at least we have baseball.
Tune in tomorrow for the review of the film, where, among other topics, I will go into how the screenplay adapters turned The Natural from a feel-bad book into a feel-good movie, while still staying faithful to the majority of the plot elements of the novel.
Onwards!
+ first read 2025-04-21, dK
+ ⏳🏆⚾😥
+ ❌3️⃣ Heavy adults-only content. | UN
+ 😡-1 😵💫-0 🤬-2 🤭-3 🫣-3
+ 👀⬇️3️⃣ ➖😐🗿🔮
+ ✝️ -4 ➖🤬🤬♂️♀️♀️
+ ✡️ -3 ➖🤬🫢🖤
+ 🗽 -2 ➖⏰
Last updated 2025-04-22
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