Recommended reading - The Natural

The Natural

by Bernard Malamud.

Filmed as The Natural (1984), directed by Barry Levinson.

Paperback.

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

First published 1952.

ISBN: 9780374502003

ISBN 10: 0374502005

ASIN: 0374502005

Description:

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." 

Born on this day – Bernard Malamud:

Bernard Malamud

Writer

April 26, 1914 – March 18, 1986

Credits:

Books:

A Malamud Reader (1967); A New Life (1961); A World of Fiction (1983); Baseball: a Literary Anthology (2002); Best of Science Fiction: No. 10 (1964); Dubin's Lives (1977); First Fiction: An Anthology of the First Published Stories by Famous Writers (1994); God's Grace (1982); Great Baseball Stories (1990); Great Tales of Mystery and Suspense (1981); Idiots First (1963); Penguin Modern Stories 1 (1969); Pictures of Fidelman (1969); Prize Stories 1970: The O. Henry Awards (1970); Prize Stories 1973: The O. Henry Awards (1973); Rembrandt's Hat (1973); Selected Stories (1950); Talking Horse (1980); The Assistant (1957); The Best American Short Stories 1964 (1964); The Best American Short Stories of the Century (2000); The Complete Stories (1997); The Fixer (1966); The Magic Barrel (1950); The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English Since 1950 (1999); The Natural (1952); The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales (1993); The People (1989); The Stories of Bernard Malamud (1983); The Tenants (1971); Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction (1973); Winter's Tales 15 (1969); Wonderful Town (2000); Writing New York (1998).

Awards:

National Jewish Book Award: The Assistant (1958); National Book Award for Fiction: The Magic Barrel (1959); National Book Award for Fiction: The Fixer (1967); Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: The Fixer (1967); O. Henry Award: Man in the Drawer, published in the April 1968 edition of The Atlantic Monthly (1969); PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the runner-up award for The Stories (1984).

Movies and television:

Der Gehilfe (1978); Shoestring Theatre (1959); Storyboard (1961); Take Pity (1996); The Angel Levine (1970); The Assistant (1997); The Book Programme (1980); The First Seven Years (1998); The Fixer (1968); The Matchmaker (1984); The Model (1994); The Natural (1984); The Tenants (2005); Writers and Places (1980).