The Summer of Summer: The Natural

 

I didn’t know much about The Natural, except that it was a movie I hadn’t seen starring Robert Redford, and that some consider the book, written by Bernard Malamud and published in 1952, the quintessential, literary baseball novel. And baseball is a summer game (in theory, although it runs from April into October, if you’re lucky); choosing this book for my Summer of Summer seemed like an easy choice. I even got my son to read along with me on vacation.

I was expecting a hero’s journey type of book, the story of a scrappy slugger and his rise in the leagues (again, with the image of Redford in mind). Certainly, those elements are there. The book opens with Roy Hobbs, a nineteen-year-old pitcher on his way to try out for the Chicago Cubs. We know his talents are considerable when the train stops at a carnival and he strikes out “the Whammer,” a top hitter in the game.

But this hero’s journey has its trials, as they do, and Roy is a tragic character more than anything else. Without giving away any of the plot’s surprising twists, I will tell you that often, Roy’s challenges come wrapped in a female package. Sidenote: the women in this story have great names: Harriet Bird, Memo Paris, Iris Lemon. In fact, everyone has great names, from the beleaguered manager of the New York Knights, Pop Fisher, to the journalist trailing Roy for a scoop, Max Mercy, to the star player and Roy’s nemesis, Bump Baily.

You can get a feel for the tone of this book, written in the fifties, by these names. In this world, the men call each other “bub” and “kiddo” and “son,” and the women say things like “How droll!”

But did I like it? I appreciated the atmosphere, dialect, and winding plot, and once I got a feel for the tragic element, I appreciated the character of Roy on a symbolic level. He’s a striver, a uniquely American character in his quest for fame and greatness—spurned on by an unhappy childhood and a string of bad luck. He’s a man of appetites that cause, in many ways, his demise. And in the way of tragedies, often we readers see what’s coming down the track before the character can; many times, I wished Roy would wise up, act better, do right.

I also liked some of the exaggerated elements of the book—such as when Roy literally hits a ball so hard that the cowhide falls off—these bits felt almost apocryphal and compounded that feel of heroism and the way we raise our sports competitors to mythic levels.

When I finished the book, I started to imagine how they took this story and filmed it, and now that I’ve watched the trailer, it would seem they made it into what I imagined the story to be before I picked it up—a story of a slugger making his way to the top. We’ll see. I’m planning to watch the full movie soon.

Next up for my Summer of Summer is quite a shift, the 2007 “fragmentary novel” by the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, Flights. Let me know what you’re reading, or if you try any on my summer list!