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!
