The Natural
Book description
This is a book about heroism - of sorts. Roy Hobbs has an immense natural gift for playing baseball. He could become one of the great ones of the game, a player unmatched in his time - a hero. But his first hard-won big chance ends violently, at the hands…
Why read it?
1 author picked The Natural as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Most baseball fans know that director Barry Levinson changed the ending to The Natural when he adapted the book into a film. Instead of striking out, Roy Hobbs hits a game-winning home run into the lights. The movie is full of hope, but the book is wonderfully grim.
It’s a story of hubris and corruption, a baseball noir published in 1952, just as the postwar American dream was starting to dissipate with the Civil Rights Era, McCarthyism, and fears of nuclear holocaust. Malamud writes beautifully about the game he loves while gazing with clear eyes at the country that invented…
From Noah's list on books that tell the true story of baseball.
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