When you pick up Bernard Malamud’s The Natural, inevitably the Robert
Redford movie creeps into your conscious mind.
But this book is a far darker vision than the movie, and the end, with
its even duskier conclusion about human fallibility, makes reading The Natural both sad and enlivening.
The Roy Hobbes of the book is intent on getting his
second chance as a major league ball player.
The strain of misogyny in the novel is strong, and women are the element
that continually fouls Hobbes’ chance at success. This is an ugly part of the book, but in
keeping with the overall gray moral sentiments expressed throughout. Hobbes is not the eunuch of the movie, and he
is interested sex, money and fame as much as success in baseball (and he often
views baseball as merely a means to that end).
The
Natural provides a hard look at second chances, and the
inability of people to capitalize on them.
Our first lives intrude on our second.
We repeat the same mistakes.
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