5/20/2023 0 Comments The natural malamud![]() ![]() In several interviews Malamud has admitted that he clearly intended to depict the twentieth-century baseball star as a mythic hero-in the case of Roy Hobbs, as one who fails in his quest, disappointing the hopes of his culture and community. At the same time, the novel draws on events from both documented and accepted baseball history, most notably from the Black Sox scandal but also from the careers of Babe Ruth, Eddie Waitkus, Wilbert Robinson, Bob Feller, Chuck Hostetler, and Pete Reiser. Critics are also attracted to The Natural because Malamud infuses his story of star-crossed phenom Roy Hobbs with allusions drawn from a variety of mythic sources-Arthurian legend, the Bible, Homer, fertility myth, the myth of the hero-as well as with central constructs from the work of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. This attention is not surprising, for The Natural is the first novel of a writer who subsequently achieved canonical status, and, following Lardner's work, it is the first of many serious baseball novels in the latter half of the twentieth century. ![]() ![]() Written between 19 and published in 1951, Bernard Malamud's The Natural has garnered more critical attention than any other baseball novel. ![]()
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