Book: The Natural

I'll admit up front that part of my problem with The Natural is that the movie casts a long shadow. For those who encountered and fell in love with the book first, I can see why the movie would be absolutely infuriating. Major (and I mean MAJOR) differences in both Roy's character and the novel's plot--including a complete 180 on the climax--turn them into wholly different animals with little more than shared DNA: a talented kid, a tragic shooting, an old rookie, a struggling team, a girl named Memo. Reading the novel after my familiarity with the film felt like stepping into an alternate reality.

But credit where credit is due, Malamud's world is as fully fleshed and full of iconography as anything in the film. It just also happens to be a darker, sadder place, full of disappointed heroes and missed opportunities. Roy Hobbes is a harder to character to like here than in the movies. He is both more Godlike in his prowess and more frail in his weaknesses, and thus somehow harder to connect to than a Sandy Koufax pitch. I wanted to like him, but I also wanted him to be better, and that's part of the genius of the story. As the novel progresses, we become like the boy Roy encounters on the final page, pleading "Say it ain't so, Roy," even as we see him stumble and fall to his knees. He may be a natural, Malamud tells us, but he is also fallible, and sometimes we, like Roy, wait too long to make up for past sins.

Is this a Greek myth? A classic tragedy? A biblical allegory? It's all of those things, and it's the story of Shoeless Joe Jackson, and it's a crackling 30s noir, and its about America's fall from grace. It is whip-smart writing, full of the lingo of the baseball diamond and the chalk and dirt of legends. It's good. It really is. It's just . . .

It's just that I love the movie, for all its cheese and schmaltz. Despite the facts that it goes for the syrupy sugar when the novel goes for the jugular. Despite the fact that it's clearly dumbing down the complexity of Malamud's novel. Despite the fact that it doesn't want to question our myth-making so much as codify it. Despite all that, I look back on the movie the same way that Redford and Levinson seem to be looking back on the golden age of baseball itself--with rose colored glasses that somehow seem able to forgive a lot of obvious flaws. It reminds me of being a kid, and of my brother, and of being filled with hope. And it reminds me of the present, and showing it to film students and seeing them jump when Harriet Bird fires that gun, and of getting a little misty-eyed when those lights get blown apart. 

So even if the novel came first, it feels a little like it's kicking at a piece of my personality that is good and optimistic and full of life. So I can respect the book, but at least for now, I can's say I love it. Icons and heroes fall--I know they do--and yet I don't have to love it when they do.

Sorry, Judge, but I still believe in the goodness of man. I can respect the tragedy here. But I can't love it.

Grade: B