Baseball & Big Questions

THE NATURAL (237 pp.)--Bernard Malamud--Harcourt, Brace ($3).

Rookie Outfielder Roy Hobbs could not have stumbled into the New York Knights' dugout at a worse time. Manager Pop Fisher was screaming mad, and with reason. The Knights were mired in the cellar, they had forgotten how to hit, their best pitcher had just blown up. Things were so tough that Pop had athlete's foot on his hands. When Roy reported, a big, 34-year-old semipro from the sticks with a bassoon case in his hands, Pop sneered: "Oh, my eight-foot uncle, what have we got here, the Salvation Army band?" Said Roy: "The only music I make is with my bat."

What Roy carried in the bassoon case was Wonderboy, a bat he had whittled for himself from the center of a tree struck by lightning. And when Pop finally gave him his chance, he made beautiful music with it. He belted homers almost without trying, but he was more than just a slugger. It developed that he could throw like DiMaggio and field like Tris Speaker. In short, he was a natural. The whole team caught fire from him; within a few weeks, the Knights were back in the pennant fight.

Roy's story, The Natural, is told by Brooklynite First-Novelist Bernard Malamud. In some parts it is just about the best baseball yarning since the late great Ring Lardner put the cover on his typewriter. One side of The Natural is broad farce, in which Novelist Malamud kids the legends of baseball prowess. The other side of Roy's story is pitched to the theme of American tragedy. He had come up to the leagues once before as a youngster, only to be shot by a madwoman in a Chicago hotel the night before he was to report. Now, 15 years later, he knows his second-chance success must come soon if at all.

But Roy also finds that he is no longer quite so sure what success is. Some days, even after his most stupendous feats, with the stadium roar pounding in his head, he is most downcast. One thing he is sure he wants is Memo Paris, the manager's redhaired, teasing niece. But what Memo wants is fun and money, big money. The temptation to get that money the fast, easy way by helping to throw a playoff game brings Roy to his final tragic crisis.

At one level, The Natural is a preposterously original and readable story about life on & off the diamond. On another level, Novelist Malamud juggles symbolism and cloudy language to suggest the tragic limitations of the average American dream. He is better when his creatures are playing baseball than when they are playing with the Big Questions.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.