A BEAUTIFUL FIRST EDITION OF ‘THE NATURAL’, SIGNED BY BERNARD MALAMUD – PERHAPS THE GREATEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN ABOUT BASEBALL
The Natural, Bernard Malamud’s first novel, published in 1952, is also the first―and some would say still the best―novel ever written about baseball. In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material―the story of a superbly gifted “natural” at play in the fields of the national pastime.
First edition of the author’s first book, and one of the greatest baseball novels of all time. Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “For Jonathan and Andrew, from Bernard Malamud.” The recipients, Jonathan and Andrew Goldstein were the sons of Malamud’s close friend, Laurence Goldstein (1/5/43-4/16/23) poet, literary critic, historian and author of 16 books. The book is in near fine condition in a near fine dust jacket. Cover art by Simon Goltche.
“Malamud has done something which, now that he has done it, looks as if we have been waiting for it all our lives. He has really raised the whole passion and craziness and fanaticism of baseball as a popular spectacle to its ordained place in mythology” (Alfred Kazin). It was the basis for the 1984 film bearing the same name directed by Barry Levinson and starring Robert Redford, Glenn Close, and Robert Duvall. Variety called the film an “impeccably made fable about success and failure in America.” James Berardinelli praised The Natural as “arguably the best baseball movie ever made.” Sports writer Bill Simmons has argued, “Any ‘Best Sports Movies’ list that doesn’t feature either Hoosiers or The Natural as the No. 1 pick shouldn’t even count.”.
