The Natural.
MALAMUD, Bernard.
The Natural.
"We have two lives... the life we learn with and the life we live after that": First edition of Bernard Malamud’s The Natural; Inscribed by him to American journalist and politician Richard L. Neuberger
New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1952.
$7,200.00
In Stock
Item Number: 150456
First edition of the author’s first book, and one of the greatest baseball novels of all time. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Richard L. Neuberger for daring to lead with sincere best wishes Bernard Malamud Corvallis Oregon 1954.” The recipient, Richard L. Neuberger (1912-1960) was an American journalist, author, and politician. He served in the Oregon House of Representatives and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1954. A laid in letter of provenance signed by David Curry notes: ‘An outspoken liberal, [Neuberger] died at the untimely age of 47 while campaigning for reelection. Neuberger quarreled openly and bitterly with Wayne Morse, the senior U.S. senator from Oregon who case the single vote against the Tonkin Bay Resolution authorizing U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. Their relationship began when Neuberger was a law student at the University of Oregon, where Morse was then a dean and faculty member. When Morse gave Neuberger a grade of ‘D’ in a class and Neuberger complained, Morse changed the grade to ‘F.” Very good in a very good dust jacket. Cover art by Simon Goltche. With the bookplate of Richard L. Neuberger to the pastedown. Housed in a custom clamshell box.
"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 "impeccably made ... fable about success and failure in America." James Berardinelli praised The Natural as "[a]rguably 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."
