The Natural - Bernard Malamud torrent

Category: Adults, Classic, Contemporary, General Fiction
Language: EnglishKeywords: 1950’s Baseball Sport & Recreation
Written by Bernard Malamud
Read by Christopher Hurt
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Edition: Unabridged
Release date: July 25, 2007
Duration: 06:43:48
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bernard Malamud’s first novel is still one of the best ever written about baseball. His story of a superbly gifted “natural” at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era is invested with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work.
First published in 1952, this novel has since become an American classic. Five decades later, Alfred Kazin’s comment still holds true: “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.”
This fine audio production retains the flavor of the world of professional sports circa 1940 though no explanation is needed for the contemporary listener. Christopher Hurt’s vaguely Midwestern voice is wonderfully matched to the characters–the seedy agents, the other players, the “dames” Roy gets involved with, the greedy owners and Roy himself. Hurt’s voice has the perfect combination of flatness and emotion common to the finest sports announcers. This production is essential for collections of serious American fiction and great baseball novels.
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Edition: Unabridged
Release date: July 25, 2007
Duration: 06:43:48

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bernard Malamud’s first novel is still one of the best ever written about baseball. His story of a superbly gifted “natural” at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era is invested with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work.

First published in 1952, this novel has since become an American classic. Five decades later, Alfred Kazin’s comment still holds true: “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.”

This fine audio production retains the flavor of the world of professional sports circa 1940 though no explanation is needed for the contemporary listener. Christopher Hurt’s vaguely Midwestern voice is wonderfully matched to the characters–the seedy agents, the other players, the “dames” Roy gets involved with, the greedy owners and Roy himself. Hurt’s voice has the perfect combination of flatness and emotion common to the finest sports announcers. This production is essential for collections of serious American fiction and great baseball novels.