{"product_id":"book-hlen","title":"The Natural","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eIntroduction by Kevin Baker  \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Natural\u003c\/i\u003e, 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 old daylight baseball era - and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFour 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.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Audible","offers":[{"title":"Audio CD","offer_id":50778407403824,"sku":"ZEhlen","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Audio CD [10]","offer_id":49352261501232,"sku":"10hlen","price":34.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0879\/2784\/9264\/files\/hlen-Square-cover.jpg?v=1771910043","url":"https:\/\/downpour.com\/products\/book-hlen","provider":"Downpour","version":"1.0","type":"link"}