ABSTRACT
His first novel, The Natural (1952), differs from any that followed. Baseball becomes a knightly joust at times, with the characters taking on roles from Arthurian legend. The game is played by a team called the Knights, on Knights Field. In addition, the grail legend and fertility myths are of central importance, with a Fisher King figure; a dessicated, "wasteland"-like playing field; and a concern for heroes, with hero-nurturing and hero-destroying women. There is no other American baseball novel that is so packed with mythic references, Malamud having stated that before he could write a baseball novel he found it necessary to transform the game into myth, possibly because of the game's essentiallightness. Remaining as a basic stance, however, is his distinctive theme of self-development and personal growth through suffering. In this novel the hero learns too late about the importance of selflessness and does not achieve the secular salvation that marks most of Malamud's other works. American novelists generally do not place a major emphasis on these themes.
