Two Novels: The Natural; The Assistant (The Modern Library of the World's Best Books ML 317)

438, [2] pp. The Natural: Roy Hobbs is a baseball prodigy whose career is sidetracked when he is shot by a woman whose motivation remains mysterious. Adapted into a hit movie starring Robert Redford. The Assistant: The story of Morris Bober, a grocer in postwar Brooklyn, who “wants better” for himself and his family. First two robbers appear and hold him up; then things take a turn for the better when broken-nosed Frank Alpine becomes his assistant. But there are complications: Frank, whose reaction to Jews is ambivalent, falls in love with Helen Bober; at the same time he begins to steal from the store. Like Malamud's best stories, this novel unerringly evokes an immigrant world of cramped circumstances and great expectations. Malamud defined the immigrant experience in a way that has proven vital for several generations of writers.