Customer Reviews

The Bear Comes Home

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Rafi Zabor takes us on two magical journeys without us even knowing it. The first is the material world in which the bear lives in, complete with all his struggles and triumphs. The other is the world inside Bears head. Zabor writes the two so seamlessly together that you never notice where you are at the time. The flow of the narrative resembles that of a jazz solo: always testing new borders and limits but never breaking our attention span. Zabor goes off on character thought tangents with the greatest of ease, painting a delicate picture of each character. One memorable example of this is the Bear's romp through the woods midway through the book. He returns to the woods to reflect on past events. The author so ingeniously weaves the details of the physical environment with what the Bear is thinking at the moment and why. This is a beautifully crafted book that never ceases to lose our imagination in its musical flow, like honey on the brain.

This is a hellaciously entertaining read: funny, melancholy, erotic, scathingly satirical. And the language occasionally reaches magical heights of realism. There are webs of words in here that will give you glimpses of actual experience itself - surely the ultimate writer's conjuring trick. The book's hero incarnates an audacious leap of the imagination: he's a Caucasian circus bear, who can talk, reads literature, studies mysticism, and... plays the alto sax. The Bear heightens the duality of human nature - part angel, part animal - in order to explore it. It's a satirical premise that illuminates many of the contradictions lurking in the depths of our contemporary social mythos - our ambivalence towards Nature red in tooth and claw, our reduction of even the most transcendent art to commodity, our acceptance of lives that are pale shadows of their potential. If you've ever wondered what it's like to be a professional musician, The Bear Comes Home will satisfy your curiosity. If you've ever been involved in the performing arts, you will recognize many of the situations. Among its many treasures, The Bear is stunningly effective as an evocation of the seemingly constant frustration and occasional epiphanies of the creative process. It's also a dead-on portrait of the jazz life, a deeply felt exploration of the complexity of human relationships. Most amazingly, The Bear himself never collapses into a man in a bear suit. It's not that tough to devise and describe an unusual protagonist. But by the third act, even faerie queens and immortal vampires descend to the same petty, mundane emotions that drive your personal soap opera as relentlessly as they do mine. The Bear is different. Although the situations he lives through are achingly human, The Bear is never quite, no matter how much Rumi he reads, how deeply he loves, how fanatically he explores the possibilities of his horn. You've never met anyone quite like The Bear, and unless you read this book, you never will.

Every musician or anyone who believes they have a special harmony with music should read this humorous, insightful and moving book.

The author does a good job of digging deep into the higher meanings of music and life, but knows when to pull in the reins at the right moment (Isn't that right, Bucky?) And anyone who can write a book that holds James Garner's Rockford Files, Thelonious Monk and great German philosophers in equal regard can't be all that bad.

I think this is mentioned on the back cover, but it bears repeating: Like a good solo, the author throws in every lick he knows and avoids cliche's.

One of my favourite images of the book is the bear teaching a "bird" in the woods Monk's "Well You Needn't." It had its blatent and hidden messages, but, when at the end of the book the "bird" returns to haunt the bear with the half learned tune ("Need - n't") and the bear replies, "Well, at least it isn't 'Nevermore'," we smile. It is like throwing "Here Comes the Sun" in the middle of a solo during "Summertime". It is immediately recognizable and appreciated. We all are in on the joke.

Although some of the Monk and jazz analysis went over my head, I found the book enjoyable from start to finish. The only exception being the sex scene between the bear and his human girlfriend in graphic detail. They were two of the hardest pages to get through and I'm still wondering why the author felt he had to include it in the book. Perhaps it was to show the bear not as this mystical musical being, but something more normal, more flesh and blood.

Read this book, pass it on or buy it as a present for the musician in your life (they'll love you for it). However, be prepared for the perplexed looks and stares when you start describing this "book about a saxophone playing bear.... No it's not a children's book..."

TSM

I stumbled upon this book at a tiny trade-in library at a hotel in Mexico while on vacation. I had my doubts given the anthropomorphizing of a bear and the focus on jazz, about which I know relatively little. However, I was very pleasantly surprised by the writing, plot, and development of the bear's character. I enjoyed the use of the bear as allegory for the alienated man among us. Zabor was quite good at making the bear's experience and that of the other characters accessible given the universality of their emotional lives.

On a more concrete level I have to say that I did not quite understand the bear's fascination with Iris, who was a chilly withholding woman who did not seem to appreciate his attributes at all. In fact, their liaison bothered me throughout the book and it seemed uncompelling. The sex scenes were a bit disturbing, too, but kind of like a car crash that you can't help but look at.

In all, I was very engrossed in this book but felt it had its flaws. Like other reviewers, I was disappointed with the ending. It just seemed to fall short. Plus, I was hoping he'd spontaneously dump Iris and move on to a better life. I'm just glad that Zabor didn't have Iris become impregnated with the bear's baby. For a moment there during the tour scenes, I thought he might be going in that direction. You never really know since the premise of the book was kind of "out there" to start.

I would recommend this book to select people who can suspend judgment and can tolerate lengthy abstract passages about jazz/improvisation.

Every time I start talking about this book I get so excited that I flip out ALL the time and I end up knocking myself off of my own soapbox. All I can tell you is this: I bought this book and I read it. Then I went out and bought copies of it for my best friends. This is the best book about living, loving (she's just a woman), art, and jazz-sax-blowing, talking quadrupeds on the planet. It is totally sweet AND awesome. We owe Rafi Zabor a debt of gratitude for his insights.

A lineage between Rafi Zabor's disc jockey work at KGNU in Boulder, CO; his drumming; and his writing all stay true to the spirit of jazz - abstract, cerebral, and improvisational. However, his real gift is to tie these divergent activities into a message that viscerally connects to the audience. Zabor's ability to take an artistic vision and convert it into an emotional chill-up-the-reader/listener's-spine is what jazz is all about. Improvising and abstracting a story of the jazz life using "a bear" as the main riff, is what makes Zabor's writing read like good jazz sounds.

I just finished The Bear Comes Home and I really loved it. It is so wonderful to be rocked out of reality while reading about a talking, sax playing, sometimes sensitive, sometimes bearlike bear. I laughed and I now look at the world in a whole different light. The jazz theme was new to me but I enjoyed experiencing music through words.

One of the most imaginative books I've read! Not only is the main character smarter, and better drawn, than even most above average bears, but Zabor opens the mind of a musician more effectively than anyone I've read. Reading this, even a jazz-hater might now find the music, uh, bearable. Sorry.

One of the most unusual books I've yet to read, but unquestionably one of the best. Anyone who's lived in New York, plays jazz, or ever gone through bad times should read it. I've owned this book for years now (thanks to a recommendation from Vin Scelsa's Idiot's Delight), and I still continue to re-read it.

Sincerely hoping Rafi comes out with another novel in the near future.

This is the best evocation of what it feels like to play jazz that I have ever read.