The Bear Went over the Mountain

Rating:
Summary: one star is one too many
Review: I am both astounded and confounded by the reviews here. Simply put, this is the single worst novel I have ever read. Everything about it--the writing, the characters, the story--is godawful. Here follows an absolutely true story. While I was forcing myself to read this drivel, I went out on date. She and I were discussing how much of a book one should read before giving up on it. I was advocating the 25 page litmus, and she insisted on at least fifty. She did several long train commutes a week to and from work, and so read a lot of novels. Anyway, I started describing this book. She recognized it immediately, and interrupted me saying, "The Bear Went Over The Mountain! Don't read another word! If you think it's bad now, it only gets worse, if you can believe it!" She was right. If you feel the need to find out for yourself, save your money and borrow it from a friend or the library.

Rating:
Summary: The Civilized Bear
Review: Kotzwinkle at his finest, asking favorite seemingly simple questions. Do bears hibernate in the woods? Normally? If not, what? Who can say? Very funny. Fairly gentle, too, but not too denatured. Sufficient natural growl, sniff, bite, paw-swipe. The publishing industry (high academic to low pop inclusive) is the obvious target of this satire, but Kotzwinkle always leaves human civilization connected to ALL of its corruptions/discontents. The uninitiated might guess BEING THERE or GUMP echo, but ELEPHANT BANGS TRAIN is true source for THE BEAR WENT OVER THE MOUNTAIN. Only William Kotzwinkle could have written this book, blessed as it is by his peculiar sense of mammalian nature. Ursine "author" Hal Jam kills only if/when he must, consumes pies entire, steals an occasional briefcase full of manuscript, & can be otherwise innately/ineffably bearish, but his inability to calculate his criminality (or plot a novel) separates him absolutely from his more rationalizing (higher?) mammalian cronies.

One never wants to take William excessively grimly, but there is food for thought, or intuition, here. Kotzwinkle writing of animals inevitably reminds us of aspects of our own curiously confused & occasionally rampaging/frolicsome better natures, natures we have been educated to submerge. Our best satirists always operate outside all respectable circles. An obvious bear with occasional bursts of human aspiration careening around in corrupt society is not too different from an obvious human wandering around in the Maine woods, looking for a nice cave? Is Plato referenced? Perhaps. Man, writing, & Bear, marauding, are more or less hairy kin? Who can say? Both man & bear move considerably, here, in the general direction of the proto-warmblood center.

Rating:
Summary: Laugh out loud funny!
Review: One of the funniest books I've ever read, Kotzwinklestelling of the story almost has you believing that a bearcould actually pull all this off! The hero of the story is a bear who one day finds a book manuscript hidden in the back woods of Maine, reads it and thinks its such a wonderful story that he takes (steals) it to New York city with the idea of selling it. After adopting an alias (Hal Jam), he peddles the book around the NY publishing world and meets many quirky and self absorbed people on his way to eventually becoming world famous. Throughout the story he vacillates back and forth between wanting to remain in the comfortable but strange and "hard to figure out" world of man - with its unlimited quantities of sweets and women; and wanting to return to his beloved forest where life is so much simpler. The plot is very much like the movie "Being There", except with a slapstick slant. Everyone that the bear meets reads deep and profound meaning into Hal's brooding silences and short, out of context statements. It kept me laughing out loud for two straight days, I can't remember the last time a book did that to me!

Rating:
Summary: Read it and weep - with laughter
Review: There's so much truth about the publishing world in this drop-dead-funny satire that it's a wonder the publishing world ever published it!
Outrageous premise of a man who writes The Great American Novel, loses the manuscript in the woods, and becomes so depressed that he goes into hibernation and becomes beast-like. The flip side of the equation, the part that makes this book a dangerous one to read in bed beside a sleeping mate, is that the manuscript is found by a bear who manages to sell it on a trip to New York. The bear is courted by NY's best and finest celebs, and he impresses reviewers, agents, and editors with his hyper-intelligent and deeply moving monosyllabic grunts and one-word responses to interview questions.
But the parts that'll make your trying-to-sleep spouse want to kill you are the love scenes between the bear and the object of his affection, a 'fur-bearing woman,' (a lady who doesn't shave her legs).
Don't miss it. Buy two, and give one to your favorite quirky friend.