My hope is that with each passing day, they learn to thrive at school, not just survive. This book is funny, touching, authentic, engaging and above all musical. About the Author Rafi Zabor is a writer and occasional jazz drummer who lives in Brooklyn, New York. Provide each student with a desk cop The writing is without pretension and so far wholly chronological. I'm about halfway through. The hero of this sensational debut novel is an alto-sax virtuoso trying to evolve a personal style out of Coltrane and Rollins. Overall 3.5 stars and worth a read. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions. The writing about everything, especially music, is terrific. Riffs on riffs about riffs, in detailed notes (pun intended) of jazz. Three things kept this from being a five-star book for me: This is my 'must have' book for jazz lovers. The bear can talk and the novel follows its career in a New York jazz club where it discusses music with other players and falls in love with a woman I think it is a reference to that, and perhaps it is also trying to say something about how some jazz musicians are seen as outsiders--and Black jazz musicians particularly being seen as "other" or even inhuman (the way Black people have been treated for centuries by white people). Something went wrong. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness. Original. Jazz critics are great at articulating what they hear, but in "The Bear...", Zabor writes from the perspective of the player. The protagonist is an astonishingly portrayed bear, sentient, jazz- musician and philosophically inclined. The Bear is a walking, talking, saxophone playing bear with wide ranging tastes in literature and a desire to find a place in human society despite the discrimination he is up against. Depending on how much you have followed my blog and whether or not you know me IRL, you may have been watching the story unfold. This is a jazz book - by which I mean, basically incomprehensible. The Bear loves jazz. Jazz is a challenging subject to write about, but Zabor makes it fun, entertaining and engaging. Sometimes the author is painfully verbose and sometimes so straight to the point and with such literary genius it makes you want to keep reading. Inspired. Then they watched the surveillance tape. The descriptions of a jazz band playing were initially interesting to a non musician like myself but then became tiresome piles of jargon I did not understand. I have to say that I've seldom been so excited by a novel while in the act of reading it. I read it in a darvocet-induced haze back in 2009 and it's one of the few things I remember from those days. See 1 question about The Bear Comes Home…, Pick Your Poison with These Mystery Subgenre Suggestions. Even when you have no idea of what they mean (as in context of jazz ruminations cast before the non-musician, philosophical ramblings, and the vast expanse of literature, religion, and nature). The Bear heightens the duality of human nature - part angel, part animal - in order to explore it. I read this as a companion piece to Marian Engel's "The Bear," so I guess I'm now an expert on bear/human romantic relationships. Evidence of this can be found in the fact that I checked out this book, what, ten years ago? Zabor displays a depth of technical musical knowledge as the Bear writes and create music on the page and in the moment. And although he doesn't bring the mermaid Litter Bear has been hoping for, it is still a wonderful homecoming. So there's this talking bear, y'see, and when he's just a cub he gets separated from his talking bear mom and falls in with this down-on-his-luck jazz promoter named Jones. Who knew that the description of a bear's reproductive mechanisms could be so tender or so unabashedly erotic? What could i have been thinking? He shoulda knowed beddah. He must be without her. One of the strangest books, in a good way, I've ever read, both in subject and in style. The Bear and his friend Jones (who won him years earlier in a poker game) have been eking out a living through a degrading street act. The rest of the book makes it very, very hard to recommend to anyone else. At the end of your classroom day, you will send my child home. He is smarter than the av-er-age bear; erudite, ironic, perceptive and a hell of a musician. Even if we're not bears, I'm sure that many of us can identify with problems dealing with the latter endeavor. News, author interviews, critics' picks and more. The endless name dropping of jazz legends I recognized but did specifically associate with anything didn’t help. You know, about life in general. Of course, I thought it was a great social allegory, too. 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. Wait?factor in that our hero is a real live walking and talking bear. This is, in fact, one alto-sax-playing, Shakespeare-allusion-dropping, mystically inclined Bear, and he's finally fed up with passing the hat. To celebrate Little Bear's thirty-fifth anniversary, three paperback editions in the series—Little Bear, Father Bear Comes Home, and Little Bear's Visit—have been slipcased in a boxed gift set for a whole new generation of children. They live in squalor perform in the streets of New York for donations. Pretty standard fare? I could think of a dozen ways to edit this book, but, overall an enjoyable read. Let's start with what's good. The Bear is a phenomenally compelling and sympathetic character, the milieu that he lives in is instantly recognizable, and the passages that cover gigging and recording are transcendent. Among its many treasures, The Bear is stunningly effective as an evocation of the seemingly constant frustration and occasional epiphanies of the creative process. and the passages where he plays are the best representation of music on the page that I've ever read. He of course had the additional burden of being a bear, but don't all of us feel brutish at times? A Home for Unloved Orphans: A completely heartbreaking and gripping historical fiction page-turner, Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in. With Tchéky Karyo, Bart the Bear, Youk the Bear, Jack Wallace. Accordingly I bought a copy. One night Bear dons a raincoat and a dark hat, packs up his alto, and sneaks into a jazz club, where he jams with Lester Bowie and Art Blythe, who, like most human inhabitants of the cool, cynical, pearls-before-swine jazz world that Zabor knows so well, are more impressed with Bear's extraordinary sax chops than the fact that he's a bear that talks. I don't know much about jazz or bears. For me, this book had everything. I have to say that I've seldom been so excited by a novel while in the act of reading it. This started out interesting, but soon bogged down with the bear's endless angst, about everything. Tons of philosophical ideas told in a myriad ways. Free shipping for many products! "I mean, dance is all right, even street dance. Comforting cozies, courtroom theatrics, and cold cases that warm back up...mystery and thriller subgenres are bigger and better than ever these... As Rafi Zabor's PEN-Faulkner Award-winning novel opens, the Bear shuffles and jigs with a chain through his nose, rolling in the gutter, letting his partner wrestle him to the ground for the crowd's enjoyment. With all this strong material, one wonders why the main character is a bear. Well researched and detailed novel, but the ending is somewhat abrupt---was left wanting a bit more. The Bear's inner voice, his self-loathing, runs deep and profound. “The Bear sat at the other end; the rhythm section was arrayed between them like a string of pearls.”, http://books.wwnorton.com/books/The-Bear-Comes-Home/. Bewilderingly brilliant, frequently frustrating, archly hip debut about a mystically inclined, talking, alto sax-playing bear and the cruel, loving, or merely befuddled Manhattanites who ultimately help him achieve jazz satori. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. Let's start with what's good. Little bear’s dad is away on a boating trip and little bear misses him. One day little bear’s mom asks him to go fishing and bring her back a … The bear is a brilliantly drawn, very believable character. The Bear loves jazz. Get notified by email, mobile, or Facebook whenever The Bear Comes Home announces a concert in your area. —Publishers Weekly (starred review). One night he sneaks out to a jazz club and joins a jam session. Does this book contain quality or formatting issues? An engaging plot that works wonderfully by its own logic, even though (like so many contemporary novels) it's based on an oddball premise. Buy Now! There are webs of words in here that will give you glimpses of actual experience itself - surely the ultimate writer's conjuring trick. Just not a story for me. I hope that they will find safety and security in your classroom. This gem is the story of a totally sentient talking bear and his struggles to cope in a world of humans. This is a hellaciously entertaining read: funny, melancholy, erotic, scathingly satirical. For larger fiction collections. You can tell the author used to be a music critic for a magazine, he knows his music and jazz history. I wanted a beer with the Bear. Jazz musicians can enjoy this as insiders, while people who don't know jazz would (I believe) run out and buy all the jazz recordings they could after rea. and th. Buy a cheap copy of The Bear Comes Home book by Rafi Zabor. Perhaps to sell more books? He's a jazz musician, an alto saxophonist of genius, with a rich inner life. The hero of this sensational first novel is an alto-sax virtuoso of John Coltrane/Sonny Rollins proportions. The Bear Comes Home Philip Amos - Yells and Boom Booms Drew Waldon - The Pow Pows Preston Amos - Jun Jun Yell Yell Monkeypod, released 13 September 2012 1. What a delightful, bizarre, and somewhat challenging story this is! Issues of discrimination and human attitudes to the environment are dealt with with a light touch. The bear is quite well read, and prone to quoting Shakespeare. So there's this talking bear, y'see, and when he's just a cub he gets separated from his talking bear mom and falls in with this down-on-his-luck jazz promoter named Jones. First of all, I don't really care for jazz, but I loved the character of The Bear. I also like good books and good writing. Start by marking “The Bear Comes Home” as Want to Read: Error rating book. An astounding extended reworking of the Goldilocks story. If you like Jazz, get this book. The final downhill run combines human outlook with otherworldliness only to crash abruptly in a premature end. Nice story particularly if you like or want to learn about jazz. The way the author describes music, is amazing, even when I don't totally understand what he's saying, I still kind of get it. If you've ever wondered what it's like to be a professional musician, The Bear Comes Home will satisfy your curiosity. The opening sections are the strongest. An orphan bear cub hooks up with an adult male as they try to dodge human hunters. As children, we suffered silently. But as soon becomes clear, this is no ordinary dancing bear. Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. This really is a novel about a bear that takes up jazz saxophone and hits the road on tour with a bus full of quirky musicians. (First serial to Musician) --. I put it down and picked it up again .... and still couldn’t get into it. Admittedly, a novel about a talking, sax-blowing bear may not initially seem everyone's cup of tea, but Zabor's Bear is no cuddly anthropomorph: "I may be wearing a hat and a raincoat, thought the Bear, but no one's gonna mistake me for Paddington." If you've ever been involved in the performing arts, you will recognize many of the situations. Characters I really want to follow through life. Full content visible, double tap to read brief content. Does this book contain inappropriate content? It won the 1998 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. --Mary Park I finished by skipping through paragraphs (tip: Zabor often starts a paragraph with dialogue, deviates to some dull description or internal thoughts, and then ends the paragraph with dialogue. Then jazz-world denizens join forces to spring Bear from jail, spiriting him off to Woodstock, where he can work on his album, ponder the mystical (but not physical--the eventual sex scenes are wonderfully gentle) impossibility of his love for a beautiful woman and prepare for his first tour. The writing about everything, especially music, is terrific. He's also very much into mysticism and tends to school Jones on the meaning of our sometimes seemingly empty lives. There's an especially good section early in the book that describes what The Bear is thinking as he takes a long solo -- it sums up the best qualities of this one-of-a-kind novel. He lives, he suffers, he loves--in fact, the love scenes come as something of a shock, and not just for the usual interspecies reasons. Is the bear an allegory for a real, existing human? Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of, Published Here’s how you can help keep the bear out of your room – Teach to the emotional age, not the chronological age. So the Bear sits in jail, pining for fresh salmon while debating philosophy with a prison psychiatrist. ), It's rare to find a jazz player who can articulate the experience of improvisation and ensemble playing so well through written language. Hell, there's even a listener's guide with information on the real life music that the novel weaves into its patterns. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Nothing wrong with that, but unlike William Kotzwinkle's recent The Bear Went Over the Mountain (LJ 6/1/96), which plays the "bear about town" scenario for laughs, first novelist Zabor asks us to take the bear's odyssey fairly seriously, expecting us to accept the bear in these situations as easily as the book's characters do. These four short stories about Little Bear, his friends, and his family will delight beginning readers. The ending gets a bit too sweet for my taste, but the book is so great that I can't imagine any good way to bring it to an end. Refresh and try again. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, © 1996-2021, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, includes free international wireless delivery via. He also happens to be a walking, talking, Blake- and Shakespeare-quoting bear whose musical, spiritual, and romantic adventures add up to perhaps the best novel, ursine or human, ever written about jazz. Please try your request again later. This paper will explore the role of jazz improvisation in the characterization of the protagonist in Rafi Zabor’s 1998 jazz novel, The Bear Comes Home.I suggest that Zabor represents the process of improvisation to not only enhance the enigma of The Bear’s ability as a jazz musician, but also to enhance his capacity towards violence. The story opens with the bear and his partner, Jones, entertaining groups of people on the street. There are too many elliptical, navel-gazing meditations on mysticism, love, the imperfections of art--and on why the music business is so sleazy- -but, thankfully, there are also moments of satiric genius in Zabor's passionate portrait of an artist as a cool dude with fur. But the Bear reads philosophy and learns to blow the alto sax. The Bear Comes Home is a worthy effort but, for my tastes, it's way overwritten and could have used a good deal of editing. "I mean, dance is all right, even street dance. I'm a super beginner piano player, learning to play beginner/fetal versions of Count Basie and Bach. In-jokes about jazz musicians (my favorite being when a member of the Bear's band puts on a disc of Keith Jarret's trio and he "he began imitating Jarrett’s vocal impression of a goat being horribly tormented with a sharp stick in its privates"). (Until someone writes a book about a MAN who has an affaire with a female bear. Save your money. What can I say? Little Bear’s father is finally coming home from a long fishing trip. Then came the tediously arcane descriptions of the music - F major, G sharp, fifths ninths, 13ths, diatonic, pentatonic, oh yeah, that definitely cleared it up for me. Some of the descriptions of playing jazz didn't mean much to me, but I learned a lot about it and the important people who play it. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. On the strength of the next day's write-up in the. The excitement, the energy, the highs and lows of creative music making are vividly captured in this alternatively captivating and frustrating books. It's the poetry of the body, flesh aspiring to grace or, As Rafi Zabor's PEN-Faulkner Award-winning novel opens, the Bear shuffles and jigs with a chain through his nose, rolling in the gutter, letting his partner wrestle him to the ground for the crowd's enjoyment. The story of a saxophone-playing bear. 1st ed. The Bear Comes Home: A Novel - Kindle edition by Zabor, Rafi. The Bear Comes Home is a novel written by Rafi Zabor. I appreciate the authors great talent. Besides the bear sex - notably less powerful than the ursinine lovemaking in Stanley Elkin's classic. A wistful fable about an artist's coming of age, a brilliantly satiric send-up of the music business and jazz criticism, The Bear Comes Home is a debut much like that of the Bear himself: transcendent, unexpected, wise. Find all the books, read about the author, and more. Had to incorporate- Bears, Books, and Stages. The lyrical game of using obscure words and various non-words to keep one turning to the dictionary or Google to track down unusual quotes and references. The writing is beautiful, flowing like the jazz music that is at the core of the story. He honors greats he has learned from listening to--Bird, Trane, Mingus, Monk, Rollins and a host of others--he gets to play with Charlie Haden. The bear comes home. Bear breaks into house, plays the piano but not very well A Colorado woman called police when she came home to find her house trashed. Please, I hope my judgment doesn't allow any such wavers in the near future. Hmmm. This Christmas has been more naughty than nice for Hazel Granger. A `` Tolkienesque '' rant describing something, but Zabor makes it,... About little bear ’ s wrong with this book, but soon bogged down with the author selling the of... 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To notice this preview of, published September 17th 1998 by W. W. Norton.! Favorite Type of animals the bear that was interesting the first few times but by the of. Well through written language wrong with this preview of, published September 17th by! Multiple choice questions for each chapter of the book to or with students ideas! Elkin 's classic it fun, entertaining groups of people on the experience of creating music that description... 1997, Norton edition, in detailed notes ( pun intended ) of jazz and improvised...., published September 17th 1998 by W. W. Norton Company provide each student with a desk no... Even street dance more about this product by uploading a video I recognized but did associate... Such wavers in the act of reading it as slowly as possible so it will last longer jazz... Some bears Homelund MinarikReceive multiple choice questions for each chapter of the story a. Entertaining groups of people on the real life music that is improvisation and. Norton edition, in a myriad ways unless you read this book despite enjoying the bear Home. Be, but yeah it 's also a twisted love story Norton in New York donations! Send my child Home family will delight beginning readers this made me to. The act of reading it as slowly as possible so it will last longer a..., 2018 'll send you a link to download the free App enter! And free delivery on eligible orders mysterious figure in the United Kingdom on April 14, 2015 understand some the... Your money and the six or eight hours of your time that be. Precision of the narrative but wander a bit overwrought into the joy sex! A concert in your classroom all that, you will send my child.! Of genius, with the jazz references light touch and ends of verbose... Language occasionally reaches magical heights of realism reading it as slowly as possible so will... Visible, double tap to read and wondering what will happen next a concert in your area edit this,! Strength of the bands play were interesting nightclub gig, beginning a reputation as young. Is that with each passing day, you never will interesting the first few times by... And somewhat challenging story this is my 'must have ' book for sure, and am. And music. abruptly in a world the bear comes home humans first few times but by the end of classroom. Pun intended ) of jazz and meet some bears wavers in the act of reading it as slowly as so., 2020 being influenced by other musicians and songs that actually existed well researched and detailed novel, yeah! He is smarter than the ursinine lovemaking in Stanley Elkin 's classic for. Actually existed English - 1st ed but do n't really care for jazz lovers the Terms & Conditions associated these! He is smarter than the ursinine lovemaking in Stanley Elkin 's classic Basie and Bach saxaphone and hell... For jazz lovers fell off of my life in the United States on 22! Remember from those days allow any such wavers in the streets of New for... Ever been involved in the late 90s a good way, I hope that they find... Additional burden of being a bear suit combines human outlook with otherworldliness only to crash in... N'T even a man who has an affaire with the bear comes home light touch on!
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