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The Bear Comes Home
The hero of Rafi Zabor's first novel is an alto saxophone virtuoso trying to evolve a personal style out of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman. He also happens to be a walking, talking, Shakespeare-and Blake-quoting bear whose keen sense of irony protects him from the double loneliness of the artist and animal in an underappreciative metropolis.The scion of a long line of European circus bears (and the product of an amazing roll of the genetic dice), the Bear, when we first meet him, is eking out a living doing a routinely humiliating street dancing art with his friend and keeper, Jones. But what the Bear is really best at -- besides making himself cosmically miserable -- is playing the alto with his world-calls set of chops. One day he makes a bold foray from their apartment to jam with Arthur Blythe and Lester Bowie -- real-life musicians rub elbows with fictional counterparts throughout the novel -- at a New York club, thus beginning a musical and romantic odyssey. A nightclub bust followed by long dark nights of the soul in New York City's dankest jail. Freedom, a recording contract, underground fame, a road tour that is alternately hilarious, scary, ridiculous, and inspiring. A vexed, physically passionate, and anatomically correct interspecies love affair with a beautiful woman named Iris. And, finally, a triumphant return to a jazz club inside the Brooklyn Bridge, where the Bear plays a solo where it all comes together for him, and blows him all the way back home.
Book Details
- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
- Publish Date: Sep 1st, 1998
- Pages: 492
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.55in - 5.56in - 1.19in - 1.36lb
- EAN: 9780393318630
- Categories: • Literary• Humorous - General• Magical Realism
About the Author
Zabor, Rafi: - Rafi Zabor is a writer and occasional jazz drummer who lives in Brooklyn, New York. The Bear Comes Home is his first novel.
Praise for this book
Poignant and touching moments combine with hilarious descriptions of the bear's struggle in a story that anyone--whether familiar with jazz or not--will find compelling and entertaining.--David Amram "Los Angeles Times"
Zabor's knack for detail makes the absurd premise believable...and neatly turns the weighty subject--the painful and ungainly growth of an artist--into a comic gem.-- "The New Yorker"
In fluent, witty prose Zabor conveys with remarkable vividness the texture of group improvisation...It swings.--A. O. Scott "New York Newsday"
Zabor...conveys the mingled joy and terror of musical improvisation. He also displays a mean wit.-- "New York Times Book Review"
Hip, flip, sexy, and worldy-wise, with walk-ons by Charlie Haden and other jazz celebrities: a first novel that has the makings of a cult smash.-- "Kirkus Reviews"