The Bear Comes Home

Starred review from June 30, 1997
New York's coterie of jazz musicians makes room for one large addition as a talking, thinking, alto sax-playing Kodiak bear arrives on the jazz scene in this hilarious, richly imagined bear's-eye view of love, music, alienation, manhood and humanity. 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. Tired of that depressing circus shtick, the Bear begins sitting in with Arthur Blythe at a local jazz club. In addition to Blythe, Billy Hart, Lester Bowie, Charlie Haden, Ornette Coleman and other famous musicians become characters, and the Bear's musical ruminations bring Monk, Mingus, Parker, Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Jackie McClean prominently into the novel. After an early gig gets him shot at, locked up and experimented upon, the Bear strives to avoid publicity even while touring and recording. He struggles painfully through his changing relationship with Jones, an interspecies love affair with beautiful Iris and the strange, alternately menacing and wonderful world of humans. Drummer/journalist Zabor's invocation of jazz is impressive: far more than beguiling background noise, music is a dynamic presence in this story, central to the Bear's struggle, and Zabor's renderings of its inner dramas are daring and effective. If the romantic subplot is the weakest link in this very solid chain, the Bear's convincing interactions with Jones and the jazzmen show a shambling, cartoonish wit that recalls Pynchon at his most controlled. Best of all, the mystical, wisecracking, well-read, big-hearted, restless Bear comes vividly, enchantingly to life. First serial to Musician magazine.