≡ Libro The Bear Comes Home A Novel Rafi Zabor 9780393318630 Books

The Bear Comes Home A Novel Rafi Zabor 9780393318630 Books

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The Bear Comes Home A Novel Rafi Zabor 9780393318630 Books

If you like Jazz, get this book. If you like reading about music theory, but in a way that makes want to learn more, not in way that gives you a headache, get this book. I'm a super beginner piano player, learning to play beginner/fetal versions of Count Basie and Bach. I loved reading about the Bear interacting with or being influenced by other musicians and songs that actually existed. You can tell the author used to be a music critic for a magazine, he knows his music and jazz history. I'd often read a few pages then search for a video of a certain musician or piece of music like Carla Bley, Gary Bartz or Shostakovich violin concerto 1. 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. OK, Is the story any good? Considering the rest, it doesn't have to be, but yeah it's decent. There is enough story to keep you wanting to read and wondering what will happen next. Occasionally the author goes off on a "Tolkienesque" rant describing something, but he always brings you back before you get bored.


Tags : The Bear Comes Home: A Novel [Rafi Zabor] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <strong>Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: A hilarious, richly imagined bear's eye view of love, music,Rafi Zabor,The Bear Comes Home: A Novel,W. W. Norton & Company,039331863X,Literary,American First Novelists,FICTION Literary,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction General,General,General & Literary Fiction,Literature & literary studies,Modern fiction,FIC000000

The Bear Comes Home A Novel Rafi Zabor 9780393318630 Books Reviews

I read this book for an English course and enjoyed it very much. Being a full-time student, I was looking forward to reading this novel even though I dreaded reading other texts. First book in a long while that didn't get me bored or uninterested! )) Thanks for my new favorite ))
Item as described, received as promised.
To me this book is about freedom. I bought into the idea of the bear interacting amoung humans -finding love, talking,etc. Ultimately, the bear is only truely happy in moments of true love. Love of a women, love of music--the process, the performance, other musicians that move him. The bear also has the ability to love tranquility and feel love as a father figure. I allowed myself to buy into this world of the bear and walk his walk--a musicians walk for sure--striving,practicing,learning to try and reach for the "perfect" sound which he heard in his head--but ultimately needing more--
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.
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. There is also a twisted love story -- if you can swallow all that, you'll have a good time. The book is a little long, but The Bear's interactions with his quirky backing musicians are priceless, and some of Zabor's writing is really excellent. 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.
It is hard to believe that this is Zabor's first novel. His writing is - well, maybe rhapsodic is the word. It seems appropriate because much of the novel is describing jazz. Now, I don't have a deep understanding of jazz, but Zabor's descriptions of the various songs as they developed creates an experience approaching ecstacy. It is also hard to believe that the hero of this book is a bear, a bear who not only talks, but plays jazz (alto sax), reads Shakespeare, loves women, and has spiritual awakenings. This is one my husband and I read aloud to each other, and is one of our all-time favorites.
I like jazz. I like jazz a lot. I also like good books and good writing. This book is neither of those. Here's what's good about it some of the descriptions of the bands play were interesting. Zabor got into the psychology of group playing. That was interesting the first few times but by the end, it just got boring. There was some snappy dialogue and the Shakespeare refs were kinda fun to notice. But that's about it. It was godawful long, pointless, and boring. 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. I just started reading the beginnings and ends of his verbose paragraphs). Why did this win a Pen/Faulkner, I don't know. Save your money.
If you like Jazz, get this book. If you like reading about music theory, but in a way that makes want to learn more, not in way that gives you a headache, get this book. I'm a super beginner piano player, learning to play beginner/fetal versions of Count Basie and Bach. I loved reading about the Bear interacting with or being influenced by other musicians and songs that actually existed. You can tell the author used to be a music critic for a magazine, he knows his music and jazz history. I'd often read a few pages then search for a video of a certain musician or piece of music like Carla Bley, Gary Bartz or Shostakovich violin concerto 1. 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. OK, Is the story any good? Considering the rest, it doesn't have to be, but yeah it's decent. There is enough story to keep you wanting to read and wondering what will happen next. Occasionally the author goes off on a "Tolkienesque" rant describing something, but he always brings you back before you get bored.