The Bear Went Over the Mountain

Starred review from September 2, 1996
This is certainly the season for satirical looks at publishing. After Olivia Goldsmith's The Bestseller comes this delightful fable by Kotzwinkle (whose E.T. shares with Winston Groom's Forrest Gump the distinction of being its author's best-known title despite having been read by comparatively few people). Kotzwinkle has imagined a disconsolate Maine professor, Arthur Bramhall, who sets out to write a bestseller, only to have a bear steal it, thinking it's something to eat. This is no ordinary bear, however; he has aspirations to becoming a person (they eat so much better, and with much less trouble, than bears do). What better way to establish an identity than by becoming a celebrity novelist? Soon, the bear has found a pseudonym, Hal Jam, an agent and a publisher. With his distinctively masculine presence, and a monosyllabic way of talking that reminds many of Hemingway, he's on his way to stardom with a novel that everyone agrees has its roots deep in the natural world. Soon, he has a Hollywood agent, too, and the admiration of a Southern writer whose specialty is angels; both of them succumb to Hal's exuberant love-making (since a bear normally does it only once a year, a lot of libido is saved up). A pillar of the Christian right wants Hal's support for a run for the presidency, and Hal is only too willing, since he thinks "candidacy,'' like most words he doesn't know, means something to eat. Meanwhile, Bramhall, who is turning into a bear as fast as Hal is becoming human, launches a lawsuit to recover his lost book. How it all works out, and how Hal finds himself a sequel, is the meat of Kotzwinkle's hilarious and sometimes touching parable. The book business is unmercifully skewered (having read only a few lines of the novel, Hal's publicity person writes a summary on which all interviewers depend), but the spirit is mostly kindly, and in Hal Kotzwinkle has created a real star. Movie rights optioned by Jim Henson Pictures; author tour.

June 1, 1996
Here's one author you'll never forget. We don't mean Kotzwinkle, who does have best sellers like E.T. (LJ 8/82) to his credit, but his latest protagonist: a bear in the Maine woods who discovers an abandoned manuscript and heads to New York to seek literary fortune.

December 1, 1996
YA-Hal Jam takes a manuscript that he finds under a tree in rural Maine, breaks into a store to secure appropriate clothing, and heads for New York City to transform the manuscript into a runaway best-seller. Jam thinks, talks, and behaves like a human with bearlike tendencies; the only unusual part of this scenario is that he is in fact a bear. Kotzwinkle has created a very funny novel, satirizing many different aspects of the literary world. While Hal Jam becomes more and more human in behavior, the real author of the manuscript, Arthur Bramhall, falls further and further into reclusiveness searching for possible ideas for a future novel. As he retreats from humankind, his bearlike characteristics become more and more permanent. Only a brief attempt to identify himself as the author of the famous novel shakes Bramhall from his winter slumber. As Hal Jam thrives in his new environment, he encounters all the negatives found in a fast-wheeling money-driven society-drugs, alcohol, greed, and under-the-table agreements. His human behavior struggles with his still-prominent bear behavior. He has the normal desires of a male bear and acts upon them. And no one sees the bear. There are a lot of outrageous scenes, both in rural Maine and in urban areas. Sophisticated students will understand the underlying satire; others will laugh just for the sake of laughing.-Dottie Kraft, formerly at Fairfax County Public Schools, VA

Starred review from August 1, 1996
Kotzwinkle's sprawling body of work includes the psychedelic cult novel "The Fan Man" (1974), the novelization of" ET: The Extraterrestrial" (1982), and the award-winning animal-uprising fantasy "Dr. Rat" (1976). If anyone is qualified to write a satire of the book racket featuring a famous author who is also a bear, it's Kotzwinkle. As the book opens, we meet University of Maine professor Arthur Bramhall, who has spent his sabbatical in the country writing "Destiny and Desire," a moving rural love story with lots of fishing and sex. Having lost one typewritten draft to a fire, he cautiously hides his latest version under a low-hanging tree. Unfortunately for Art, the briefcase containing his manuscript is found by a foraging bear, who can read well enough to know that he's got a hit on his hands. Having acquired a suit, a New York agent, and the nom de plume Hal Jam, he takes the publishing world by storm. His clumsy utterances act as a sort of conversational inkblot test, much like Chauncey Gardiner's power in "Being There"everyone hears what they need to hear. No one notices that Hal is a bear, but he does get compared to Hemingway a lot. Meanwhile, back in Maine, Art is exhibiting some distinctly ursine behavior. Within the framework of the tried-and-true "switch" plot, Kotzwinkle tweaks publicists, academics, politicians, and anyone else he can think of and wraps up the whole uproarious package with an ending that is both surprising and inevitable. ((Reviewed Aug. 1996))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1996, American Library Association.)