Setting Free the Bears

Irvingin esikoisesta on helppo huomata tämän lahjat tarinankertojana ja myöhemmistä kirjoista tuttuja elementtejä on reilusti Irving-bingon täytteeksi. Vapauttakaa karhut ei kuitenkaan ole kovin hyvä kirja. Eikä syynä ole niinkään, että omat verrokkini Irvingin muusta tuotannosta, siis loistavat Garpin maailma ja Kaikki isäni hotellit, olisivat asettaneet tälle liian korkeat odotukset. Kirjan kerronta vain takkuili jatkuvasti ja kirjan lopussa jäi vahva fiilis, että useampia kirjassa esiteltyjä kehityskulkuja ei käsitelty järin tyydyttävästi. Oli tässä paljon hyvääkin, kuten juonen mainio kehystys, ajoittainen loistava sekoilu sekä hieno toinen osa, jossa vuorottelevat kertomus toisen maailmansodan ajan Itävallasta ja Jugoslaviasta sekä öinen soluttautuminen wieniläiseen eläintarhaan; onneksi tämä osa vei noin puolet kirjasta.

I absolutely love books where the protagonist slowly goes insane. Also lovely homoeroticism and so many silly lines. It had me giggling out loud at some points. There were some kind of rough descriptions of women near the beginning which felt icky, but besides that a mostly very fun and enjoyable book.

I think this was my 3rd attempt at reading this book and I made it through with more appreciation for it than I had after abandoning it before. I think I quit as a younger person because the main character is so rudderless. I can see that now and get what Irving was doing with the character but I think it seemed too weird to me 3 decades ago. Now, the book strikes me as a little uneven but still one I should have read long ago.

Si no fuese fan absoluta de John Irving probablemente este libro me hubiera resultado insoportable; es caótico, delirante y aburrido a ratos pero es John Irving: muchas de las razones por las que me gustan sus novelas se encuentran también aquí, sólo que no tan bien desarrolladas como en sus trabajos posteriores. Libertad para los osos es lo primero que publicó y eso se nota pero aún así no me arrepiento de haberla leído, creo que todos los fans de John Irving deberían hacerlo.

I'm a fan of John Irving and have read many of his books. I was aware that early in his career he was not immediately a bestselling author and had written three novels before his break thru The World According Garp. Setting Free the Bears was his first. My guess is he was writing it while he was in The University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop studying under Kurt Vonnegut. While there are no wrestlers there were several aspects which became expected parts of a Irving novel. There are central characters moving along the arc of a plot, sex, accidents, weirdness, tons of imagination, relatives, motorcycles, animals, violence, cursing, broken families, etc. Frotting becomes the f-word of choice used frequently. While Irving's later novels are often based in the U.S. and Canada he has also taken us to northern European countries. This one is a little different. It takes place in Austria with side trips mainly to Yugoslavia.



The arc starts off with a student at loose ends who quickly pairs up with a wild man who's obsessed with motorcycles. They begin an aimless journey, think Jack Kerouac, riding, fishing, living off the land, exiting before authorities appear. The wild man becomes obsessed with the possibility of freeing animals locked up in captivity, to his mind, through no fault of their own. Things get complex when they arrive at a village with a Gasthaus and a drunken milkman is whipping a fallen horse. The wild man goes berserk and beats up the drunk. It gets worse and it's time for him to exit quickly, with motorcycle of course. Our hero on the other hand is left holding the bag and becoming enamored with the young niece of the Gasthaus owner.



At this point everything shifts. We barely hear about our hero and his predicament. Instead it feels like the Writer's Workshop intervenes and we have two stories told through alternating passages. In one we get the wild man's back story in terms of his father's prewar and WWII experiences and how he comes to possess the legendary motorcycle our wild man is attached to. The story is told with the accuracy of a historical fiction writer laying out how WWII impacted real people, ruining lives right and left. I can only guess this is what John Irving studied in school down to a short bibliography of sources for these seemingly wild series of events. Alternating with this saga we see the wild man meticulously creating a way to bust out all the animals as he stalks the nightwatchmen who he believes must be torturing the animals as they scream out to warn each other. He silently talks with the animals and understands their pain. Acting against type, he puts together a detailed plan, which he is convinced will free the beasts once the tyrant has been subdued.



Time for the handoff. The wild man returns to the village to free our hero and recruit him to free the zoo animals from their oppressor. But this time the authorities are waiting for him and he goes out in a burst of glory upsetting the perilously stacked tower of bees who of course take it out on our hero who barely survives the zillions of stinging insects. He is nursed/bathed back to health in the Gasthaus only to have to escape with the young niece who seems to have aged quickly. And of course they ride off with the motorcycle. At first it's just the bliss of getting away. Then we await the inevitable as the two slowly become a couple. She wants to become worldly and suggests they go to Vienna, only to discover that's where the zoo is. Our hero sees the wild man's notebook contains a carefully crafted plan to bust out the animals. They fight over his desire to free the animals as she clearly sees this as the madness she thought they both recognized and rejected. She goes along with the plan only if he revised it to only release small animals who won't kill each other. It starts out that way but the animals have a mind of their own and get into it, releasing bigger and bigger beasts. It's pandemonium with the larger predators exercising their natural instincts to hunt the slower beasts. Our lovers escape the zoo only to find the neighbors have risen to the challenge with pitchforks and other implements at hand. Killing is everywhere. Once they've cleared the area they stop. She is fed up with him, demands the money she was paid to have her long hair cut to be made into wigs. She wants to go back to Vienna without of course the defeated hero who heads out of town hoping she might change her mind.



How does this end? As he gets further out of town he stops only to see a pair of bears slowly getting closer to the mountains ahead. In some sense it was worth it after all.



Irving had to start somewhere.

Dieses Buch ist die Definition für Mittelmaß. Definitiv nicht schlecht oder langweilig, aber auch nicht besonders überragend. Irving kann sehr gute Geschichten schreiben (siehe Gottes Werk und Teufels Beitrag), aber Lasst die Bären los gehört nicht dazu, was sicherlich darin liegt, dass dies sein Erstlingswerk ist. Trotzdem findet man hier schon typische Irving-Elemente und auch der Stil ist relativ ähnlich zu dem, was er später schreiben sollte. Und gerade der skurrile, außergewöhnliche Stil ist das, was mir besonders gut gefällt.
Inhaltlich erlebt der Leser auf 500 Seiten schon recht viel. Die beiden Protagonisten Graff und Siggi, beide eher erfolgslose Wiener Studenten, entscheiden sich spontan, auf einem alten Motorrad durch Österreich zu reisen, ohne besonderes Ziel. Im ersten Teil haben wir einen klassischen "Roadmovie", der Spaß macht. Allerdings ist die Übersetzung so dermaßen misslungen; die Dialoge sind unrealistisch und die Sprache der beiden, auch wenn man sich in den 60ern befindet, nicht zeitgemäß.
Im zweiten Teil gibt es einen harten Bruch in der Geschichte und man erfährt von Siggis Vorgeschichte und dem Leben seiner Eltern im zweiten Weltkrieg. An dieser Stelle hätte ich mir noch mehr die Perspektive Siggis in der Nachkriegszeit gewünscht. Das wurde zu Beginn des zweiten Teils kurz angeschnitten, danach leider nicht mehr aufgegriffen. Dennoch ist der zweite Teil für mich der spannendste Teil des Buches.
Im dritten Teil springt die Geschichte zurück ans Ende des ersten Teils. Inhaltlich werde ich hier nichts mehr zu schreiben.
Insgesamt hat das Buch einige Schwächen, was die Charakterausarbeitung angeht. Im Grunde sind einige Hauptfiguren bis zum Ende blass, was so Irving-untypisch ist und er in späteren Werken besser macht. Zudem wird die Geschichte mir am Ende zu pathetisch (für das Thema).

What the hell was that?

Setting Free the Bears had a very 1960s vibe to it, at least the first part did, with the strange and unexplained characters and motivations. I'm just not sure what to make of the rest of it.

It was an interesting project for an American to take on, this story that takes place in WWII- and postwar-era Europe, and is deeply and specifically European.

It might be best to read this novel more than once, but as much as I enjoyed parts of it, I don't think I'm going to do that.

This makes me sad to admit but John Irving´s books have been such disappointments lately - and I used to consider him one of my favorite authors. The ones I´ve read recently are boring, reading them feels like a chore instead of a gripping enjoyment. Setting Free the Bears has a similar style to Irving´s later novels and it even features some of the elements (like bears) that seem to always come up in his stories. The history parts especially have some funny bits, but I found the women to be written extremely poorly and even the main characters couldn´t hold my interest. It was nearly impossible to create any connection to them. I really hope I´ll find more gems by John Irving or else I´ll stop searching. It feels like I either absolutely adore his stories or almost despise them. Right now I´d be happy to come across something I´d at least enjoy.