Help me find some fictional bears
June 19, 2010 6:30 AM Subscribe
I'm writing an absurd little story, and I need examples of bears that appear in literature. It can be full characters such as Winnie the Pooh and Baloo, but ideally they would be secondary beings like the bear in A Winter's Tale or the bear in William Faulkner's The Bear.
In the story, a professor becomes obsessed with teaching this topic. It's also important that the work or author in question is reasonably well regarded in academia (i.e. Faulkner, Shakespeare), and not too obscure, since everything takes place in a college setting.
In the story, a professor becomes obsessed with teaching this topic. It's also important that the work or author in question is reasonably well regarded in academia (i.e. Faulkner, Shakespeare), and not too obscure, since everything takes place in a college setting.
Hotel New Hampshire
posted by spicynuts at 6:44 AM on June 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by spicynuts at 6:44 AM on June 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
As well an an earlier John Irving novel, Setting Free the Bears.
posted by leesh at 6:49 AM on June 19, 2010
posted by leesh at 6:49 AM on June 19, 2010
There are bears all through John Irvings early fiction. He wrote a novel called Setting Free the Bears. Hotel New Hampshire. I'm pretty sure there's a bear in Garp. Yup, this chart at wikipedia shows all the novels with bears as a theme.
posted by OmieWise at 6:52 AM on June 19, 2010
posted by OmieWise at 6:52 AM on June 19, 2010
Best answer: 2 Kings 2:23-25:
23 Then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!” 24 When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. Then two female bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number. 25 And he went from there to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.posted by pracowity at 6:58 AM on June 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: I did see the wiki list previously Faint of Butt, but it's predominantly about children's lit. The Bartered Bride, the Bible, and John Irving are just the kind of stuff I need. Keep em coming!
posted by Omon Ra at 7:10 AM on June 19, 2010
posted by Omon Ra at 7:10 AM on June 19, 2010
Are representations of bears acceptable, or do they have to be real bears? In other words, do teddy bears and people dressed up as bears count?
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:15 AM on June 19, 2010
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:15 AM on June 19, 2010
Someone's mentioned Ursa Major (mythologically, Zeus' love interest Callisto turned into a bear by Hera), but how's this for absurd:
posted by amtho at 7:17 AM on June 19, 2010
In European star charts, the constellation was visualized with the 'square' of the Big Dipper forming the bear's body and the chain of stars as a long tail. However, bears do not have long tails, and Jewish astronomers considered Alioth, Mizar, and Alkaid instead to be either three cubs following their mother, and the Native Americans as three hunters.Also, Paddington.
posted by amtho at 7:17 AM on June 19, 2010
The Callisto myth referred to by pracowity was my first thought. Also, Jack London's your man: take a look at "Bald-Face" (grizzlies) and "The Story of Keesh" (polar bears).
posted by cirripede at 7:17 AM on June 19, 2010
posted by cirripede at 7:17 AM on June 19, 2010
Best answer: And here's a link to the Callisto story in Ovid's Metamorphoses, which is the version I'm familiar with.
posted by cirripede at 7:21 AM on June 19, 2010
posted by cirripede at 7:21 AM on June 19, 2010
There's a bear in the Stephen King book, The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon.
posted by samsaunt at 7:56 AM on June 19, 2010
posted by samsaunt at 7:56 AM on June 19, 2010
Here's a bit of a long shot because it doesn't appear in literature, but appears in a movie but is based on a bit in a book:
The bear in the movie The Shining.
For some reason it's a bear in the movie, but in the book it's a dog.
posted by Sassyfras at 8:00 AM on June 19, 2010
The bear in the movie The Shining.
For some reason it's a bear in the movie, but in the book it's a dog.
posted by Sassyfras at 8:00 AM on June 19, 2010
Terry Bisson has a great short story called Bears Discover Fire in the short story collection of the same name. IIRC the bears in it are only ever seen at a distance, but they do figure prominently.
posted by slappy_pinchbottom at 8:05 AM on June 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by slappy_pinchbottom at 8:05 AM on June 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
It's not literature, but: "There's a Bear in the woods... Isn't it smart to be as strong as the bear? If there is a bear?" (Reagan/Bush '84 campaign ad; the bear of course represents the Soviet Union.)
posted by orthogonality at 8:10 AM on June 19, 2010
posted by orthogonality at 8:10 AM on June 19, 2010
The Bear Went Over the Mountain is the story of a bear who finds a manuscript and becomes an overnight literary sensation. Despite the fact that he is indeed a bear.
posted by chatongriffes at 8:19 AM on June 19, 2010 [2 favorites]
posted by chatongriffes at 8:19 AM on June 19, 2010 [2 favorites]
Having read it 25 years ago, I can't remember much about the quality or plot of Bear by Marian Engel, except that it was a book about a woman who has a sexual relationship with a bear. I've never seen it with the cover shown in the link, which makes it look absurdly cheesy, but it was considered serious Canadian literature at one time.
posted by TimTypeZed at 8:35 AM on June 19, 2010
posted by TimTypeZed at 8:35 AM on June 19, 2010
Best answer: This is very minor, but in War and Peace Anatole and his drunken bad-boy friends have a bear cub that they get in all sorts of shenanigans with. They tie it to a police officer and throw them in the river, among other things. And IIRC it's gossiped about in several other scenes by other people.
posted by DestinationUnknown at 8:37 AM on June 19, 2010
posted by DestinationUnknown at 8:37 AM on June 19, 2010
Canadian novelist Marian Engel's Bear (1976), about a woman in a sexual relationship with a bear. Shocked a lot of people, won the Governor-General's Award.
posted by neroli at 9:31 AM on June 19, 2010
posted by neroli at 9:31 AM on June 19, 2010
Didn't Atalanta wrestle a bear or maybe she was raised by a bear or something? I forget. Hm, all I'm finding online is that she supposedly suckled from a she-bear and that might explain her strength.
posted by ifjuly at 9:33 AM on June 19, 2010
posted by ifjuly at 9:33 AM on June 19, 2010
Response by poster: Faint of Butt, it also works with representational bears.
The gist of the story is that a small university, having lost all its literature professors, assigns a slightly mad zoologist the task of teaching those courses. The zoologist then goes on to design a demented syllabus, which argues that the only "true subject" of world literature is bears. The joke works best with things like the Bible, classical Greek myth, Shakespeare, and especially War and Peace, since part of the point is to create a satire which shows how sub-par academics sometimes try to squeeze every point of reference to serve their skewed pet theories.
posted by Omon Ra at 9:50 AM on June 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
The gist of the story is that a small university, having lost all its literature professors, assigns a slightly mad zoologist the task of teaching those courses. The zoologist then goes on to design a demented syllabus, which argues that the only "true subject" of world literature is bears. The joke works best with things like the Bible, classical Greek myth, Shakespeare, and especially War and Peace, since part of the point is to create a satire which shows how sub-par academics sometimes try to squeeze every point of reference to serve their skewed pet theories.
posted by Omon Ra at 9:50 AM on June 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
In one of the many Patrick O'Brien books, Jack Aubrey escapes from someplace in a bear suit. But its not very high literature, and you'll have to comb through about twenty books to find it. Although I think it happens in the first half of the series.
There is also the SnowWhite and RoseRed fairy tale, which feature a prince disguised as a bear.
And the Golden Compass. Young adult literature, not quite kiddie lit.
And the marvelous East of the Sun and West of the Moon.
posted by SLC Mom at 10:27 AM on June 19, 2010
There is also the SnowWhite and RoseRed fairy tale, which feature a prince disguised as a bear.
And the Golden Compass. Young adult literature, not quite kiddie lit.
And the marvelous East of the Sun and West of the Moon.
posted by SLC Mom at 10:27 AM on June 19, 2010
His Dark Materials features the Panserbjorne, most notably Iorek Byrnison
posted by cmgonzalez at 10:28 AM on June 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by cmgonzalez at 10:28 AM on June 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
Nthing Johh Irving. Make sure to look at his latest book, Last Night in Twisted River, because [semi-spoiler alert] it's a novel about a novelist who writes autobiography disguised as fiction, written by John Irving, who is known for incorporating autobiography into his fiction. It's an interesting dynamic. Irving is no Shakespeare, but if your zoologist/professor looked only at John Irving he'd certainly be convinced that all books incorporate bears (and New England boarding school wrestling teams, older women who prey sexually on young adolescent men, and Vienna).
posted by sallybrown at 10:32 AM on June 19, 2010
posted by sallybrown at 10:32 AM on June 19, 2010
Best answer: You can't read Russian literature without tripping over bears. Bears are huge in Russian folktales and cultural traditions and most of the big Russian authors have used them at some point or another. Pushkin has a bear dream sequence in Eugene Onegin, and a dancing bear in his poem, The Gypsies; Dostoevsky uses a bear for a parable in The Brothers Karamazov (last paragraph on the page); Chekhov wrote a play called The Bear (although I can't remember if there is an actual bear in it and I don't see the text online). In addition to the bear in War and Peace, Tolstoy wrote The Bear Hunt about his personal experience on an actual hunt. Ivan Krylov is basically the Russian Aesop and features bears in a number of his works. The Hermit and the Bear and Quartet come to mind, although I can't find good English translations online anywhere. Thumb through a volume of Russian folk tales or an anthology of Russian literature and you'll find dozens of examples of bears.
posted by Dojie at 10:58 AM on June 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by Dojie at 10:58 AM on June 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
And no one has mentioned The Golden Compass? Granted, it's fictional, but one of the main characters is bear.
posted by krisak at 11:05 AM on June 19, 2010
posted by krisak at 11:05 AM on June 19, 2010
If living authors are okay, Jim Harrison is someone that some consider one of the greatest living American novelists. (I'm sure he has competition, but it is plausible that your prof would agree.) So, if your professor wanted to have a section on great American novels, he could use Faulkner (above) and then Harrison for something more current.
Two Harrison books come to mind:
- The book of novellas The Beast God Forgot to Invent has a bear on its cover, and bears make a few small but important cameos. In one novella, Brown Dog (a recurring Harrison character who is Native American) walks to(?) and all around Los Angeles with just $49 to his name, looking for a bearskin someone stole from him. The novella that shares the book's title is about a local guy brain-damaged in an accident. He goes out on an all-night jaunt. "She said Joe had said he was walking up the small river, in the river at that, to visit the grave of an infant bear he had buried in late May." When found, "Joe announced that he had seen something quite extraordinary, a brand-new mammalian species, a beast that he didn't know existed." Shortly thereafter, he disappears forever. This is not my favorite Harrison book, but in your prof's mind, maybe he is just finding himself as an author?
- Returning to Earth is one of Harrison's most recent books, and the Amazon descriptions make it look really well-reviewed. (I haven't read it.) It is about a man dying of disease, and bears play a key role in his idea of death and the afterlife. It would be plausible for your prof to say that this is the capstone of his career. With the themes of mortality, the afterlife, and spirituality, it could be an interesting note to end on.
posted by salvia at 1:08 PM on June 19, 2010
Two Harrison books come to mind:
- The book of novellas The Beast God Forgot to Invent has a bear on its cover, and bears make a few small but important cameos. In one novella, Brown Dog (a recurring Harrison character who is Native American) walks to(?) and all around Los Angeles with just $49 to his name, looking for a bearskin someone stole from him. The novella that shares the book's title is about a local guy brain-damaged in an accident. He goes out on an all-night jaunt. "She said Joe had said he was walking up the small river, in the river at that, to visit the grave of an infant bear he had buried in late May." When found, "Joe announced that he had seen something quite extraordinary, a brand-new mammalian species, a beast that he didn't know existed." Shortly thereafter, he disappears forever. This is not my favorite Harrison book, but in your prof's mind, maybe he is just finding himself as an author?
- Returning to Earth is one of Harrison's most recent books, and the Amazon descriptions make it look really well-reviewed. (I haven't read it.) It is about a man dying of disease, and bears play a key role in his idea of death and the afterlife. It would be plausible for your prof to say that this is the capstone of his career. With the themes of mortality, the afterlife, and spirituality, it could be an interesting note to end on.
posted by salvia at 1:08 PM on June 19, 2010
In one of the many Patrick O'Brien books, Jack Aubrey escapes from someplace in a bear suit.
Happens early in Post Captain, the 2nd book in the series.
posted by mediareport at 4:58 PM on June 19, 2010
Happens early in Post Captain, the 2nd book in the series.
posted by mediareport at 4:58 PM on June 19, 2010
I know you've already got a Shakespeare example, but in Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice has a bit about how she'll "take sixpence in earnest of the bear-ward" when she's extolling the virtues of spinsterhood.
posted by the latin mouse at 5:11 PM on June 19, 2010
posted by the latin mouse at 5:11 PM on June 19, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
But surely you've consulted Wikipedia's list of fictional bears?
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:42 AM on June 19, 2010