I am reading the new John Irving novel and so far its pretty good. I have read all of his books, even the ones before The World According to Garp. He is one of the few “serious” writers I read. I mostly read popular fiction like Stephen King, John Grisham, John Patterson, Robert Ludlum, Janet Evanovich, Stuart Woods, Lawrence Sanders, Robert Crais, Sue Grafton, Tom Clancy, John Sanford, amongst others.
I like to read for the sheer enjoyment of it and don’t usually get caught up with metaphorical references and the meaning of life, but in Irving’s first 5-6 novels, there was always a reference to a bear, including Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire. One of the novels was actually named Setting Free the Bears.
Does anybody know what this was a reference to or the object of the metaphor? The setting of these books were usually at least partially in Europe, they were written during the Cold War years, and Russia’s symbol was the bear, but that never seemed to make sense to me. Was it that or something else? Any literary scholars out there who know the answer or at least have thoughts on the subject?
I don’t get it either, but you’re not alone in thinking it (link contains spoilers for Widow for One Year). Maybe they’re just nostalgic references to his first novel?
A friend once told me that John Irving had said in an interview that, in his younger years, when he did a lot of wrestling, his nickname was “The Bear.” Dunno whether this is true or not.
That’s what I came in here to post – he studied in Vienna, and there’s bears around almost every corner there. In circuses, on coats of arms, on menus – bears.
We studied Irving back when I was going for my Masters, and my professor was an acquaintance of his. He asied Irving about the bears, and Irving said, essentially, “whenever I introduce a bear into my book, it suddenly becomes more interesting.” In other words, something about introducing a bear made the writing suddenly fall into place for him. It’s just a writing technique he uses.
Way back he did a reading at the U of Texas. Someone asked him what was the deal with Vienna and bears in his books. He got all huffy and said that there wasn’t one.