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. ( )

Beautifully observed with well-developed characters like all other Irving, but pages upon pages upon pages of talk about motorcycle parts. Plus, countless contrived dark slapstick situations I suspect John Irving thought were brilliant and hilarious built around intentional or unintentional animal abuse/ death as a recurring theme. “The Water Method Man”, published 4 years after this, is my very favorite- if this were my first John Irving novel, it would have been my last. I would consider bringing it with me on camping trips to use the pages as kindling. ( )

Was tun, wenn zwei Wiener Eulenspiegel beschlossen haben, durch ihre Universitätsexamen zu fallen, auf einem geliehenen Motorrad in die Welt zu fahren und die Bären zu befreien? Unterwegs gilt es, dicke und dünne Mädchen zu erobern, wachsame Tanten, Parkwächter und wütende Bienen zu überlisten. Vor dem Hintergrund des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Österreich bekommt diese Reise eine tragisch-skurrile Vorgeschichte.

It's not often you put down a book having got to the last page and think to yourself, 'Why did I bother'. An awful book. Written in a comic book, faux naive style it has a plot that goes nowhere until the last few pages. It has characters who are cardboard cut outs. It has an irritating written style. It has nothing to recommend it. ( )

Een vreemd boek, dat de gebeurtenissen in Oostenrijk in WO II combineert met het dolle plan van twee gesjeesde studenten om de dieren van de dierentuin bij Wenen los te laten. Of doen oorlogen dat met mensen, ze zo gek maken?