By Clare Howell
Once upon a time, before photocopying and smartphones, a sad English professor, Arthur Bramhall, takes a sabbatical, buys a cabin in the woods of Maine, and goes there to write a best-selling novel about having sex with women who’ve moved to the country and are as depressed as he is. But he finds that women there «wore shapeless overalls, frequently smelled of kerosene… and refused to shave their legs. «
This suppressed his libido, so he gives up on the idea of trying to duplicate a bestseller and simply writes “from the heart—about love and longing, and loss, about the forces of nature.” Lots of sex remains, but now it is all connected “to the ancient moods of the forests, to crow songs.”
Upon finishing his novel, he puts it in a briefcase and stores it outside away from the cabin under some tree limbs in case of fire. A bear foraging for food sees him hiding the briefcase. When the man leaves for town, the bear uncovers the briefcase to find no food, but he notices the manuscript. Disappointed he can’t eat it, the bear looks at the first page, reads a bit, and thinks to himself, «This isn’t bad. «
And we’re off and running in a wonderland of misunderstanding, lust, greed, and constant hunger, featuring a bear who longs to be human and a human who devolves (evolves?) into a bear. All this in a gently wicked satire that ravages the publishing industry and what passes for reality in our current moment.
Though written 25 years ago, this story resonates righteously now, when supposedly responsible people can say with a straight face that up is down and round is square. Rereading it now, it has a more piquant edge than it did a generation ago.
The bear takes the manuscript to a local diner and decides to take a human name for himself—»Jam, » from his favorite food, and «Hal,» from a packet of half-and-half on the table. He carefully writes a new cover sheet to the manuscript, changing it from «Destiny and Desire» by “Arthur Bramhall,» to «Destiny and Desire» by «Hal Jam.” Laugh-out-loud hilarity ensues.
Hal knows he isn’t smart like people, nor is he very articulate. He’s only a bear. His efforts to humanize himself occasionally run afoul of his bear nature. After a fine meal at a restaurant with his agent, for example, Hal slides out of his chair and rolls around on his back on the floor «with his paws in the air as a bear will do when he finds a field of flowers that fills him with happiness. » His agent is horrified as the waiter springs into action, «Monsieur, please, not during lunch!» The bear freezes, aware of many eyes on him. «I’m getting a feeling here… Possible blunder? «
Another time, at a luncheon for him, Hal’s nose—»the olfactory bulb at its root a thousand times more sensitive than that of a human»—twitches. He turns, and there it is—salmon, skewered with tomatoes and mushrooms. «Raw, » said the bear. «Raw? Raw female. Lots of eggs. In my teeth. » Lord, thinks his agent, another Hemingway.
Meanwhile, as Hal soaks up the adulation of publishers and agents in NYC and Hollywood, Arthur Bramhall is slowly going crazy in the woods. Unhinged beyond angry at his fate, he takes to sleeping for long stretches in a cave until hunger drives him to break into houses looking for raw fish. He finds one wrapped in a newspaper, on a scrap of which he catches the title, «Destiny and Desire» by Hal Jam, and realizes he’d been had by a bear.
A courtroom drama follows, pitting Hal against Bramhall. Confused on the stand, Hal confesses, «I’m a bear. » Yes, thinks the jury, «the voice of Maine—the bears, the moose, the birds, the flowers » The jury decides for Hal. They didn’t know he was a bear, in spite of his having told them. They’re only human.
Bramhall returns to the woods and his senses gradually become acute. A new world opens to him as «he sniffed his way through a layer of experience that had been sealed off from mankind for eons.»
Hal, ever on the lookout for another stray briefcase, meets an old Cuban revolutionary who has spent the last 30 years locked away in a Castro prison, secretly writing a fantasy set in the woods about Ratty, a rodent he grew fond of in his cell. Now, rapidly fading into dementia and physical decrepitude, the old guy is on his last legs. In fact, he’ll fall over in just a minute, leaving nothing but a battered briefcase containing his book that no one knows about. It’s a story from the heart—of love and longing, and loss, about the forces of nature. . .
