Bear

Hosted by Chris Piuma and Suzanne Conklin Akbari

Bear, take me to the bottom of the ocean with you, bear, swim with me, bear, put your arms around me, enclose me, swim, down, down, down with me.

Bear, make me comfortable in the world at last. Give me your skin.

Bear, I want nothing but this from you. Oh, thank you, bear. I will keep you safe from strangers and peering eyes forever.

Bear, give up your humility. You are not a humble beast. You think your own thoughts. Tell them to me.

Bear, I cannot command you to love me, but I think you love me. What I want is for you to continue to be, and to be something to me. No more. Bear.

Marian Engel’s novel Bear has a reputation—or perhaps two. Some people speak about it in giggling tones as “that Canadian book where a woman has sex with a bear”; but people who actually read the novel often find a complex and nuanced story, full of unexpected resonance. Suzanne and Chris think about how the novel’s relationship with 70s feminism plays out 45 years later, and look at the binaries the novel sets up (man/woman, human/animal, civilized/natural, subject/object) and what happens as they break down.

46. Bear.

The Spouter-Inn Marian Engel’s controversial but classic novel Bear. More episodes

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Show Notes.

Next: Marian Engel: Bear. [Bookshop.]

CBC Radio on Bear.

Hugh MacLennan: Two Solitudes.

Marius Barbeau, problematic ethnologist.

On Lord Byron.

Edward John Trelawny: Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author.

Our episodes on Braiding Sweetgrass and Monkey Beach.

E.T.A. Hoffmann: The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr.

Our episode on Little Women.

Marie de France: Lais, esp. Chevrefoil and Lanval.

Next: E.B. White: Charlotte’s Web. [Bookshop.]

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