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Bear V. Shark
Book by Bachelder, Chris
251 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
24 people are currently reading
1011 people want to read
About the author
Chris Bachelder
17 books170 followersChris Bachelder is the author of Bear V. Shark, U.S.!: Songs and Stories, Abbott Awaits, and The Throwback Special. His fiction and essays have appeared in McSweeney’s, The Believer, and the Paris Review. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Cincinnati, where he teaches at the University of Cincinnati.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 135 reviews
March 5, 2008
If you've read this, it's not as good as you think it is and you need to get over it. If you haven't, you should, because it's better than you think it will be and I think you're kind of ignorant for not giving it a shot.
September 18, 2012
Round One
Who would win a fight between a young short-haired chihuahua and a pink fairy armadillo? At first, it seems like an easy win for the natural aggressor, the chihuahua, but like many of its species, the pink fairy armadillo has fantastic defence capabilities with its bony armour shell and knack for burrowing to safety in deserts. The chihuahua might paw and provoke the armadillo for several hours, while the sedentary creature remains still, waiting for the chihuahua to grind its teeth down trying to break through its shell. The chihuahua would then collapse exhausted: victor, the armadillo. Or the chihuahua would easily flip the armadillo onto its back and attack the furry side, leaving the creature unable to burrow to safety in the first few seconds, having its way with the helpful desert mammal and emerging the natural, freak-eared winner.
v.
Round Two
Who would win in a fight between a baby black rhino and a Gyles Brandreth? At first, it seems like an easy win for the baby black rhino, which could use its prehensile horn to gore the former TV presenter and Tory MP in the testicles. Easy win. But the Gyles Brandreth might recite a long and tedious anecdote about his education at the Lycée Français or his time spent in the Queen’s company, and bore the young rhino into defeat. The baby black rhino may have developed a third horn however, which can be driven straight through the posh man’s stomach for a swift disembowelment. Advantage, rhino!
v.
Original Review:
This fast-paced satire on TV’s enslavement of the docile American masses packs a mean wallop. It put me in mind of Requiem For A Dream the movie, with all the jump-cuts and invading TV voices, though as a satirist Bachelder is clearly indebted to Kurt Vonnegut. Chris B has an innovative and original voice, though his corpus so far has been rather slim: this novel and U.S.! are his only full-length works. Sob. (Update: Abbott Awaits too).
Who would win a fight between a young short-haired chihuahua and a pink fairy armadillo? At first, it seems like an easy win for the natural aggressor, the chihuahua, but like many of its species, the pink fairy armadillo has fantastic defence capabilities with its bony armour shell and knack for burrowing to safety in deserts. The chihuahua might paw and provoke the armadillo for several hours, while the sedentary creature remains still, waiting for the chihuahua to grind its teeth down trying to break through its shell. The chihuahua would then collapse exhausted: victor, the armadillo. Or the chihuahua would easily flip the armadillo onto its back and attack the furry side, leaving the creature unable to burrow to safety in the first few seconds, having its way with the helpful desert mammal and emerging the natural, freak-eared winner.
v.
Round Two
Who would win in a fight between a baby black rhino and a Gyles Brandreth? At first, it seems like an easy win for the baby black rhino, which could use its prehensile horn to gore the former TV presenter and Tory MP in the testicles. Easy win. But the Gyles Brandreth might recite a long and tedious anecdote about his education at the Lycée Français or his time spent in the Queen’s company, and bore the young rhino into defeat. The baby black rhino may have developed a third horn however, which can be driven straight through the posh man’s stomach for a swift disembowelment. Advantage, rhino!
v.
Original Review:
This fast-paced satire on TV’s enslavement of the docile American masses packs a mean wallop. It put me in mind of Requiem For A Dream the movie, with all the jump-cuts and invading TV voices, though as a satirist Bachelder is clearly indebted to Kurt Vonnegut. Chris B has an innovative and original voice, though his corpus so far has been rather slim: this novel and U.S.! are his only full-length works. Sob. (Update: Abbott Awaits too).
April 28, 2024
I’ve been a fan of Chris Bachelder since reading The Throwback Special, and Abbott Awaits is simply one of my favorite books of all time.
Bear v Shark shows the author’s young voice being honed, and it’s entertaining and smart and a really well done satire of U.S. consumer and entertainment culture. It’s a high wire act to pull off satire without going over the edge into farce, and Bachelder stays the course for the duration.
There are few authors that I’ve read with as many staggering, poignant reflections on domestic life, marriage and existing in this peculiar country, and it’s what keeps me coming back to Chris Bachelder’s work.
This book is also an artifact of the specific time it was written, and that’s non intended as a criticism. To simplify things perhaps too much, it functions as a more readable version of Infinite Jest, concerned with the same things (consumerism, entertainment) and one does not have to strain to picture the bomb that went off in MFA creative writing classes immediately following IJ’s 1996 publication. I wouldn’t say he’s mimicking DFW’s style, but there are clear hints of the influence and also some chapters that are post-modern, experimental and a bit meta with varying degrees of success.
And yet, it’s also sort of the very last gasp before 9/11. Terrorism is a kind of sub-theme for the whole thing, but also treated in kind of a flippant style that wouldn’t have been possible if this book was written a year later, however prescient it might have felt for someone picking it up in October 2001.
I also remember (vaguely) what it was like to live in a pre-9/11 world where our largest national concern was that basically the whole country was becoming dull and vegetative in front of their television each night, and that advertisers were selling us things we didn’t need. How quaint those concerns would soon be.
Mostly, I just love how Bachelder writes about the American family and more specifically the inner thoughts of American fathers.
Bear v Shark shows the author’s young voice being honed, and it’s entertaining and smart and a really well done satire of U.S. consumer and entertainment culture. It’s a high wire act to pull off satire without going over the edge into farce, and Bachelder stays the course for the duration.
There are few authors that I’ve read with as many staggering, poignant reflections on domestic life, marriage and existing in this peculiar country, and it’s what keeps me coming back to Chris Bachelder’s work.
This book is also an artifact of the specific time it was written, and that’s non intended as a criticism. To simplify things perhaps too much, it functions as a more readable version of Infinite Jest, concerned with the same things (consumerism, entertainment) and one does not have to strain to picture the bomb that went off in MFA creative writing classes immediately following IJ’s 1996 publication. I wouldn’t say he’s mimicking DFW’s style, but there are clear hints of the influence and also some chapters that are post-modern, experimental and a bit meta with varying degrees of success.
And yet, it’s also sort of the very last gasp before 9/11. Terrorism is a kind of sub-theme for the whole thing, but also treated in kind of a flippant style that wouldn’t have been possible if this book was written a year later, however prescient it might have felt for someone picking it up in October 2001.
I also remember (vaguely) what it was like to live in a pre-9/11 world where our largest national concern was that basically the whole country was becoming dull and vegetative in front of their television each night, and that advertisers were selling us things we didn’t need. How quaint those concerns would soon be.
Mostly, I just love how Bachelder writes about the American family and more specifically the inner thoughts of American fathers.
June 4, 2007
Bear V Shark was Chris Bachelder's first novel, U.S.! was his second, and reading them, you can really tell that they were written in that order. U.S.! is much more accomplished, whereas Bear V Shark, while clever, suffers from being far too one-note. It's also more bleak and depressing, eviscerating American culture—which, in a not-too-distant future where televisions no longer turn off, involves a nation that has become obsessed with a virtual fight between the titular animals—without leaving even the shred of hope or optimism U.S.! offered. Plus, the (intentional) errors in fact that all the characters spout (a Gordian knot is referred to throughout as a guardian knot, for example) drove me *insane*. I can't stand that amount of dumb! Not even in the cause of satire!
However, it is very amusing to picture Stephen Colbert reading this novel. I'm thinking audio book?
However, it is very amusing to picture Stephen Colbert reading this novel. I'm thinking audio book?
June 15, 2017
"Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements?"
January 29, 2014
Our culture of spectacle is awful, terrible, no-good, very bad – how’s that for a newsflash…?
Chris Bachelder’s Bear v. Shark is one of those books that does what one of my teachers used to admonish his students to do: it articulates the obvious. In many cases that is a good thing, not a bad one, and this book is one of those cases.
The subject of Bear v. Shark is the devolution of American culture, and Bachelder does a decent job of articulating the horror that is our descent into trivialized celebration of the meaningless with his overriding meme – a sensationalized “battle of the ages” between a bear (type never denoted) and a shark (type never denoted). Part of the charm of wading through Bachelder’s book is his constant evasion of answering this question: What kind of bear is going to fight what kind of shark – and why should I care? That he gets us to wonder about this instead of immediately responding “What a load of crap this is” says good things about his talent as a writer. But it doesn’t help this book, published in 2001, from feeling dated.Part of that dated feeling comes from reading a book that is so obviously a contrived homage to one who is surely in Bachelder’s pantheon of favorite writers: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Stylistically, Bear v. Shark owes much – perhaps, too much – to the Vonnegut of the Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions period. So reading the novel feels like stepping into a time capsule and being whisked back to some moment between 1969-1973. Vonnegut once described his writing style (I paraphrase) as writing a joke until he got it right, then writing another joke and another and another until he had a book. Anyone who’s read Vonnegut knows that that’s not quite the truth – but it’s reasonably close. The same is true of Bachelder; he writes joke after joke with, like his stylistic master Vonnegut, those few passages of dramatic action that convey a signal message of the book. It’s a wonderful, engaging style, and Bachelder does it well here – but it’s too Vonnegut. I kept waiting for Kilgore Trout to pop up. The setting, sometime in a near future America of nonstop infotainment, is also awfully Vonnegutian (Is that a word? Well, it is now.).
Certainly, given the recent publication date, Bachelder does a nice job of bringing to the table a number of issues afflicting our current culture: the debasing/devaluing of our most important duty as citizens by making trivial decisions matters of voting; the mindlessness of consumer culture and its seduction of everyone from children to the elderly; our wasteful use of environmental resources (the family in the novel the Normans – you’d be right in assuming that the name is a play on normal – drive an SUV); and most importantly, our obsession with being constantly amused (Bachelder quotes Postman numerous times in the text and Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death is a key source for the novel’s ideas about American cultural dissolution). These issues are illuminated sometimes with clever subtlety, sometimes a tad too stridently. One has to ask if even the most distracted father (and Mr. Norman is above all, distracted) would ignore his son’s serious head contusion to avoid missing the spectacle of a computer generated bear fighting a computer generated shark.
And maybe that’s where the novel goes a little off the rails for me. The premise is intriguing and the cultural criticisms, though sometimes too didactic, are certainly valid. But ultimately the novel lacks something that I don’t think any amount of cultural critique or jokiness can cover up – its characters lack humanity. The shallow, self-absorbed preoccupations of the Norman family – Mr. and Mrs. Norman, their sons Matthew and Curtis – are so off-putting that even when Curtis is injured jumping into his father’s arms to escape a vice squad raid on a cult determined to destroy the arena where the “bear v. shark” contest will be held (both are there because of their own foolhardiness, the most notable character trait of the family), what we feel most is – disgust for the wanton wastefulness of the business.
But maybe that’s what Chris Bachelder wants us to feel about his characters – that they are so controlled by infotainment addiction, consumption obsession, and self-gratification that they cannot rouse themselves to be humane – or human – to one another. That’s horrific – all the more so because it feels as if it could be true. So perhaps Bachelder means Bear v. Shark as a warning that our culture of distraction is destroying our humanity.
If so, he likely knows his warning has gone largely unheeded. If you don’t believe me, take a look around Sunday when the vast majority of Americans will be glued to the latest spectacle – Seahawk v. Bronco….
Chris Bachelder’s Bear v. Shark is one of those books that does what one of my teachers used to admonish his students to do: it articulates the obvious. In many cases that is a good thing, not a bad one, and this book is one of those cases.
The subject of Bear v. Shark is the devolution of American culture, and Bachelder does a decent job of articulating the horror that is our descent into trivialized celebration of the meaningless with his overriding meme – a sensationalized “battle of the ages” between a bear (type never denoted) and a shark (type never denoted). Part of the charm of wading through Bachelder’s book is his constant evasion of answering this question: What kind of bear is going to fight what kind of shark – and why should I care? That he gets us to wonder about this instead of immediately responding “What a load of crap this is” says good things about his talent as a writer. But it doesn’t help this book, published in 2001, from feeling dated.Part of that dated feeling comes from reading a book that is so obviously a contrived homage to one who is surely in Bachelder’s pantheon of favorite writers: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Stylistically, Bear v. Shark owes much – perhaps, too much – to the Vonnegut of the Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions period. So reading the novel feels like stepping into a time capsule and being whisked back to some moment between 1969-1973. Vonnegut once described his writing style (I paraphrase) as writing a joke until he got it right, then writing another joke and another and another until he had a book. Anyone who’s read Vonnegut knows that that’s not quite the truth – but it’s reasonably close. The same is true of Bachelder; he writes joke after joke with, like his stylistic master Vonnegut, those few passages of dramatic action that convey a signal message of the book. It’s a wonderful, engaging style, and Bachelder does it well here – but it’s too Vonnegut. I kept waiting for Kilgore Trout to pop up. The setting, sometime in a near future America of nonstop infotainment, is also awfully Vonnegutian (Is that a word? Well, it is now.).
Certainly, given the recent publication date, Bachelder does a nice job of bringing to the table a number of issues afflicting our current culture: the debasing/devaluing of our most important duty as citizens by making trivial decisions matters of voting; the mindlessness of consumer culture and its seduction of everyone from children to the elderly; our wasteful use of environmental resources (the family in the novel the Normans – you’d be right in assuming that the name is a play on normal – drive an SUV); and most importantly, our obsession with being constantly amused (Bachelder quotes Postman numerous times in the text and Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death is a key source for the novel’s ideas about American cultural dissolution). These issues are illuminated sometimes with clever subtlety, sometimes a tad too stridently. One has to ask if even the most distracted father (and Mr. Norman is above all, distracted) would ignore his son’s serious head contusion to avoid missing the spectacle of a computer generated bear fighting a computer generated shark.
And maybe that’s where the novel goes a little off the rails for me. The premise is intriguing and the cultural criticisms, though sometimes too didactic, are certainly valid. But ultimately the novel lacks something that I don’t think any amount of cultural critique or jokiness can cover up – its characters lack humanity. The shallow, self-absorbed preoccupations of the Norman family – Mr. and Mrs. Norman, their sons Matthew and Curtis – are so off-putting that even when Curtis is injured jumping into his father’s arms to escape a vice squad raid on a cult determined to destroy the arena where the “bear v. shark” contest will be held (both are there because of their own foolhardiness, the most notable character trait of the family), what we feel most is – disgust for the wanton wastefulness of the business.
But maybe that’s what Chris Bachelder wants us to feel about his characters – that they are so controlled by infotainment addiction, consumption obsession, and self-gratification that they cannot rouse themselves to be humane – or human – to one another. That’s horrific – all the more so because it feels as if it could be true. So perhaps Bachelder means Bear v. Shark as a warning that our culture of distraction is destroying our humanity.
If so, he likely knows his warning has gone largely unheeded. If you don’t believe me, take a look around Sunday when the vast majority of Americans will be glued to the latest spectacle – Seahawk v. Bronco….
June 15, 2022
Es un libro que no podría recomendar por miedo a que me lo tiréis a la cabeza. Pero lo cierto es que si entras en el delirio postmoderno de propone, es super divertido. En la linea de Pynchon y Foster Wallace, retorciendo el significado, el sujeto y la propia idea de la ficción o de la novela
June 16, 2020
I thought it was great at the beginning. It was hilarious, provocative and quite innovative, but at some point of the book I started to lose interest...
June 17, 2023
Una grande distopia da riscoprire, perchè no, in occasione dell'uscita della nuova stagione di Black Mirror...
Ne parlo in questo videino!
https://youtu.be/ABcL9xmHrhk
Ne parlo in questo videino!
https://youtu.be/ABcL9xmHrhk
November 23, 2022
Leer este libro en medio de la histeria social por el Mundial y el Gran Hermano, es como ver Contagio (la peli de Soderbergh) cuando empezó el coronavirus, o ver Utopia (la yanki o la inglesa, las dos están bien) cuando empezó el tema de la vacuna Sputnik.
El libro cuenta la aventura de una familia que va a ver un espectáculo en Las Vegas, donde van a competir un oso contra un tiburón, un espectáculo del que la nación entera está hablando sin parar.
Eso es la punta de un iceberg de rumiaciones sobre la adicción de la gente a las pantallas (televisores, celulares, lo que sea), la desinformación, las fake news, la gente que opina sin saber de nada pero recibe un medio para que sus opiniones sean escuchadas, la violencia del Estado, el consumismo exagerado, los falsos remedios, la falta de comunicación entre las personas, el entretenimiento para que no veamos los problemas reales (los propios y los que ocurren al otro lado de la puerta).
Y Bachelder lo hace de forma tal que no es un comentario sobre la realidad: es una trompada al lado de la otra. Te está cagando a patadas mientras te grita "PERO VOS TE DAS CUENTA DE QUE ESTO ES LO QUE ESTÁ PASANDO, PEDAZO DE IMBÉCIL".
Varias veces tuve que parar la lectura porque se hace demasiado, en serio. No podés quedarte con el "Ay, qué terrible el capitalismo" como si leyeras un libro de Naomi Klein. De alguna forma te hace sentir culpa, porque sos parte de todo esto y, en el fondo, realmente no querés salir de esto.
Al final del libro te está diciendo que vos, lector, sos igual que Curtis en ese momento, mirando el espectáculo.
Es terrible. Es hermoso. Es doloroso. Es genial.
El libro cuenta la aventura de una familia que va a ver un espectáculo en Las Vegas, donde van a competir un oso contra un tiburón, un espectáculo del que la nación entera está hablando sin parar.
Eso es la punta de un iceberg de rumiaciones sobre la adicción de la gente a las pantallas (televisores, celulares, lo que sea), la desinformación, las fake news, la gente que opina sin saber de nada pero recibe un medio para que sus opiniones sean escuchadas, la violencia del Estado, el consumismo exagerado, los falsos remedios, la falta de comunicación entre las personas, el entretenimiento para que no veamos los problemas reales (los propios y los que ocurren al otro lado de la puerta).
Y Bachelder lo hace de forma tal que no es un comentario sobre la realidad: es una trompada al lado de la otra. Te está cagando a patadas mientras te grita "PERO VOS TE DAS CUENTA DE QUE ESTO ES LO QUE ESTÁ PASANDO, PEDAZO DE IMBÉCIL".
Varias veces tuve que parar la lectura porque se hace demasiado, en serio. No podés quedarte con el "Ay, qué terrible el capitalismo" como si leyeras un libro de Naomi Klein. De alguna forma te hace sentir culpa, porque sos parte de todo esto y, en el fondo, realmente no querés salir de esto.
Al final del libro te está diciendo que vos, lector, sos igual que Curtis en ese momento, mirando el espectáculo.
Es terrible. Es hermoso. Es doloroso. Es genial.
June 26, 2023
Donde Foster Wallace pone el dedo, Bachelder entiende el juego.
No solamente apunta a un Estados Unidos noventero apuntalado por un capitalismo televisivo hortera y elocuente a la vez, entiende que comunicar eso es posible a través de un artefacto narrativo ameno y rápido. Es como ver un programa de televisión que parece naive y ultrairónico al principio pero que, a medida que avanza, se llena de carne y miedo. Termina por ser algo siniestro pero no por ello puedes dejar de mirar. Es la televisión, el flujo continuo de falsa información, hecha libro.
"Truth and Lie, Irony and That Which Is Not Irony, such that context and purity are forever lost, and the pieces are indistinguishable"
"Real would be too fake?
Real would be too real, sir, which would be fake, but not in a real way.
Real is not real enough.
Exactly, sir"
"Arent satirists just sentimental and oversensitive cranks who just wish the world were a kinder place and furthermore sort of believe that it could be a kinder place and it is therefore tragic that its such a cruel and stupid place?"
No solamente apunta a un Estados Unidos noventero apuntalado por un capitalismo televisivo hortera y elocuente a la vez, entiende que comunicar eso es posible a través de un artefacto narrativo ameno y rápido. Es como ver un programa de televisión que parece naive y ultrairónico al principio pero que, a medida que avanza, se llena de carne y miedo. Termina por ser algo siniestro pero no por ello puedes dejar de mirar. Es la televisión, el flujo continuo de falsa información, hecha libro.
"Truth and Lie, Irony and That Which Is Not Irony, such that context and purity are forever lost, and the pieces are indistinguishable"
"Real would be too fake?
Real would be too real, sir, which would be fake, but not in a real way.
Real is not real enough.
Exactly, sir"
"Arent satirists just sentimental and oversensitive cranks who just wish the world were a kinder place and furthermore sort of believe that it could be a kinder place and it is therefore tragic that its such a cruel and stupid place?"
February 21, 2025
Hard book to review. On the one hand, this was super smart. The type of satire that makes you laugh but also leaves a real chill. It’s super funny, but this book was actively depressing me. The fact that it’s over 20 years old is nuts. So relevant to today. It deals on every page with a favorite theme of mine: the total degradation of culture by advertising and our need to be constantly distracted (can something so depressing be a ‘favorite theme?’ Discuss!)
It’s also a frustrating book. It’s 250 pages of 1 to 3 page chapters, without an ounce of real character or stakes. It’s got a chapter that’s a quiz and another chapter that’s an answer key, a long digression that features the author as a character, and has chapter after chapter of overlapping dialogue. No one ever has a conversation but everyone is always talking. It’s all very smart, but it’s also post-modern as fuck and can wear you down.
I liked it a lot, and it clearly got me thinking.
Team Bear btw
It’s also a frustrating book. It’s 250 pages of 1 to 3 page chapters, without an ounce of real character or stakes. It’s got a chapter that’s a quiz and another chapter that’s an answer key, a long digression that features the author as a character, and has chapter after chapter of overlapping dialogue. No one ever has a conversation but everyone is always talking. It’s all very smart, but it’s also post-modern as fuck and can wear you down.
I liked it a lot, and it clearly got me thinking.
Team Bear btw
March 29, 2025
my new favourite I don't accept negative ratings
April 2, 2025
This was bad! I’m all for satire but at some point you got to make a little sense.
To be honest I knew this wasn’t going to be good when he was referred to as a “comic Aldous Huxley”. I was right.
Steer clear. Now I’m going to go have words with my husband who gifted this gem to me.
To be honest I knew this wasn’t going to be good when he was referred to as a “comic Aldous Huxley”. I was right.
Steer clear. Now I’m going to go have words with my husband who gifted this gem to me.
June 29, 2015
My first thoughts after finishing this book, this sort of stream-of-consciousness, punctuated-by-fictional-adverts roller coaster of a book were: "I'm not even sure what to say here." As usual, I'm employing a pass-fail reviewing method, so do take my recommendation with a grain of salt, but that said: if you enjoy dystopian fiction and social commentary, do give this a read.
I'm not entirely certain whether it's so satirical that it's hilarious, or so hilariously satirical. Either way, I think the best way to judge a book is as an overall experience--whether it lets you forget yourself for a while or desperately wish to remember yourself is sort of the same kind of goal in the end, and I think this book did both for me.
Having finished the book, I will say it's the sort of experience one needs to take time to process after it's over. It's ambitious, certainly, though not without its flaws--I find it's often difficult to distinguish exactly who is doing or saying what, though that feels intentional MOST of the time. Without spoiling anything in the story, I'll just end this review by saying it's definitely worth a read--It's sort of like... an alternate 1984 that's fully aware of how ridiculous things are in the narrative.
I'm not entirely certain whether it's so satirical that it's hilarious, or so hilariously satirical. Either way, I think the best way to judge a book is as an overall experience--whether it lets you forget yourself for a while or desperately wish to remember yourself is sort of the same kind of goal in the end, and I think this book did both for me.
Having finished the book, I will say it's the sort of experience one needs to take time to process after it's over. It's ambitious, certainly, though not without its flaws--I find it's often difficult to distinguish exactly who is doing or saying what, though that feels intentional MOST of the time. Without spoiling anything in the story, I'll just end this review by saying it's definitely worth a read--It's sort of like... an alternate 1984 that's fully aware of how ridiculous things are in the narrative.
December 29, 2017
Es una reseña, no un análisis literario profundo como para entrar en detalle.
¿Lo recomiendo? Sí, especialmente a aquellos que les gusten las distopías desde 1984, Un Mundo Feliz y hasta la serie Black Mirror.
Me gusta mucho el formato de la narración. Se nota que no es al azar y que juega un papel fundamental para transmitir el tema del libro. Aviso de que la historia no es especialmente rompedora (para los que esperan finales dramáticos y giros de guión). Es una historia original sobre un tema cercano a nuestra sociedad, la saturación mediática y la manipulación de masas. Original por cómo lo plantea, es tan absurdo imaginar un oso contra un tiburón que funciona la idea.
Es un libro cortito y fresco, aunque su principal inconveniente es que este tema de las distopías sobre manipulación de masas está muy trabajado. No obstante, tanto para quien quiera algo ligero, como para quien adora estos temas, encontrará un buen libro.
¿Lo recomiendo? Sí, especialmente a aquellos que les gusten las distopías desde 1984, Un Mundo Feliz y hasta la serie Black Mirror.
Me gusta mucho el formato de la narración. Se nota que no es al azar y que juega un papel fundamental para transmitir el tema del libro. Aviso de que la historia no es especialmente rompedora (para los que esperan finales dramáticos y giros de guión). Es una historia original sobre un tema cercano a nuestra sociedad, la saturación mediática y la manipulación de masas. Original por cómo lo plantea, es tan absurdo imaginar un oso contra un tiburón que funciona la idea.
Es un libro cortito y fresco, aunque su principal inconveniente es que este tema de las distopías sobre manipulación de masas está muy trabajado. No obstante, tanto para quien quiera algo ligero, como para quien adora estos temas, encontrará un buen libro.
January 27, 2010
I ordered this on a whim and after a couple pages I thought it was going to turn out like most of my whim books - like crap. A few pages in, it occurred to me that this was the kind of pop culture satiric overload that I'd like to avoid.
But very soon I was laughing like crazy. I was laughing until I cried. I really can't remember the last thing I read or heard or saw that was this funny. First thing I did when I finished the book was go back and read some of my favorite chapters - like, um, 29 and 62. Thank goodness for the index!
I am now pushing this book on everyone with a sense of humor. Some very ridiculous questions are asked, like does a shark have a neck? Do the Dutch have a culture? What's a Guardian knot? And most important, given a relatively level playing field, who would win in a fight between a bear and a shark?
But very soon I was laughing like crazy. I was laughing until I cried. I really can't remember the last thing I read or heard or saw that was this funny. First thing I did when I finished the book was go back and read some of my favorite chapters - like, um, 29 and 62. Thank goodness for the index!
I am now pushing this book on everyone with a sense of humor. Some very ridiculous questions are asked, like does a shark have a neck? Do the Dutch have a culture? What's a Guardian knot? And most important, given a relatively level playing field, who would win in a fight between a bear and a shark?
November 6, 2009
I would rank this just as high as Bachelder's other novel, U.S.! Some people might have a tough time connecting to the characters, but I didn't. Best of all, though, it's funny as hell and a brilliant satire of American culture.
January 8, 2017
The young man out-Delillos DeLillo. And, as the basketball announcers are wont to say, he can finish! I'm starting his latest, The Throwback Special, next.
June 4, 2022
Crazy clever, insightful and fun. I cannot believe it was written 20 years ago.
I cannot remember a book that made me laugh out loud as much as this one did, yet, there’s a distinctive Black Mirror undertone.
I cannot remember a book that made me laugh out loud as much as this one did, yet, there’s a distinctive Black Mirror undertone.
September 17, 2009
I only got to page 15 before I threw in the towel and gave the book away. The story begins with 3rd person prose and inanimate objects with thoughts and language. No Thanks!
February 26, 2013
If I could give it an extra half point I think I would give this 4.5... All in all a very intriguing pop cultural stew!
January 14, 2019
I came to this first book by Bachelder having absolutely loved his second (U.S.!) and mostly enjoyed his fourth (The Throwback Special). This one very much feels like a first book in all the best and worst ways -- and I'd say reading it almost twenty years after it's publication, it's more of a curiosity than anything else. If I had to guess, I'd say that as a kid, Bachelder read the mass-market pulp book "The Predators", which is about the staging of a grizzly vs. great white fight in a South American country for pay-for-view TV. Then when in college, he (like me) read Neil Postman's critique of TV culture, Amusing Ourselves to Death in an intro to media studies course (the book is quoted from four times in the novel). Then he went to grad school and read a lot of Pynchon, Calvino, Borges, Vonengut, Barthelme, DeLillo, et al. and absorbed the techniques of postmodern fiction and criticism. And then he cranked out his own satirical critique of America's television-obsessed cultural landscape.
The book has only a notional plot -- an all-American family of four has won a trip to the independent country of Las Vegas to attend the second "Bear v. Shark" battle royale. This event has captured the complete attention of the country and is the dominant cultural entertainment, albeit one in which computer-generated animals are used instead of real ones, since real animals would look fake. (That should give you a good sense of the tone.) The characters are wafter-thin, and the book consists mainly of their road-trip to Vegas.
This is accomplished in100 chapters of 2-3 pages each, flipping wildly between fragments, riffs, commercials, dialogue, transcripts, and on and on and on. This appears to be an attempt to recreate on the written page the effect of someone flipping TV channels every 30 seconds, and I found it more exhausting than compelling, but it's an interesting attempt. Jokes both subtle and not abound, as do all manner of games with language that, again, get wearying (presumably intentionally so). The internet appears around the edges as an amplifier of the culture, and one can almost sense the author's sweating to finish the book before the internet has completely replaced television as the screen of cultural domination. All in all, marginally interesting and not that effective.
The book has only a notional plot -- an all-American family of four has won a trip to the independent country of Las Vegas to attend the second "Bear v. Shark" battle royale. This event has captured the complete attention of the country and is the dominant cultural entertainment, albeit one in which computer-generated animals are used instead of real ones, since real animals would look fake. (That should give you a good sense of the tone.) The characters are wafter-thin, and the book consists mainly of their road-trip to Vegas.
This is accomplished in100 chapters of 2-3 pages each, flipping wildly between fragments, riffs, commercials, dialogue, transcripts, and on and on and on. This appears to be an attempt to recreate on the written page the effect of someone flipping TV channels every 30 seconds, and I found it more exhausting than compelling, but it's an interesting attempt. Jokes both subtle and not abound, as do all manner of games with language that, again, get wearying (presumably intentionally so). The internet appears around the edges as an amplifier of the culture, and one can almost sense the author's sweating to finish the book before the internet has completely replaced television as the screen of cultural domination. All in all, marginally interesting and not that effective.
June 14, 2019
From a pure literary perspective, Bear v. Shark is brilliant. Bachelder captures perfectly the feeling of a seemingly normal, yet extremely dystopian, America with its frenetic energy and hyper-focus on meaningless events. As a study in writing, this is a five star book. However, as a study in *reading*, the very characteristics that make it stand out (the feeling that the world is off-kilter and that every one has had too much caffeine yet simultaneously not enough caffeine) are what forces the reader to blink several times and wonder "What the fuck just happened here?"
Mr. Norman is the main character. He sells fake computers to businesses for reasons that don't make sense in our current world but are apparently logical in a world where the lawn is painted on and tvs are permanently broadcasting into every room of every house. His wife, Mrs. Norman, is beautiful when she's asleep. His two kids are typical American boys; they're not particularly bright or interesting.
His youngest son has won an essay contest that he plagiarized from the Internet and the prize is driving to the country of Las Vegas to see Bear Vs. Shark! This event is the most exciting thing to have ever happened and all of America is completely spellbound by the endless possibilities. Will the bear win? Will the shark? Will the computer program animating the combatants get the right proportions for the animals' bodies? Actual scientists surmise that the question of a real fight between a bear and a shark is impossible to answer, but that most likely the shark would win. Or maybe the bear. It's hard to tell.
The set-up is the journey to Las Vegas in the family's Sport Utility Vehicle and their arrival and stay at what is presumably Caesar's Palace. The end is what the bear and shark fight.
Bachelder's choices for narrative definitely force the reader to understand that we're in a potential future reality. It's not quite "Idiocracy", but you can see the trajectory ending there. Yet, despite the rather ugly reality of Mr. Norman's America, Bachelder is a deft hand at wry observation and subtle humor. In some cases, that humor is exceedingly dark, but an America where entertainment is a virtual reality simulation of an impossible event is exceedingly depressing.
Mr. Norman is the main character. He sells fake computers to businesses for reasons that don't make sense in our current world but are apparently logical in a world where the lawn is painted on and tvs are permanently broadcasting into every room of every house. His wife, Mrs. Norman, is beautiful when she's asleep. His two kids are typical American boys; they're not particularly bright or interesting.
His youngest son has won an essay contest that he plagiarized from the Internet and the prize is driving to the country of Las Vegas to see Bear Vs. Shark! This event is the most exciting thing to have ever happened and all of America is completely spellbound by the endless possibilities. Will the bear win? Will the shark? Will the computer program animating the combatants get the right proportions for the animals' bodies? Actual scientists surmise that the question of a real fight between a bear and a shark is impossible to answer, but that most likely the shark would win. Or maybe the bear. It's hard to tell.
The set-up is the journey to Las Vegas in the family's Sport Utility Vehicle and their arrival and stay at what is presumably Caesar's Palace. The end is what the bear and shark fight.
Bachelder's choices for narrative definitely force the reader to understand that we're in a potential future reality. It's not quite "Idiocracy", but you can see the trajectory ending there. Yet, despite the rather ugly reality of Mr. Norman's America, Bachelder is a deft hand at wry observation and subtle humor. In some cases, that humor is exceedingly dark, but an America where entertainment is a virtual reality simulation of an impossible event is exceedingly depressing.
January 1, 2025
"Given a relatively level playing field -- i.e., water deep enough so that a shark could maneuver proficiently but shallow enough so that a bear could stand and operate with its characteristic dexterity -- who would win in a fight between a bear and a shark?"
In this ferociously witty (maybe too witty), and sharp (maybe too sharp) postmodernist satire, it's all about a normal, ordinary American family on their trip to watch the second iteration of the spectacle of spectacles where a computer-generated bear fights a shark. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, 'Bear v. Shark' is a mishmash of references, strange formating, quirky self-insertions by the author himself, and lots of chaotic commentaries that stands to imitate the cacophony of a society overstimulated, inundated, and practically enslaved by entertainment, media, and comfort in all shapes and sizes. Television (with a capital 'T') is everywhere - invasive and pervasive enough to warrant a resistance by a cult of awakened insurgents (to avoid using the *other* 't' word here).
'Bear v. Shark' reads like a sausage stuffed with the pre-chewed, pulpy goodness of 'Welcome to Night Vale''s uncanny atmosphere of unsettling nonsequiturs, 'Malcolm in the Middle's' chaotic family energy, 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas's, well, everything, and the dystopian meta-narrative of a good 'Black Mirror' episode. I'm not saying such a sausage *tastes* great. But it's springy. The casing's intact. It looks like a sausage. It smells like a sausage. Given the proper condiments and appropriate cooking temperature, it might even be edible enough. BEAR-able even.
*GROAN*
It has a zappy, tangy pace. It's fast, but it doesn't start at a breakneck speed. If anything, it begins somewhat slow and cozy. It's a fast read. Faster, if you don't take it seriously. I guess this is the kind of book spunky, adjunct professors would want their students to read. It lends itself to all sorts of discussions and seems like a good way to introduce other more serious and more coherent pieces of literature.
Oh, and the ending is kind of sad.
In this ferociously witty (maybe too witty), and sharp (maybe too sharp) postmodernist satire, it's all about a normal, ordinary American family on their trip to watch the second iteration of the spectacle of spectacles where a computer-generated bear fights a shark. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, 'Bear v. Shark' is a mishmash of references, strange formating, quirky self-insertions by the author himself, and lots of chaotic commentaries that stands to imitate the cacophony of a society overstimulated, inundated, and practically enslaved by entertainment, media, and comfort in all shapes and sizes. Television (with a capital 'T') is everywhere - invasive and pervasive enough to warrant a resistance by a cult of awakened insurgents (to avoid using the *other* 't' word here).
'Bear v. Shark' reads like a sausage stuffed with the pre-chewed, pulpy goodness of 'Welcome to Night Vale''s uncanny atmosphere of unsettling nonsequiturs, 'Malcolm in the Middle's' chaotic family energy, 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas's, well, everything, and the dystopian meta-narrative of a good 'Black Mirror' episode. I'm not saying such a sausage *tastes* great. But it's springy. The casing's intact. It looks like a sausage. It smells like a sausage. Given the proper condiments and appropriate cooking temperature, it might even be edible enough. BEAR-able even.
*GROAN*
It has a zappy, tangy pace. It's fast, but it doesn't start at a breakneck speed. If anything, it begins somewhat slow and cozy. It's a fast read. Faster, if you don't take it seriously. I guess this is the kind of book spunky, adjunct professors would want their students to read. It lends itself to all sorts of discussions and seems like a good way to introduce other more serious and more coherent pieces of literature.
Oh, and the ending is kind of sad.
September 6, 2023
The first thing about this book; I can scarcely believe it was written in 2001. The second is that I wish Chris Bachelder had written more books. Absolutely huge fan of The Throwback Special and Abbott Awaits: A Novel. The seeds for those (really very warmly written, if not deeply cynical novels) are clearly sown here..but this is a dark book. It's takedown of an American culture emerging from the 90's and spiraling downwards into..our current American culture is often hilarious. Just as often, it's horrifying. There's a lot to unpack here and much of the satire is just so damn on-the-nose.
What's that? Starfield just finished downloading and you still haven't even finished Act 1 of Baldur's Gate 3? Yup, time to run away from getting any deeper into this review.
Must say before I go, Bachelder is a always a fascinating writer. Will definitely have to get around to U.S.!: Songs and Stories and absolutely looking forward to (the newly published!!) Dayswork.
What's that? Starfield just finished downloading and you still haven't even finished Act 1 of Baldur's Gate 3? Yup, time to run away from getting any deeper into this review.
Must say before I go, Bachelder is a always a fascinating writer. Will definitely have to get around to U.S.!: Songs and Stories and absolutely looking forward to (the newly published!!) Dayswork.
March 25, 2024
Chris Bachelder is a national treasure. I have read his books in a different order than published: Abbott Awaits, The Throwback Special, and now this, Bear V. Shark. Throughout, I've noticed that Bachelder speaks a language vaguely familiar to mine, without meeting me the whole way. Bachelder breaks the 3rd wall numerous times in this book, and if you're a fan of cynical irony throughout a text, this book will be your jam.
In reflection, I reasonated with the tone and critiques related to media, the bombardment, the noise, the lack of thinking, etc. Frankly, I was radically disappointed when Mr. Norman turned the vehicle back around to the sovereign nation. I was rooting SO hard for the family to go to TeleTown and legitimately had to put the book down when they didn't. I pondered for a bit about why that meant so much to me - I personally feel trapped in my own awareness of the webs of interests vying for my attention and consumption and money and usage and identity and yet it feels absolutely inescapable. I was rooting so hard for Mr. Norman because I saw so much of that part of myself in that decision, as I navigate my own techological usage, social media, news consumption, and beyond. Bachelder's critques stand (maybe even with more punch? Who knows. I was 3 when this book was published) to this day.
Thanks, Chris.
In reflection, I reasonated with the tone and critiques related to media, the bombardment, the noise, the lack of thinking, etc. Frankly, I was radically disappointed when Mr. Norman turned the vehicle back around to the sovereign nation. I was rooting SO hard for the family to go to TeleTown and legitimately had to put the book down when they didn't. I pondered for a bit about why that meant so much to me - I personally feel trapped in my own awareness of the webs of interests vying for my attention and consumption and money and usage and identity and yet it feels absolutely inescapable. I was rooting so hard for Mr. Norman because I saw so much of that part of myself in that decision, as I navigate my own techological usage, social media, news consumption, and beyond. Bachelder's critques stand (maybe even with more punch? Who knows. I was 3 when this book was published) to this day.
Thanks, Chris.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 25, 2024
In the tradition of novels about how tv or the internet is breaking brains, this is an interesting midway point between Infinite Jest and No One Is Talking About This. (If you want to count the movies as something that breaks brains--I'm on the fence--you could probably put Day of the Locust there, too). They don't make 'em like this anymore, for good or for ill--this book has some of the encyclopedic or theory-inflected aspirations that made Infinite Jest work, but you can (maybe) see the beginnings of the individuation that No One Is Talking About This (or, kind of, Fake Accounts) explores. I found a real annoying blog from 2010 that said this book was condescending and overly impressed with itself, which was not my experience reading it. Kirkus wrote that the book is "A quirky first novel, fun especially for wordplay fans" which is pretty funny since, in addition to some admittedly fun wordplay (people forgetting names, people saying "guardian knot" and "accordion knot" for "Gordian knot") the main business of the novel is violence and dread (so, less "fun," even for wordplay fans).
June 15, 2023
Turns out that these days I only want to read satire and cookbooks. This falls quite solidly in the satire column although there are a few bear and shark themed foods in this story. As the plot stands, we follow the Norman family as they trek to the sovereign nation of Las Vegas to attend the ultimate American obsession - Bear v. Shark II. Along the way, however, there's a lot of meta-interference from Bachelder and more than a bit of subtle and not-so-subtle culture bashing. I'm okay with the "kill your tv" overtones although they do come on a bit strong. Fortunately there are other stops that break it up such as a Bear v. Shark quiz, a talking pillow, some babbling, a winning essay, a little bit of terrorism, a folksong, a non-winning essay, a secret society, and a lot of misheard/used language. It's really dark, it's super depressing, it's incredibly funny, it's ridiculously fucking clever.
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