Bear Maze!

by Jude Fawley

In response to constant bear invasions, and with the heavy moral obligation to do no harm to the invaders, the city of Gibeah has decided to put every bear it can capture into the ancient maze at its center. They hoped in this way to both meet their moral obligations and to never see the bears again. Three years later, the discredited scientist and inventor by the name of Daedalus believes that these bears are in fact capable of solving and escaping the maze, and are at the heart of a brooding calamity threatening to destroy the city.

At its heart, the book is a retelling of the myths of Daedalus--the story of Icarus, of the Labyrinth and the Minotaur, and the Pasiphae with her bull, all only slightly readapted so that they may contain a Leper Colony and an intelligent, ominous threat of bears. It would be perhaps audacious to say that this retelling is equal parts hilarious and heart-breaking, in its deference to the great Greek art comedies and tragedies, but it can safely be said that 117,000 words were expended in the process (with a few minor repetitions). Numerous allusions are made throughout to Greek mythology, the Bible, Kafka, Dostoevsky, the German language and the author's personal life, but all hopefully very tasteful and without presupposed knowledge on the part of the reader. Perhaps a great read.

251 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

When I first started writing, my mother told me, "Jude, that's not what an A is shaped like." And she was right, or at least it wasn't shaped like everyone else's. And the rest of the alphabet—similar problems, similar criticisms. But when you're a four year old, that kind of truth is much harder to swallow, and since I was obstinate my As were malformed for many years to follow.

What I would have argued, if I had my current perspective those many years ago, is that the shape of the letters never really mattered. The people that spent years practicing their penmanship, with their protractors and their rulers, never really had anything better to say. An A is nothing if it isn't in a word, a word is nothing if it doesn't have the context of thought, and a thought is nothing if it's coming out of stupid people.

So it came to be that the rest of my life, from the age of four to now, I've dedicated to the avoidance of becoming stupid, at the expense of my handwriting. It is my hope, then, that this will give context to my thoughts and meaning to my letters. With these thoughts I sit at a computer, using a keyboard rather than a pen, and string thousands and thousands of these letters together, so that they become books. It is up to you whether they have meaning. And if you find the font disagreeable, the medium by which these thoughts become accessible to you, it won't be my handwriting to blame, but rather some seventeenth century typographer who was just trying to make a living and is now dead. You can blame him, you have my permission.