Bear v. Shark in Books We Love

I used to kind of be a traditionalist snob, in that I went around telling everyone how great Flannery O'Connor was and how useless John Barth is.  But Chris Bachelder's Bear v. Shark really changed all that.  The premise of the book is simple:  If your had a bear face a shark in a fair fight, who would win?  That I liked a book about a bear fighting a shark is in no way surprising, but that I liked this book was a bit out of character. 

Bachelder loosely follows a single family who has won tickets to the main event because their son won a national Bear v. Shark essay contest, but interspersed within that free-ranging and all together non-arcing, non-narrative narrative arc, are disconnected fragments.  Sometimes rants, sometimes commercials, once a radio interview with Bachelder himself--the bits in between are as postmodern and non-conformist as any bearded Dentonite would want, but what makes this book stand out is that these bits all unquestionably work together to create a sense greater than the whole, and in the end I came to the conclusion that there was no other way to tell this story.  

So while I still love Flannery O'Connor, and I still hate John Barth (a lot), Chris Bachelder proved to me that you can really write anything so long as you write it good.  And if any one book gets the credit/blame for me trying to write a novel about reality, television, and their freakish offspring--it's this one.


Andy Briseno is a PhD student in Creative Writing (fiction) at the University of North Texas. His quirky personality and insightful comments are always much appreciated by the program.