Y ou shouldn't judge a book by its epigraph. This insubstantial nugget leads into, appropriately enough, an almost fiber-free novel about the soulless shell that is American book publishing. Kotzwinkle's hero is an affable bear who moseys out of the Maine woods one day and finds the manuscript of a novel hidden under a tree, where it's been ditched by a disillusioned English professor.
Bear takes briefcase, reads novel, and likes it.
And after stealing a suit of clothes and acquiring the name Hal Jam from a jar of one of his favorite foodstuffs, he sets off for the big city to find an agent, a publisher and perhaps a tasty pie or two. He gets all these in short order, along with a place on the bestseller list, movie deals and talk-show celebrity. There are few surprises in these characters, and fewer still in the plot. This is a novel that, while it satirizes the connection between Hollywood and the publishing world, is fully a product of that union. What you have here, surely not for the first or last time, is a novelization before the fact.