A DANCING BEAR, by David Free… a podio-book! that whole new media thing is, like, happening

“He tried to kill time. It kept not dying.”

That’s a quote from the narrator at the end of David Free’s A Dancing Bear, the first podiobook I ever listened to all the way. Free is a fellow podio-book author over at Podiobooks.com, and I think the quote gives some of the flavor of the books cynically humorous quality.

This book helped get me through 24-Hour Comic Day and for that reason alone I’ll never forget it. In fact, if you’re trying to figure out how to survive making a graphic novel, [http://firstsecondbooks.typepad.com/mainblog/2007/12/how-to-survive.html). I’ve been meaning to blog about it and give it a little more attention than this. Really, though, it speaks for itself. While it does not mention Free’s book, it does put large creative projects in the right perspective.

To Free’s novel, for one largely about pain and misery, all its many storied and sundry bastards don’t suffer nearly enough by the end for my tastes. I know I’m being critical here, but I’m also being positive. The truth is, Free creates a very rich cast in this book and you develop powerful opinions about them. The threat of some pretty serious violence/accidents/consequences loom constantly and you feel like the hand of Fate really ought to slam down on some of these people in a permanent and meaningful way.

I don’t mean to spoil the book for you, but it really doesn’t.

If you’re looking for a book to get into, though, I think you’ll get into Free’s. I’ll just be curious to know if you feel, like I did, that Free could have created a richer work if he’d had the guts to really make his characters suffer and really make it stick. I understand where he’s coming from, going easy. As a writer, I’ve often felt guilty about really putting it to my characters, really destroying them, really ruining their lives.

But that’s what literature is for, right? Us demented few with the evil-wherewithal to come up with fiendish ends for others do it on the printed page so we don’t find ourselves doing it in real life and those of you with the need to rubberneck at such misfortune can do so safely against the printed page rather than inspecting the many miseries of real life too insensitively.