Honey for the Bears by Anthony Burgess (1963)
Although I can’t quite stop myself from picking up even more books that I find in thrift stores and Little Free Libraries along life’s way, I’m doing my best to read through some of the many titles I’ve collected over the years. I’m also in the process of weeding out books that I likely will never read.
Honey for the Bears by Anthony Burgess is one book that has stayed on the shelves through all the weeding, because I’ve been fascinated with the plot’s concept: a British man and his wife trying to smuggle dresses into Soviet Russia in the 1960s. Sounds unique and funny and teachable all at once. And as published in 1963, I was sure it would also offer some keen insights into the climate of the Cold War just when it was getting more and more frigid. The cover and blurbs for this book alone drew me in, though ultimately the book shocked me. This shouldn’t have been surprising, but it was.
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Like any nerd, I got caught up in Stanley Kubrick‘s films whilst working at a video store in college (not to date myself or anything!), so I’m familiar with Anthony Burgess and his Clockwork Orange. I’ve never read that book, but the film creeped me out, and its feminization of men (not to mention the forced-open eyeballs) was just one reason for the unease.
About halfway through Honey for the Bears, you’ll realize that all the main characters seem to suffer from latent homosexuality, and their presence in Soviet Russia makes it difficult for them to act on or discuss these feelings. When I hit this point in the book (where a lady doctor explains all this to the protagonist), I wrote to my friend that since it’s only implied and since I’m still interested in the plot and its look at 1960s Communist Russia, I’m willing to press on. I’m glad I got the final scoop, but only so I can spare you the need ever to have to read it. Three things stand out to me.
First, this book contains its fair share of Soviet propaganda from a visiting Brit’s perspective, but in a way that suggests that the West is just as screwed up as the Communist Bloc—and far less happy than those within the godless system. It’s certainly not a Red novel, but it definitely humanizes the world behind the Iron Curtain—something I view as healthy, since the people living within a Red system aren’t necessarily of the System itself. This goes for any nation ruled by Communism—and it’s a timeless reality well worth the reminder. That they’re all happy and content withing the system, well that’s obviously debatable.
Second, this book also involves some disturbing sexual scenes which ought to be avoided, so be forewarned about that. The protagonist crosses so many moral lines, you’re never actually rooting for him. You just sort of want the book to end, and if he eventually ends up in front of a Soviet firing squad, well, good riddance.
Finally, I was actually quite shocked by a statement that an androgynous doctor made towards the end of the book, a statement that emphasized not only our modern Relativistic “truth” but also the present fad of genderlessness, a fad that seems to have creeped up on us only within the last half-decade or so. And yet in these words from the doctor, we get a sense that as far back as 60 years ago during the Sexual Revolution, already people were willing publicly to blur the lines that have forever defined humanity. The character says:
‘Russia,’ said the [androgynous] Doctor, ruminatively, ‘I think we must move on, Madox and I. Towards the East. I am tired of categories, of divisions, of opposites. Good, evil; male, female; positive, negative. That they interpenetrate is no real palliative, no ointment for the cut. What I seek is the continuum, the merging. Europe is all Manichees [dualistic]; Russia has become the most European of them all.’ (Anthony Burgess, Honey for the Bears, 190)
How incredible a statement (ripped from our own headlines) to have come from a book published so long ago! Jonathan Cahn’s recent book, The Return of the Gods, suggests that the destruction of gender that we see in our culture today actually began in the 1960s, and now I can totally believe it.
A Clockwork Orange hit me as disturbing, and despite this book’s interesting plot (and Burgess’s own fascinating talent for writing), Honey for the Bears is just as disturbing. I’m obviously not going to recommend the book, but if you’ve read it and disagree with my thoughts, I invite your comments and would love to dish about this book and the values it teaches.
Oh, and I’ll close with two great quotes that I felt were worth preserving:
“Russia is really everybody’s past. Not everybody’s future but everybody’s past.” (Anthony Burgess, Honey for the Bears, 73)
“‘As for Crime and Punishment,‘ Feodor said, ‘it was a crime to write it and it is a punishment to read it.” (Anthony Burgess, Honey for the Bears, 133)
©2022 E.T.