SETTING FREE THE BEARS by John Irving. 335 pages. Random House. $5.95.
It may be a symptom of just how cosmopolitan the modern world has become. Or it may merely be talent. Whatever the cause, John Irving, a young American writer, has successfully created two European characters, set them against a European landscape, and turned them loose in what has always been a typical American literary form—the novel of youthful escape and adventure. From Huckleberry Finn to On the Road, the characters in such stories yearn for joyful freedom; their picaresque progress becomes a...
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