Coover, Robert

The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.

Average customer rating:

Intellectually brilliant but humanly lacking
The Boxscores Were Enough
Homo Ludens
A Brilliant Allegory of Something or Other
Creation

The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.
Robert Coover
Manufacturer: Plume
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Baseball | Sports | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Sports Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Celebrant: A Novel
Bang the Drum Slowly (Second Edition)
You Know Me Al
Strat-O-Matic Fanatics: The Unlikely Success Story Of A Game That Became An American Passion
End Zone

ASIN: 0452260302

Customer Reviews:

Intellectually brilliant but humanly lacking.......2006-05-09

This book is an elaborate intellectual game.Coover brilliantly tells the story of another kind of creator, his main character, Henry Waugh who makes up his own major- leagues and creates the games through which they go through the season. It seems that the whole exercise has a large number of possible interpretations.
And in fact the work comes to read for me as largely an exercise more devoted to what literary critics will say, than what readers will feel.

The Boxscores Were Enough.......2005-07-02

I don't recommend this book for the faint of heart. While you can summarize the basic story of "The Universal Baseball Association" in a few words, the actual reading experience is far more intense than a summary would suggest. This book celebrates the myth of baseball as American creation in just about the darkest way imaginable.

The novel's set-up is an appealing one. J. Henry Waugh (whose initials read YAHWEH) took eight of the original post-Civil War major league franchises, populated them entirely with players of his own invention, and evolved his league through dozens of seasons via a tabletop, dice-activated baseball game of his own design. The league begins to consume his life in its 56th season -- and his 56th year. It sounds fun to take on a project like this. Indeed, on the Internet you can even find recreations of the UBA charts as J. Henry Waugh may have designed them.

As the book goes on, however, progressively fewer paragraphs are devoted to the point of view of our protagonist. Rather, Henry's players -- unaware of his very existence -- begin to do all the talking for him. The slide begins innocently enough: Henry leaves work a few minutes early one Wednesday afternoon so he can reread the boxscore of a perfect game one of "his" rookies pitched the night before. While reading, he imagines the past greats of his league telling stories about the early years. In one of the book's funnier moments, one of those old-time players is suddenly cut off in mid-quote when Henry realizes that the man in question is, in fact, dead.

Thus we learn more about Henry's league: His players live full lives after retirement from the playing field, and can even marry, have children, and die. The league structure involves politics, intrigue, romance, music -- sometimes all at once. One of the book's more gruesome in-jokes is retold in a ballad that Henry wrote to celebrate the exploits of one "Long Lew Lydell".

As the book progresses, Coover writes verbose yet carefully structured passages in which Henry vanishes entirely, replaced by the players taking increasing free reign over his subconscious. What the players say in Henry's head is a subtle distortion of what Henry's just been through. Henry's take on women is colored, for example, by the fact that his girlfriend charges by the hour; his players have dreams which mirror his own anxieties. It gets so that Henry can't even complete a conversation with the few acquaintainces in his life, without the players' voices intruding. This becomes progressively more disturbing, especially if you note what happens during Henry's final appearance in the book.

You can't blame Henry for leaving behind such a dreary accounting job; he is escaping into a richer world than did Bartleby, for example. In fact, you could put the book down after Chapter 7 and read it as a happy ending. In 2005, I'd almost venture to say that "Office Space"-type fantasies retroactively make Henry one of the first heroes of the so-called information age. One of the key questions at the end: are we meant to feel sympathy for Henry at the end? Empathy? Pity? Disgust?

What gives "Universal Baseball Association" its life is not the baseball scenes or the office scenes, but rather the depth and texture of Henry's increasingly complicated fantasy sequences. You can see the entropy in Henry's universe by comparing the player names in the final chapter to those in the first two chapters, before things started to go wrong. While difficult to get through -- this is certainly not a beach book, although that's where I read most of it -- "Universal Baseball Association" rewards repeated readings once you overcome the queasy feelings caused by entering Henry's subconscious.

You will also vow never to play Strat-O-Matic Baseball again.

Homo Ludens.......2004-12-23

When I was in middle school, I was perhaps a little too much in love with a Nintendo football game called Tecmo Bowl. The game was great. I played out an entire season of NFL games using the video game teams, recording wins, losses, which teams made the playoffs, and keeping a running total of the player's stats for the season. I would even pretend to be the announcer, and sometimes recorded my commentary (painfully inane if I ever listened to it afterwards). Then I would go out in the back yard and reenact the highlights from each game. In many respects, I was similar to the protagonist of Robert Coover's The Universal Baseball Association, Inc.: J. Henry Waugh, Prop., who devises an intricate version of simulated baseball that he plays in his kitchen with dice. The difference is that I was twelve. Henry is fifty-seven.

To escape from reality into a world of imagination is regarded as endearing and encouraging in children - in adults, it seems pathetic and disturbing. As the novel progresses, we see how far Henry has taken his obsession: he concocts life stories for the players, composes songs supposedly popular in the alternate reality inhabited by the UBA, conducts pretend interviews, writes newspaper articles, lines his shelves with record books, and even conflates events of his own life with the lives of the players - and vice versa. What could drive a man to do all this? Certainly not a love for the game. In fact, Henry admits that real baseball bores him. Possible explanations seem to be desire for control, intense boredom, overwhelming feelings of isolation, or simply inability to mature and face the problems of adult life.

However, we are not given a simple explanation for Henry's habit, nor are we led to believe that his actions are to be thought of in a negative light. In many ways, Henry's Association is an exemplification of mankind's drive to create. This issue - is Henry hiding or creating? - forms the most compelling theme of The Universal Baseball Association, as well of providing much of Henry's internal conflict.

But Coover isn't content to deliver a novel with a simple theme, or ask simple questions - and therein lays both the novel's greatness and its folly. We encounter lengthy stream-of-consciousness passages, during which Henry's mind loses the ability to distinguish creation from reality. We hear Henry presented as a god, complete with powers over life and death. We are treated to parallels between creation, destruction, war, and the curious relationship between omnipotence and impotence. The entire last chapter sounds like Absurdist Theater. As we near the end, there can be no doubt that Henry is an overt schizophrenic, and yet, like Humbert Humbert, Henry has a way of making sickness seem normal.

In the opulent extravagance of the novel lies a certain genius. The flights of fancy taken by Henry's supple mind suggest meaning on a wide variety of levels. Not all of it succeeds, especially when Coover digresses into the topic of sex. Still, the book succeeds overall, both as narrative and as commentary on the nature of man. By the end, the association becomes Henry's entire system of meaning - his way of exploring good, evil, purpose, and nihilism. Perhaps answering metaphysical questions using dice is absurd, but perhaps not. As Henry reflects, "You roll, Player A gets a hit or he doesn't, gets his man out or he doesn't. Sounds simple. But call Player A 'Sycamore Flynn' or 'Melbourne Trench' and something starts to happen. He shrinks or grows, stretches out or puts on muscle.... Strange. But name a man and you make him what he is."

A Brilliant Allegory of Something or Other.......2004-03-29

The basic story of Coover's book is quite simple. Henry Waugh creates an intricate single-player baseball game that's played with dice. He plays entire seasons with his eight-team league; he keeps detailed statistics for every player and every game; he creates backstories and personalities for his players; he develops an administrative body for his league and imagines political debates among the players; and he acts as an official historian of the league, writing volumes of stories about the game and its players. When something shocking and unexpected occurs within the game, Henry gradually loses the ability to distinguish between reality and imagined events within the game. In the end, he is more or less consumed by his game.

As the synopsis above no doubt suggests, this story begs to be read as an allegory. One might read it as an allegory of God's relation to His creation. Henry, like God, is a creator who appears to have complete control over his creation, and yet, like God, his creation comes to take on a life of its own. When terrible things occur, he desperately wants to step in and set things right, but he also wants the game to retain its integrity. So Henry is like God in that he remains outside his creation even though it seems he could sometimes intervene to set things right. (Indeed, some of the game's players are said to have some sense of a higher power controlling their destiny.) One might also read Henry's relation to his game as an allegory of man's attempt to make sense of his world through art, religion, science, philosophy, etc. All that's really going on is the random event of rolling the dice, as, in some sense, all that's really going on in the universe is certain random physical events. And yet Henry imagines an entire alternate reality to make sense of the random events of his game. His player backgrounds and psychologies, his historical interpretations of the game, his imaginings of crowds and stadiums--all of this is intended to give the random throws of the dice some meaning, some significance to him. (This reading is also suggested by our one look at Henry at work in his job as an accountant. Rather than merely crunch the numbers, he reads a story of the operation of a business off his accounting books. He makes sense of the numbers by seeing them as evidence of something beyond themselves.) Finally, one might interpret Henry's relation to his game as an allegory of the artist's relation to his works.

These allegorical readings notwithstanding, it's also possible to read this book as a simple and moving story of one isolated man who gradually loses touch with reality. While Henry seems a decent enough chap, he has no family, only one friend (and not an especially close one), no real love interest, and no interests outside of his game. From what we learn in the novel, it seems his entire life consists in (occasionally) going to work at his mind-numbing job, stopping at the local bar to drown his sorrows, and sitting at his kitchen table playing his game. Since Henry's life is thoroughly dull and uneventful from the outside, the book focuses on what's going on in his mind. The focus of the book is his isolation and his attempts to create something important and lasting and to be a part of something larger than himself. The opportunity to create something important is what the game appears to provide him, and so it's not all that surprising that he ends up losing himself in his game.

This, of course, suggests that Henry can be understood as an example of the way in which alienated individuals can get lost in solitary pursuits that are made available to them by modern life. Because he lacks an community of people with which to identify, Henry ends up getting lost in his game in much the same way that others can get lost in books, television, the internet, etc. All of these things appear to provide their user with a connection to a world beyond himself, and yet total immersion in them brings you no closer to other people than you'd be without them.

I'd give this book 4.5 stars if I could; that seems a more accurate assessment. The reader should note that this isn't really a baseball book. It's more about the trappings of baseball--the statistics, the history, the players, the rites--than it is about the game itself. So this isn't a book for someone looking for a presentation of dramatic athletic feats; instead, it's a book for the baseball fan whose appreciation of the game is intellectual rather than visceral.

Creation.......2003-08-14

This is a savagely funny, brutally creative (and, at times, very dark) novel about baseball and the human condition that ultimately takes a theological twist. It is not for everyone, but would definitely be a treat to someone who has a fondness for black comedy and untrustworthy narrators - and some passion for baseball.

Average customer rating:

Not an etude, but better
Old fashioned spanking
Clever but light-weight exercise
It may be lit'rary, but I cannot like it
A comic-erotic send-up of Nouvelle Vague fiction

Spanking the Maid (Coover, Robert)
Robert Coover
Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Adult Fiction | Erotica | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Erotica | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Romance Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z
Once Upon A Knee MF Spanking & Domestic Discipline Stories Volume One
Stepmother (Coover, Robert)
Pricksongs & Descants: Fictions
Spanking Tails, Vol. 1: A Gallery Girls Collection

ASIN: 0802135404

Customer Reviews:

Not an etude, but better.......2001-09-25

Taking a cue from Raymond Queneau's "Exercises in Style," and his own short stories featured in "Pricksongs and Descants," what would seem to be only an experiment develops into a real commentary on self-reference and post structuralism. Coover's treatment of the master-slave, dominant-submissive relationship serves to show the sado-masochistic exchange that exists in language when that language becomes "meta" language, or language about language. In this way all "criticism" is "criticized," begging the question: if meta language is sado-masochistic, what is meta-meta language?

The novel also works despite its subject matter-- if Coover had chosen some other setting, one could still delight in the way he weaves repitition into an ongoing cascade, each permutation the same and wholly different. Chaos theory as literary genre? Now who's being sado-masochistic?

Old fashioned spanking.......2001-07-13

I did not find this book particularly erotic, and it was plotless to me.

Clever but light-weight exercise.......2001-06-27

Coover's brief tale takes a paper-thin premise and runs it right into the ground--yes, it's yet another one of those self-indulgent, self-conscious post-modernist novels seldom enjoyed by anyone who isn't an undergraduate English major. It's a very short book that you will likely wish were shorter. But though the plot goes (by design) nowhere, and the book is stuffed with the kind of affected whimsy employed by writers far too impressed with their own intelligence, there is some witty, bouncy prose to enjoy and a few inspired comic moments. For what it is, it's well put together.

It may be lit'rary, but I cannot like it.......2000-05-25

I did not care for the endless repetition with minor variations. I did not care for the one-sidedness of it all--man gets off, maid is out in the cold. I did not care for the endless repetition with minor variations. One had the feeling someone was trying out a lit'rary exercise and it got published by mistake. One had no sympathy for any one in the book, and one felt one was overcharged.

A comic-erotic send-up of Nouvelle Vague fiction.......1999-04-27

This elegant, concisely written masturbatory farce, in which similar scenes of a maid's transgression and a master's punishment are played out over and over again, conflates the delicious repetitive nature of erotic fantasy with a send-up of "Last Year at Marienbad"-type fiction--to an effect that is both erotically arousing and hilarious. Coover's greatest tour-de-force and a tiny, but original, masterpiece.

Average customer rating:

Pricksongs & Descants: Fictions
Robert Coover
Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Lost in the Funhouse (The Anchor Literary Library)
A Child Again (Coover, Robert)
Sixty Stories (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
Forty Stories (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
Snow White

ASIN: 0802136672

Book Description

Pricksongs & Descants, originally published in 1969, is a virtuoso performance that established its author - already a William Faulkner Award winner for his first novel - as a writer of enduring power and unquestionable brilliance, a promise he has fulfilled over a stellar career. It also began Coover's now-trademark riffs on fairy tales and bedtime stories. In these riotously word-drunk fictional romps, two children follow an old man into the woods, trailing bread crumbs behind and edging helplessly toward a sinister end that never comes; a husband walks toward the bed where his wife awaits his caresses, but by the time he arrives she's been dead three weeks and detectives are pounding down the door; a teenaged babysitter's evening becomes a kaleidoscope of dangerous erotic fantasies-her employer's, her boyfriend's, her own; an aging, humble carpenter marries a beautiful but frigid woman, and after he's waited weeks to consummate their union she announces that God has made her pregnant. Now available in a Grove paperback, Pricksongs & Descants is a cornerstone of Robert Coover's remarkable career and a brilliant work by a major American writer.

A Night at the Movies Or, You Must Remember This

Average customer rating:

Great selection of short stories with cinematic themes...
Coover's book was a very confusing piece of literature.
Coovers book is a masterpiece that reflects today's society.
Film and Television in black and white
Coover's book is a great postmodernist reading.

A Night at the Movies Or, You Must Remember This
Robert Coover
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey
Wilderness Tips
Dancing in the Dark
By the Lake
American Primitive

ASIN: 0671617966

Product Description

From Hollywood B-movies to Hollywood classics, A Night at the Movies invents what might have happened in these Saturday afternoon matinees. Mad scientists, vampires, cowboys, dance-men, Chaplin, and Bogart, all flit across Robert Coover's riotously funny screen, doing things and uttering lines that are as shocking to them as they are funny to the reader. As Coover's Program announces, you will get Coming Attractions, The Weekly Serial, Adventure, Comedy, Romance, and more, but turned upside-down and inside-out.

Customer Reviews:

Great selection of short stories with cinematic themes..........2002-05-15

You must remember this features the love of Rick and Ilse as you've never imagined it before. Other stories offer a colorful
though often sadistic portrayal of the place where reality
meets the celluloid imaginings that too often seem to dominate
our lives. Wonderful, clear, easy to read prose. Bitingly honest.

Coover's book was a very confusing piece of literature........1999-11-02

A Night at the Movies, is an illussive postmodern novel waith a dangerous twist of cinema genres. Coover's text interest me because all of the stories in novel seem to deal with identity. This is why I found the book confusing. Coover's illusive words and characters makr the novel hard to follow. Although coover's novel wasconfusing , it was not all bad. One of Coover's overall strengths was that he is able to create the cinematic feeling by being very desciptive. An example of his discriptive skill shows up in "Chalie in the House of Rue". Charlie discovers a police officer sitting in a tub of water. Coover describes,"His uniform is black ripply beneath the surface, the brass botton appearing to float free"(107). This descriptiion helps you visualize the officer, asif you are in the movies watching. This book is a okay read, but is very confusing. I suggest if you are not a vivid reader not to read this book. Unless your teacher assigns it. which in this case you better read it.

Coovers book is a masterpiece that reflects today's society........1999-11-02

A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES by Robert Coover is a bunch of short stories within a story, these stories are based on movie sterotypes. This story is based on sex and violence which increase within the story. This story shows the purpose of the increase in sex and violence within society from the 40's to the present. Coover strength in most cases is how he uses various movie sterotypes to display the ending that is not your typical ending. A western movie would overall include the "good guy" winning, however its not in this case. Overall A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES by Robert Coover is a good read that display the way in which modern society has changed its openness and view on sex and violence and how people typically think a certain movie will end. This book is designed for a more mature audiance.

Film and Television in black and white.......1999-11-02

A Night at the Movies by Robert Coover takes a look at film of the twentieth century in a way that makes you feel like you're in the front row enjoying every scene. Coover's breakdown of the different film genres is great. He gives us all a little taste of everything in the first chapter and then gets more focused on particular genres in later chapters. One of the overall strengths in the book is the transition from one genre to the next. In the beginning of the book where Coover is moving rapidly through different genres he still manages to tie in an interesting story. An over all weakness of the text is the very short sections between the others. These stories are very short and kind of slow. After reading them I wondered why they are even in the book. Coovers text provides a smooth transition from one film genre to the next. He does a good job of accomplishing what he set out to do. Which is explore the different types of films of our time. Coover's A Night at the Movies is worth while reading for anyone who is interested in film and wants to examine a wide range of film genres.

Coover's book is a great postmodernist reading........1999-11-02

"A Night at the Movies" by Robert Coover is a book partitioned into chapters each representing different film genre with sex and violence being the most dominant. One of the overall strength in Coover's text is that it is as close to reality as it is to fiction. That is considering the ideas and not necessarily the stories. For example, he explicitly describes sexual encounters which represents the unconscious thought of human beings. Coover makes a lot of references to multiple specific movie titles which a number of readers may not have seen or even heard of; however, his main intention is the general genres. The structure of the plot of this text is hetrogeneous with no clear cut shifting points. He takes the reader flying, sailing, riding, walking.. in a short moment. This can leave the reader confused and feeling a sense of ambiguity. However, Coover does a good job in recapturing the reader's attention. Especially when he reminds the reader between now and then that he/she doesn't belong in the story. He/she is only watching or reading the events. The reader is an outsider looking in. Coover plays with the elements of fiction very well to make this book a great piece of postmodernism.

Average customer rating:

Thanks, Kevin
Godawful
No more than a sideshow attraction
Unfinished
A cruel, yet sympathetic, view of Richard Nixon

The Public Burning (Coover, Robert)
Robert Coover
Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Omensetter's Luck (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
Pricksongs & Descants: Fictions
The Origin of the Brunists (Coover, Robert)
Sixty Stories (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
The Book of Daniel: A Novel

ASIN: 0802135277

Amazon.com

For quite some time after the 1977 publication of The Public Burning, it was almost impossible to find a copy. The book's own publisher seemed--no, was reluctant to admit it even existed. That's because this imaginative reconstruction of the 1953 execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted for giving atom bomb secrets to the Soviets, was the first major work of modern fiction to feature a still-living historical figure as a prominent character. The book's obscurity was the publisher's attempt to avoid legal repercussions from Richard Nixon, who over the course of the book engages in a romantic interlude with Ethel Rosenberg and graphically surrenders himself to a rapacious Uncle Sam.

Now that Nixon's dead, however, readers are free to marvel at one of the few American novels to rival Joyce's Ulysses for sustained stylistic inventiveness. Snippets of speeches and articles from Time are recast in poetic form, entire scenes are presented in dramatic verse, as events in the Rosenberg case move towards their historically destined conclusion. --Ron Hogan

Customer Reviews:

Thanks, Kevin.......2005-03-18

It's good to have red-baiting reviewers like Kevin Bowman to prove Robert Coover's point a half-century after the Rosenbergs died and nearly thirty years after his book appeared. Gee, even an evil intellectual ("vindictive college professor") turns up in Kevin's review. Talk about fully-formed characters.

It's a great book. You don't have to agree with the politics. There are parts where Coover goes way over the top, as you might expect with any 800 pound gorilla of a novel like this. It's true, it is a little "sophomoric" sometimes. It's profound more often, though, and not just because Coover takes potshots at Luce's Time Magazine.

Seriously, this is an unjustly ignored masterpiece. Let's hope there are more vindictive college professors out there.

Godawful .......2005-02-25

Any book based on the premise that the Rosenbergs were innocent, deserving of beatification, victims of awful America, is not going to date well. 1977, I suppose, was a kind of high-water mark for that sort of thinking. If you have a friend who thinks Stalin was unfairly maligned, this may be the book for him.

I was forced to read this book cover to cover by a vindictive college professor who assigned it to me (and me alone) as the subject for a class writing project. I loathed every minute of it. From its doctrinaire anti-anti-communist, anti-Americanism; its sub-Dos Passos modernism; its sophomoric delight in scatology (giggle, giggle, tee hee, Nixon has sex with Ethel Rosenberg and is then anally raped by Uncle Sam). There are no fully-formed characters, just endless making of puerile political points. Nixon-bad. Time Magazine-bad. America-bad. Ethel Rosenberg-saint and martyr.

Its like a bad book treatment of a very bad Ken Russell movie. I'd rather eat jagged metal bits than be forced to read this pompous, train-wreck of a book ever again.

No more than a sideshow attraction.......2004-12-21

Every now and then I finish a book and ask, "Now why did this author write that?" I'm not talking about trash reading. We know what that's for; entertainment. No, when I ask "Why?" after finishing a book, it's generally a longer work with artistic ambitions and evidently an important point to make. I just can't tell what that point might be.

Take "The Public Burning". The author, Robert Coover, is widely considered to be one of the leading lights of American experimental fiction. The novel is a semi-fictionalized narrative of the days preceding the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, here as in real life convicted of treason for selling atomic secrets to the Russians. It's a good read, but what's the value in telling a true story in such an odd way? The true story is dramatic enough as is. Coover never quite answers that, and it weakens his book.

Feel free to skip this part if you know the historical facts:

Back in the 1950s, the Soviet Union exploded a nuclear bomb. Many assumed that the Soviets must have stolen nuclear information from the U.S. through a network of spies, and the FBI picked the Rosenbergs as the guilty parties. They were convicted and sentenced to death, and despite a last-minute stay of execution by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, they went to the electric chair on June 19, 1953.

In his novel, Coover recasts the Rosenberg execution as a piece of political theater, deliberately staged by the Eisenhower administration to boost American morale, and therefore set to take place as the novel opens not at the Sing Sing death house, but in the middle of Times Square. Uncle Sam, here a real person, is a sort of superhero, possessed of remarkable powers in his neverending battle against the Phantom, his appropriately shady Communist counterpart. And perhaps most bizarrely, while half the chapters have the usual third-person narrator telling the story in a kind of hyper-inflated circus language, the other chapters are narrated by none other than Vice President Richard Nixon.

Before we get to Tricky Dick, however, let's consider the carnival-barker narration of the other chapters. It's filled with comic-book jargon, interjections on the order of "Good Heavens!" and various other cheesy rhetorical devices. Uncle Sam himself speaks like a snake-oil salesman, tossing in many a "Whoopee-ti-yi-yo!" and things like that as the execution approaches.

Evidently, this book seeks to present the United States as a nation of con men and suckers, but in the midst of all the tinsel and ballyhoo (directed by Cecil B. DeMille, with sets by Walt Disney), it seems like a lot of fun. Coover shows a nice balance between the exhilaration of rah-rah Americanism and the horror of the rot under the surface. It's all part of the same long, strange trip, and you can't have one without the other.

With a similar schizophrenia, in his sections of this book, Nixon has a sort of poetry in his soul and genuine sense of mission, both of them about as banal as you please. That sounds like a contradiction in terms, I know, but what else can you say about a character who comes right out and says that he loves his wife primarily because she belongs to him? Who can't decide between serving his country and serving himself, and often conflates the two? And who spends half his time parsing every one of Uncle Sam's most moronic clichés like it was the entrails of some sacrificial chicken?

If this description reminds you of your favorite national politican, Republican or Democrat, I assure you that's not a coincidence. Nixon himself once said, in real life, that John Kennedy was what people wanted to be, and he himself what they actually were. In any case, his fictionalized counterpart here is doubtless what we're afraid we are. He is Vice President of the United States, for God's sake, and he's still a loser. He sweats and stinks through the pages in desperate need of a shave or a toilet, he strains to justify himself and his past in the middle of a national crisis, he can't even relax while playing golf. And needless to say, the more he struggles for victory, the more clownish he becomes. By the time the book is over, a jammed Times Square has had an eyeful of Dick Nixon with his pants around his ankles, and there are worse humiliations in store for him.

Okay, so far we've got an examination of the American split personality from two very different and complementary points of view, filtered through an actual historical event and featuring historical figures. I was intrigued. So why did I feel so let down when I reached the last page?

I think it's because, when you get right down to cases, nothing really happens in "The Public Burning". Ethel and Julius Rosenberg die, Uncle Sam taps Nixon as a future president, and things go back to the way they were before. For all the flash and dazzle, the comic book zip, the world of this book and the world we live in are pretty much alike. Which isn't a bad thing, but the flourish made me anticipate something more, some explosive scream at the end. Instead, "The Public Burning" reads like Coover simply observed these events through a literary kaleidoscope and wrote down what he saw. That makes for good painting sometimes, but not necessarily good novels; "The Public Burning" is an amusing experiment, but so what?

In short, this book would have made a truly fascinating short piece, and even as is it's a lot of fun to read for the language alone. Really good full-length novels, on the other hand, leave what Anthony Burgess called some kind of residue in the mind. "The Public Burning" just slides right through. Bring on the next one.

Benshlomo says, 500-odd pages ought to weigh more than this.

Unfinished.......2002-03-24

Perhaps it's unfair of me to rate this book, since I didn't make it to the end. It was disappointing, since I've liked others of Coover's books. This one is written in a stream of consciousness style reminiscent of James Joyce/"Ulysses" (which I liked a lot). Similarly, it also is incredibly literate and erudite, lots of language play which still somehow was mostly just hard and not fun the way language should and can be. I could appreciate the humor intellectually, but it wasn't really funny. The subject matter is a cynical take on a dark subject, the Rosenberg executions. I can certainly understand why its release was so contoversial. It might help to know more about the period but as someone who came of political age (later) during the Watergate years I know little about Nixon as VP and many of the social references were lost on me.

A cruel, yet sympathetic, view of Richard Nixon.......2000-04-24

When The Public Burning was first published in 1977, Richard Nixon was the ultimate political pariah. His public perception, shaped by Watergate and his resignation, was reinforced by Woodward and Bernstein's fictionalized The Final Days, a brutal account of Nixon's disintegrating psyche. Nixon's own memoir RN was perhaps his worst book, self-pitying, incredibly defensive, too weak-willed to be called defiant.

In this context, Coover's treatment of Nixon in this novel is not as cruel as it may appear. Coover gives Nixon a literary soul, self-doubt, knowledge of his private and public sins and an odd desire to be one with the artists and rebels of the world. True, Coover's Nixon bares his bottom in public, becomes the boy-toy of Uncle Sam and is caught pleasuring himself in a most embarrassing moment ... but Coover's over-the-top cruelty to Nixon has a purpose.

Nixon, the man "born in the house my father built" had to make horrific compromises to attain power, then faced the most public humiliation once attaining it. The burden of American power, personified by Uncle Sam, demands more than any humble human can bear. No wonder he finally walked away.

Book Description

Originally published in 1966 and now back in print after over a decade, Robert Coover's first novel instantly established his mastery. A coal-mine explosion in a small mid-American town claims ninety-seven lives. The only survivor, a lapsed Catholic given to mysterious visions, is adopted as a doomsday prophet by a group of small-town mystics. "Exposed" by the town newspaper editor, the cult gains international notoriety and its ranks swell. As its members gather on the Mount of Redemption to await the apocalypse, Robert Coover lays bare the madness of religious frenzy and the sometimes greater madness of "normal" citizens. The Origin of the Brunists is vintage Coover -- comic, fearless, incisive, and brilliantly executed. "A novel of intensity and conviction . . . a splendid talent . . . heir to Dreiser or Lewis." -- The New York Times Book Review; "A breathtaking masterpiece on any level you approach it." -- Sol Yurick; "[The Origin of the Brunists] delivers the goods . . . [and] says what it has to say with rudeness, vigor, poetry and a headlong narrative momentum." -- The Plain Dealer (Cleveland).

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant.......2001-09-29

Having read Coover's later books, I was rather skeptical if his earlier ones would be as good - and was pleasantly surprised. In fact, I would rate Coover's first novel as his best work: taut, earthy and powerful, it chronicles the rise and fall of a cult group called the Brunist (following the name of the so-called founder of the group, Giovanni Bruno) and how even a small, seemingly harmless and insignificant group of people can become potentially threatening to the larger community. But what I truly admire about this novel is the slow, subtle building of the narrative terror and hysteria. Coover is indeed a master of suspense and anti-climaxes, building up very tensed episodes to end them in slick, sometimes frustrating, bathos. But this only makes the novel more rewarding as the reader is never on solid ground. The prose continuously shifts and distabilises the reader's suppositions, making it almost impossible to stop reading (this is not an exaggeration). I highly recommend this electrifying novel and hope that it will reach a very wide audience.

Origin of the Brunists - B-grade people meet religion.......1997-11-05

Robert Coover's first novel, Origin of the Brunists, shows how he won so many awards for his poetry and short fiction. This is a book you won't forget. The book throws a strange group of definitely substandard people together, adds a set of bizarre events, shakes, and comes up with the most bizarre - but plausible - religion you have ever seen. Metaphysics, virtual Forteanism, downright stoicism, you name it, it gets thrown in and sort of works. The book is a study of the individuals, not the religion, but the religion serves to hold the people together. I haven't read this book in 15 years, and I'm aching to get another copy. If you like this book, try Coover's Universal Baseball Association - J. Henry Waugh, Prop., or a collection of his poetry and shortstuff, Pricksongs and Other Delights. At least one of these is in print.

Average customer rating:

Coover at his best

Stepmother (Coover, Robert)
Robert Coover
Manufacturer: McSweeney's
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

A Child Again (Coover, Robert)
The Origin of the Brunists (Coover, Robert)
Briar Rose (Coover, Robert)
Charm School Book One: Magical Witch Girl Bunny
Against the Day

ASIN: 1932416099

Book Description

Robert Coover, a father of modern American experimental fiction, returns with "Stepmother," a masterful re-imagining of the fairy-tale tradition. There is magic, there are princes, and painful castrations. Also, there is beauty and true love, of a sort. Stepmother is illustrated by Michael Kupperman, bound in soft cloth, and stamped with precious metals.

Customer Reviews:

Coover at his best.......2006-05-04

This is a fairy tale for adults, with all the elements of those tales you knew as children, but more. The book is an easy read, entertaining, and only long enough for a short afternoon or evening. The content, illustrations, and binding guarantee that it will be parked on your library shelf. It's a great introduction to Coover, and aptly demonstrates why he will, in my opinion, gain a rightful place among our country's great authors.

Average customer rating:

A definitively postmodern western.
A Delight From Beginning To End
More Over praised Fiction
The bloodiest knife fight in fiction history
Amazing genreless genre fiction

Ghost Town
Robert Coover
Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Glengarry Glen Ross
The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History
Iron John: A Book About Men
American Pastoral
Fear of Flying

ASIN: 0802136664

Amazon.com

Cross Cormac McCarthy with Eugene Ionesco and you might get something like Robert Coover's Ghost Town. The hero of this spaghetti Western is an unnamed cowboy riding along through a "vast empty plain, where nothing seems to have happened yet and yet everything seems already over...." Exhausted and parched, he sets his sights across the distant horizon only to find himself overtaken--literally--by a small, seemingly deserted little town. With the immutable logic of a dream, he becomes caught up in a strange, disjointed chain of events, in which drunken gamblers declare him sheriff and a saloon chanteuse stakes him out for her own. Meanwhile, the cowboy carries a torch for a melancholy, pale-faced woman known as the schoolmarm, who has a disturbing propensity for correcting his grammar while slapping his face. If, after wandering through Ghost Town's bloody streets for a while, readers find themselves suspecting that this is one of them newfangled metafictions, Coover will not disappoint. He plants the requisite empty plain-empty page analogies, and the book's denouement is nothing less than sexuality and textuality in a showdown at high noon. But there is more here than mere postmodern pastiche. Coover writes with prodigious intellectual energy and quicksilver wit; his sentences are never less than surprising, and often possess a sublime beauty all their own. As for his take on the genre's conventions, Coover may have struck closer to home than we think. Long stretches of tedium interrupted by flashes of hallucinatory violence: in its own bizarre way, Ghost Town might be the most realistic depiction of the Old West in a very long time. --Mary Park

Book Description

A nameless rider plods through the desert toward a dusty Western town shimmering on the horizon. In his latest novel, Robert Coover has taken the familiar form of the Western and turned it inside out. The lonesome stranger reaches the town - or rather, it reaches him - and he becomes part of its gunfights, saloon brawls, bawdy houses, train robberies, and, of course, the choice between the saloon chanteuse or the sweet-faced schoolmistress whom he loves. Throughout, Robert Coover reanimates the Western epics of Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour, infusing them with the Beckettian echoes, unique comic energy, and exuberant prose that have made him one of the most influential figures in contemporary American literature. It is, as The Washington Post Book World put it, "a fast-forward, ribald vision of the American West, a free-for-all that slides from surreal to ridiculous like a circus-goer's grin through a funhouse mirror . . . a heady frisson, a salon entertainment, one helluva ride."

Customer Reviews:

A definitively postmodern western........2003-12-15

I enjoyed this book immensely. Fans of metafiction--that is, fiction about the way fiction works--will find much to enjoy here. Readers looking for a linear storyline and 'realistic' plot should probably stay away. As mentioned before, 'GHOST TOWN' is perhaps best described as a send-up of the Cormac McCarthry western in the style, perhaps, of Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthemle or Italo Calvino. It is rather imperative that one understands and appreciates the metafiction aesthetic, at least in general, if s/he plans to get anything approaching enjoyment out of this novel. Otherwise, there is a significant chance that you will come away rather frustrated. If this sounds like something you think you might enjoy then I'd be willing to bet that you will.

A Delight From Beginning To End.......2003-06-23

This is the first Robert Coover book I have read, and I must say, I was thoroughly entertained! Some of the dialog was so funny, I had to laugh out loud. I read several passages a second time, they were such a delight to read. Even when events turn dark, and killing is described in such graphic detail, there is a constant underlying layer of humor. I highly recommend this book and look forward to reading more of Robert Coover's works.

More Over praised Fiction.......2002-07-09

Ghost Town, Robert Coover (7/02): This is an amazing novel in that it is simultaneously juvenile and pretentious. This attempt at a Beckian version of Cormak McCarthy succeeds on no level. The long drawn out prose are neither poetic nor sparse. The re-visioning of the cowboy myth, by portraying a violent grotesque environment, only come off as silly and has been done before. I could not tell whether the frequent, homey existential quips by the cowboys were supposed to make fun the of the genre or were meant to be profound. Yet, they succeeded at neither. In short, this is another over-praised novel by an author of noteworthy intentions but little original skill needed to pull it off.

The bloodiest knife fight in fiction history.......2001-10-19

Less disconnected than some Coover books I've read, Ghost Town borrows elements from literary and hollywood westerns and gives them a subversive and often graphic edge. At times a wonderful read with passages that flow beautifully and at other times harsh and violent. It contains the single bloodiest knife fight in fiction history. All in all a risky venture but Coover blends these two opposites and keeps it together through the end.

Amazing genreless genre fiction.......2001-09-25

Those who come to Coover from his earlier works are well-prepared for this remarkable synthesis of excellent language, excellent description, excellent mood. Those new to Coover will delight in their discovery. Ghost Town is somehow less earnest, more effortless, than earlier Coover, and is more mature for it. Here is a novel that makes no apologies, denies an association with the "modern novel," and expertly ignores the western as genre by setting itself right in the middle of it. In Coover's Ghost Town, genre cliches become literary devices, and stereotypes become grammatical foils. Critics (not to mention grad students) will be playing with this one for years; casual readers will carry it around with them and read their favorite bits over and over again for even longer.

Average customer rating:

Outstanding, clever, cynical and sympathetic fabulist short stories
Good from beginning to end

A Child Again (Coover, Robert)
Robert Coover
Manufacturer: McSweeney's
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

United States | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Stepmother (Coover, Robert)
Pricksongs & Descants: Fictions
The People of Paper
The Facts of Winter
Here They Come

ASIN: 1932416226

Book Description

Casey returns to bat. The Pied Piper pipes again. Little Red Riding Hood is not safe yet. Robert Coover returns with a new collection of short fiction, reexamining our shared narrative heritage — myths, fairy tales, and favorite childhood stories — and unearthing the underlying hope, fear, and wonder at their core. Playful yet systematic, satirical yet empathetic, Coover uses the stories of our past to point towards a fiction of the future.

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding, clever, cynical and sympathetic fabulist short stories.......2006-05-15

Robert Coover is one of the most celebrated writers of our time, for novels such as The Public Burning and for short fiction collected in books such as Pricksongs and Descants. Coover has always been something of a fabulist, and in A Child Again he is overtly working that vein. The stories are reimaginings of fairy tales, children's stories, a song ("Puff the Magic Dragon"), puzzles. There is even a depiction of a stick figure visiting our world. The title of the collection suggests a return to childhood - perhaps even a "second childhood" - but from the viewpoint of age, a viewpoint often cynical, other times knowing or accepting.

Indeed perhaps the dominant theme is old age - perhaps not a surprise from a 77-year-old writer. (Though to be sure some of these stories were first published decades ago.) Story after story looks at characters from a familiar tale grown very old. The collection opens with "Sir John Paper Returns to Honah-Lee", about the aging Jackie Paper visiting his childhood friend Puff the Magic Dragon once again. And it closes with "Aesop's Forest", which depicts the death of Aesop the fabulist along with the death of the characters in his forest, particularly a very decrepit lion. The story is sad and funny and cynical in equal measure - which could be said of many of the stories here.

One of my favorites is "Alice in the Time of the Jabberwock". Again, an aging character returns to the fantasy world she visited as a youth. Alice, apparently menopausal, flabby, incontinent, and otherwise afflicted with the ills of the elderly, finds herself again in unchanging Wonderland. Coover very cleverly depicts the characters of Wonderland from a slant viewpoint, and very movingly but not sentimentally depicts Alice's regrets and frustration.

Not every story insists on aging characters. "The Dead Queen" is a "what happens after happily ever after" story, in which Prince Charming begins to be concerned about Snow White's true character as they bury her tortured stepmother. "The Last One", another favorite of mine, is the story of Bluebeard from the point of view of Bluebeard - paranoidly convinced that his lovely new wife will disobey him as all the others have, by visiting his secret charnel room. But there is a nice twist buried in the close.

Coover is also fascinated by games and metafictional tricks. Three stories are presented as puzzles: a riddle, a cryptogram, and most humorously, a jigsaw puzzle, "Suburban Jigsaw", in which the tabs and slots of the puzzle seem representative of the sexual habits of the adulterous characters of the title suburb. Even cleverer, perhaps, is "Heart Suit", a story presented as fifteen cards (an introduction, a joker, and the heart suit) in a pocket at the back of the book. The story concerns the mystery of who stole the tarts the Queen of Hearts baked for the King. It is designed to be read with the cards shuffled in any order (except for the first and last). I tried a few possible orders and it works quite well - the fact that the guilty party might be one of several suspects is part of the point.

I haven't touched on many of the stories here - such as "The Presidents", which hilariously views Presidents as a rather unpleasant species of animal, or "The Return of the Dark Children", a powerful look at the guilty response of the parents of Hamelin to the loss of their children to the Pied Piper. The book is outstanding - clever throughout without forgetting to mean something, cynical but still sympathetic to its characters, and excellently written, in long carefully constructed paragraphs and a quite individual voice.

Good from beginning to end.......2005-12-21

This collection of short stories by Robert Coover is nothing short of genius. First of all, let me say that I don't usually read short story collections beginning to end. This collection, however, I read cover to cover. It consumed me. The power of Coover's prose cuts deeper than the fun, mercurial language initially suggests-- you'll find yourself thinking about these stories as you ride to work; you'll find yourself comparing them to real life situations; you'll find yourself mentioning them in conversation; you'll find yourself re-reading them, and enjoying them even more the second time.
While every story varies wildly in voice, tone, and subject matter, they all seem to be striking at a similar theme, which is the pain of growing old, the death of childhood illusions and fantasies. While this theme isn't new, Coover always puts a fresh, somewhat sick twist on it.This book about the years after the fairy tale ends, the denoument in which Alice is still stuck in Wonderland, now grown fat and irritable, her hormones raging out of control. By inverting the framework of stories that we have all read and enjoyed as children, Coover cuts directly into the deep longing to return to childhood that each of us possesses. Moreover, he never fails to surprise, to take the unexpected position and flesh it out with astounding understanding.
To top it all off, Mcsweeney's (as usual) has crafted a gorgeous book to house these stories. If nothing else, buy it just to have one of the most beautiful hard cover books published in the last ten years on your bookshelf.
This one's a winner. Check it out.

Average customer rating:

Excellent exploration of the symbolic overtones of the Sleeping Beauty story
And you thought the Brothers were Grimm
An Existential Sleeping Beauty
Not his best
What a Waste of Time!

Briar Rose (Coover, Robert)
Robert Coover
Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Fantasy, Futuristic & Ghost | Romance | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Romance Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

A Child Again (Coover, Robert)
Stepmother (Coover, Robert)
Pricksongs & Descants: Fictions
The Bloody Chamber
Briar Rose

ASIN: 0802135412

Amazon.com

Robert Coover has a power over the language matched by few authors and a curiosity about the nature of stories and narratives that keeps his work intellectually charged, if sometimes difficult to follow. Students of postmodernism and fans of metafiction will be interested to read Briar Rose, Coover's funny deconstruction and retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent exploration of the symbolic overtones of the Sleeping Beauty story.......2006-04-28

Briar Rose is the name of the princess in Sleeping Beauty and the name of the Grimm brothers version of the story is Little Briar Rose. Robert Coover tells the story from three points of view. First is the point of view of the prince entering and cutting his way through the briars on a heroic/erotic quest. Then there is the princess dreaming of her rescue by a kiss from the spell induced by a spindle prick and the promised handsome prince who will do the kissing. Lastly, is the evil fairy who cast the spell and who keeps the princess company by telling her stories during her 100 year slumber. The story keeps switching between these three perspectives, with much repetition. Each character explores their own expectations and fears through this process.

This is a story rich in mythic and erotic symbolism, and Coover explores these in depth as each character relives the event in their mind from slightly different perspectives over and over again. As a study in the symbolism and possible overtones of the brief story, Coover's work is excellent. People looking for a romantic retelling of the original tale should definitely look elsewhere because some of the variations include disturbing elements like incest, cannibalism, adultery, and rape. While nowhere near as much an erotic fantasy as Anne Rice's three volume Beauty series, this book is still not appropriate for the faint of heart or children.

And you thought the Brothers were Grimm.......2005-04-01

I kept falling asleep when I was reading this--and all I can remember now, its been a year. Is how weird I found it. It kept giving me weird ideas, that perhaps the author would have loved to seen Sleeping Beauty as a porno flick instead of a fairy tale.

Strange, strange book. Though it certainly has some unique ideas in it.

This is a really dark book, even if it is amazingly short.

An Existential Sleeping Beauty.......2004-09-21

While reading Coover's book, you might find yourself confused. This is only appropriate, as Coover wrote an existential masterpiece. The prince's efforts to penetrate the briar hedge lead him nowhere. Beauty dreams of a series of princes waking her, each worse than the last. They seek eachother because they seek the only concept they know will not melt away.

If you consider the phrase "someday my prince will come" sacrosanct, this is probably not a good one to read.

If you need a traditional narrative, this is probalby not a good one to read.

If you're looking for a read aloud for your children...perhaps try a different book.

Otherwise, enjoy.

Not his best.......2003-08-06

I think this would have worked better as a short story. It's a bold and poetic take on Sleeping Beauty - the book is divided into numerous brief sections that continuously, circularly revisit and revise different portions of the story. It has things to say about not just Sleeping Beauty, but act of storytelling and the nature of narrative. However, the repetition does start getting tiresome after a while; it would be a more tolerable yet equally effective read if it were significantly shorter.

Overall, it's one Coover's weaker works, but as he's one of the most unsung, underrated masters of postmodernism around, it's still pretty good. To see him in top form, read A Night at the Movies, one of my personal favorites of his. For more of his revisions of fairy tales, see his novel Pinocchio in Venice and the stories "The Door" and "The Gingerbread House" in his collection Pricksongs and Descants.

What a Waste of Time!.......2002-10-31

Well, sorry but this story [is disappointing]. Espescially for anyone who enjoyed the story and idea of Sleeping Beauty. And its not even that the story is that bad. The writing [is no good]. The reader is constantly confused, and even when you've finished the book, you might go "huh?" I hated it. I do not suggest that anyone buy this book.

Authors:

Authors

Authors