Robert Coover
Houghton Mifflin Chronology of US Literature:
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Works by Robert Coover
(b. 1932)
| 1966 | The Origin of the Brunists. The Iowa-born writer's first novel is his most conventional, about a survivor of a coal-mine disaster who founds a cult to help him explain his experiences. The novel, which wins the Faulkner Award for best new novel, shows Coover's characteristic theme of the need to create myth to give meaning to the world. |
| 1968 | The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. Coover's inventive second novel treats an accountant's fantasy baseball league, which assumes a disturbing reality. The novel, like most of Coover's work, explores the relationship between myth and reality and the implications of creation and artifice. |
| 1969 | Pricksongs and Descants. Coover's collection of short fiction is one of the major examples of innovative "metafictions," works ultimately about themselves. Included are intriguing works such as "The Babysitter," "The Elevator," and "The Sentient Lens." |
| 1977 | The Public Burning. One of the most controversial novels of the decade uses the execution of the Rosenbergs in 1953 to encapsulate American moral values. Richard Nixon appears as a narrator, along with other historical figures. The novel had been refused by nearly every major U.S. publisher for fear of libel suits. Critics are split on the book's merits. |
| 1981 | Spanking the Maid. Coover's novella parodies nineteenth-century pornography while exploring the conflict between self and other and the various permutations of converting desire into an object. |
| 1986 | Gerald's Party. Coover's surrealistic novel treats a fashionable party during which a celebrated actress is found murdered. One reviewer discerns a social satire "exposing the crude sensationalism which underlies the guests' cultural pretensions" and "the moral insensibility which binds them to all but pleasure." |
| 1987 | Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears? The novella, first published in the American Review in 1975, recounts the title character's football career, off-the-field sexual exploits, and death during a steel strike. Dealing with myth and history, Coover turns, in the words of one reviewer, "a very amusing novel to a seriously funny one." |
| 1991 | Pinocchio in Venice. In Coover's novel Pinocchio is an elderly professor of aesthetics who returns to Venice for inspiration to finish a book. Anthony Burgess remarks that "This book is about Venice and Pinocchio (the title does not lie), but only if these are taken as themes for fantastic variations. This book is about itself." |
| 1996 | John's Wife and Briar Rose. The first is a novel about a woman's fascination with the inhabitants of a Midwestern town. It is described by critic Michael Harris as "on one level a bawdy and deadly satire of good-ol'-boy mores; on another level a complex portrait of the townspeople... on still another, a philosophical inquiry into the relationship between life and art." The second is a retelling of the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty," suffused with more sexuality than the traditional version and reflecting on the act of storytelling itself. |
| 1998 | Ghost Town. In a dazzling parody of the American western, Coover arranges a series of ribald dislocations for an unnamed cowboy who is overtaken by a seemingly deserted ghost town. The effect is something like "Zane Grey meets Samuel Beckett." |
Quotes By:
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Robert Coover
Quotes:
"The narrative impulse is always with us; we couldn't imagine ourselves through a day without it."
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
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Robert Coover
"Coover" redirects here. For the inventor, see Harry Coover.
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| Born | February 4, 1932 Charles City, Iowa, U.S. |
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| Occupation | writer |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Indiana University |
| Period | 1960s- |
| Genres | short story, novel |
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Influenced
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Robert Lowell Coover (born February 4, 1932) is an American author and professor in the Literary Arts program at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction.
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Contents
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Life and works
Coover was born in Charles City, Iowa. He attended Southern Illinois University Carbondale, received his B.A. in Slavic Studies from Indiana University in 1955, then served in the United States Navy. He received an M.A. in General Studies in the Humanities from the University of Chicago in 1965. In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.[1] Coover has served as a teacher or writer in residence at many universities.
Coover's first novel was The Origin of the Brunists, in which the sole survivor of a mine disaster starts a religious cult. His second book, The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., deals with the role of the creator. The eponymous Waugh, a shy, lonely accountant, creates a baseball game in which rolls of the dice determine every play, and dreams up players to attach those results to.
Coover's best-known work, The Public Burning, deals with the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in terms that have been called magic realism. Half of the book is devoted to the mythic hero Uncle Sam of tall tales, dealing with the equally fantastic Phantom, who represents international Communism. The alternate chapters portray the efforts of Richard Nixon to find what is really going on amidst the welter of narratives.
A later novella, Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears offers an alternate Nixon, one who is devoted to football and sex with the same doggedness with which he pursued political success in this reality. The theme anthology A Night at the Movies includes the story "You Must Remember This", a piece about Casablanca that features an explicit description of what Rick and Ilsa did when the camera wasn't on them. Pinocchio in Venice returns to mythical themes.
Coover is one of the founders of the Electronic Literature Organization. In 1987 he was chosen as the winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story. Coover is indeed one of the foremost short story writers of the postmodern period, as exemplified by the "Seven Exemplary Fictions" contained in his 1969 book Pricksongs and Descants, which has influenced a new generation of writers, notably Jayne Joso for the 2011 novel, Perfect Architect.
See also
Selected Bibliography
Novels
- The Origin of the Brunists (1966)
- The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (1968)
- The Public Burning (1977), completed 1975[2]
- Gerald's Party (1986)
- A Night at the Movies or, You Must Remember This (1987) (themed anthology)
- Pinocchio in Venice (1991)
- John's Wife (1996)
- Ghost Town (1998)
- The Adventures of Lucky Pierre: Director's Cut (2002)
- Noir (2010)
Short stories, Novellas, Plays & Collections
- Pricksongs & Descants (1969) (collection)
- The Babysitter (1969) (short story)
- A Theological Position (1972) (plays)
- A Political Fable (1980) (novella)
- Spanking the Maid (1982) (novella)
- In Bed One Night & Other Brief Encounters (1983) (collection)
- Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears (1987) (novella)
- Dr. Chen's Amazing Adventure (1991) (novella)
- Briar Rose (1996) (novella)
- The Grand Hotels (of Joseph Cornell) (2002) (novella)
- Stepmother (2004) (novella)
- A Child Again (2005) (collection)
- "The Case of the Severed Hand" Harper's Magazine 317 [1898] (July 2008): 74-80
- "White-Bread Jesus" Harper's Magazine 317 [1903] (December 2008): 79-88
- "Going for a beer" The New Yorker (March 14, 2011)
- "Matinée" The New Yorker (July 25, 2011)
Non-Fiction
- The End of Books (1992) (essay)
References
- ^ “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” January 30, 1968 New York Post
- ^ "the manuscript was completed in 1975" - http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rCCbiO901XAC&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=coover+%22public+burning%22+%22completed+in%22&source=bl&ots=v75WTTyykx&sig=PStGlHpzFZkzpEjhEHgSQ94tiN4&hl=en&ei=xL5XTrfCOYbX8gPej6WYDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAA
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Robert Coover |
- Faculty Home Page at Brown University
- "Robert Coover". Providencephoenix.com. http://www.providencephoenix.com/archive/books/99/04/01/COOVER.html. Retrieved 2011-08-19.– Interview
- IMDB
- The End of Books
- Rettberg, Scott. "A History of the Future of Narrative: Robert Coover on Vimeo". Vimeo.com. http://vimeo.com/1765099. Retrieved 2011-08-19.– Novelist Robert Coover's keynote address at the Electronic Literature in Europe seminar (elitineurope.net), September 13, 2008. Introduced by Scott Rettberg. Videography by Martin Arvebro.
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Houghton Mifflin Chronology of US Literature
The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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