Robert Coover (1932–2024)

Robert Coover’s fiction and the fiction of all early meta-heavy fabulators in the ‘60s and ‘70s sought to subvert the prosaic conventions of language after being driven “into a blind alley by critics and analysts” out to deconstruct and destroy what critics and analysts of Coover have called literature’s “innocent magic.” In Coover’s mind, the only proper reaction to the blind alley cornering is to create a “big blast,” destroying everything and everyone, making room to show more rebuild something new: something fractured—using—as Coover himself explains in the Prólogo to the Cervantes-inspired collection w/in the collection: “Seven Exemplary Fictions”—“familiar mythic or historical forms to combat the content of those forms and to conduct the reader…to the real, away from mystification to clarification, away from magic to maturity, away from mystery to revelation.”

Old Coover’s mostly famous for his representation of fractured fairy tales and Biblical myths taking well-known FT&Ms like Noah’s ark and turning them on their heads into these “death-cunt-and-prick songs,” stretching out the version commonly understood and pulling the humanity from b/w their lines to the fiction’s surface: Noah’s Brother narrates his part of this insane project Noah’s taken up, helping his brother construct his giant ark and gather animals as a blind favor, and the stoical Noah, when his Brother questions the sanity of what they’re doing and informs Noah that his pregnant wife can’t take care of their household on her own, he has a lot of his own work to do, &c., only says “It don’t matter none your work.” In this fractured world, God’s actions carry a certain vulgarity to them, a carelessness made manifest in their lack of concern for the common people, as the Brother, his wife and their unborn child are left abandoned to the rising waves by Noah’s family; and also as Joseph’s marriage (and later life) comes to ruin when a divine pregnancy stands b/w him and his vestal, uncaring wife. Seriously, God’s an asshole.

No longer was the City of Man a pale image of the City of God, a microcosmic reflection of the macrocosm, but rather it was all there was, neither micro- nor macrocosm, yet at the same time full of potential.

I found there were two stories in P&D that really stood out from the rest, both similarly told in a broken-up non-linear fashion w/ numerous narrative lines happening simultaneously, some true, some fantasy, but it doesn’t really matter which is which as long as we understand them all at once. “The Babysitter” tells the story of—no surprise—a babysitter, every paragraph breaking b/w real and unreal, delving into the infinite number of possibilities (all of which end up being more than slightly tragic), often the concerns of the babysitter herself, worrying about possible appearances by her boyfriend and his schmuck of a friend, the children’s health, or a sudden surprise appearance by their horny father, &c. Which is real means jack: nothing is resolved(—a trick he pulls in another story: “The Elevator”). The other story, the story that dominates this collection completely, and the first real story post-prologue (of sorts)—which really brings down the overall impact of the collection, to tell you the truth: when you start every story looking and hoping for it to compare to the first—is “The Magic Poker,” and is the strongest example of the metafictional style first defined by Gass. The “Poker” is a self-aware series of narrative lines that center around this magical poker purposely inserted onto the story’s island by its creator—the narrator, the writer, the magician—as a symbol, a literary artifact; it’s also Coover’s commentary on the state of literature circa ’68, which he characterizes as a decrepit and abandoned mansion, long forgotten by its owners (also, of course, inventions of the author), vandalized by Coover himself.

Like in “Babysitter,” every paragraph is a break from whatever previous narrative line into another, as the writer bounces around between ideas, changing his mind and re-writing events and philosophizing on the state of his island, his writing and unequivocally himself. Coover’s goal, by bringing two young antithetical sisters to this island of his, is to breathe life back into the symbol, to bring thru the power of his words magic back to literature. And so the sisters: On one hand, we have Karen, prepared for life, strong, &c., who seizes the poker, kissing the handle…the shaft…the tip…&c.—you can use yr imagination, and takes it as a memento to her boat. Karen’s sister (is she ever named?) is ill-dressed for the island in tight-fitted gold pants (mmmm...awwww), scared, confused & yet aroused; so anyway she picks up this same magic poker and is split into multiple narratives, the most fascinating of which takes on the guise of a fairy tale-like story, where the caretaker’s brutish son—who’s been watching them up until this point on and off as the narrator decides on whether to include him or not, occasionally shitting into a teakettle in a ruined cottage, aka Karen’s sister’s meaningless life (But what am I going to do with shit in the teakettle? No, no, there’s nothing to be gained by burdening our fabrications with impieties. Enough that the skin of the world is littered with our contentious artifice, lepered with the stigmata of human aggression and despair, without suffering our songs to be flattened by savagery. Back to the poker)—where the caretaker’s son becomes the Beast, or a dirty fellaheen-like man, but sly, taking the magic poker in this invented magic kingdom to strip the sister/princess of her tight-fitted golden pants and win her hand in marriage (this being a contest set up by the King), but once done the princess finally kisses the phallic symbol, transforming it into a pipe-smoking, beautiful prince, who proceeds to slay the Beast, “saving” the princess by widowing her from the sort of lover she so secretly desired. Everything on the island is invoked by this literary symbol, and Coover is the symbol, a subject/object of his own fiction and his escape into language.

I could go on and on about this story all day, but man o man, I have to move on and get this over with. Look out for this collection: it’s an essential read if you want to understand the later 20th c.’s dominant literary movement, and there are sixteen more death-cunt-and-prick songs to go along with these four, standouts incl. (but are in no way limited to): “The Marker” (yeuck), “Morris in Chains (in which Barthelme’s City Life comes into play), “The Elevator” (prvsly. mentioned), "The Gingerbread House" (another FFT), & “A Pedestrian Accident.”

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What is life, after all, but a caravan of lifelike forgeries? show less

"Oh no, my dear. there are no disenchantments, merely progressions and styles of possession. To exist is to be spell-bound" (74), says a nameless character in Robert Coover's "The Magic Poker," a prose work riffing on Shakespeare's Tempest. That piece is collected as one of thirty "short fictions" in Going for a Beer.

The title avoids calling the objects of the collection "stories," although they are all conspicuously narrative. But they are technically and structurally unorthodox, with show more rhetorical flow that sometimes darts in and out of various characters, themselves mutable, often replaying events with variations and abstaining from the signals that could fix what "really" happened for a reader in search of such a thing. In such cases, Coover's playful style invites the reader to collaborate in deciding what has occurred and in whose perception or imagination. But in among the variants and mutations there are archetypes outlined with a sort of buzzing field of possibility that gives the core a weight of the inevitable.

I have read some other Coover works, and these fictions are most like what I encountered in Briar Rose and Spanking the Maid, not in his more conventional novel The Origin of the Brunists. I was also reminded of the incantatory and associational techniques of Alain Robbe-Grillet, as well as the subversive and libidinal writing of Angela Carter. Like Carter, Coover often uses fairy tales as a formal basis or point of departure, and about a half dozen of these pieces are constructed thus. The reader is given new perspectives on Hansel & Gretel, Snow White, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the Pied Piper, and Little Red Riding Hood, not to mention Noah's Ark.

Like Robbe-Grillet, Coover does new things with text by invoking the cinematic sensibility of modern readers. This approach can be very overt, as in the three pieces "Inside the Frame," "The Phantom of the Movie Palace," and "Lap Dissolves," which appear consecutively in the collection. In one text he exploits a classic movie in the way that he does fairy-tales: "You Must Remember This" supplements Casablanca. Other sorts of entertainment serve as structural and thematic scaffolding as well: the puppet show in "Punch" and stage magic in "The Hat Act."

One of the longest pieces in the volume is what introducer T.C. Boyle calls Coover's "best-known story," the 1969 suburban fugue "The Babysitter." Strangely, it was made into a direct-to-video movie in 1995, which has been roundly panned. I suppose more people have seen the film than have read the story. But the text is an exercise in sustained provocation, with so much of it consisting of the fantasies and fears of the characters, that the attentive reader can only speculate upon an objective state of affairs.

"Going for a Beer" is one of the shortest texts of the collection, and it keenly depicts a foreshortened and inconsequential life, raced through to its unremarkable end. It's interesting that it should give its title to the larger book as an eponym.

The whole book is admirable: often funny, sometimes profound, occasionally hair-raising. I came into my copy cheaply, but I will be keeping it, because there are several of these stories that I can easily imagine myself returning to. show less

Insane, in the best way possible.

It's particularly amazing to think that this came from the mind of one person, long before it was possible to look things up on the internet. It's hard to explain what I mean by that, but parts of the book almost had the tone of a malfunctioning ChatGPT run amok, grabbing phrases, ideas, and images willy-nilly and combining them into a poisonous soup of political satire that is both spot-on and persistently nonsensical. I'm not sure I've ever read a book show more loaded with so many off-putting and surreally-deployed references to history and popular culture, engineered to make you feel uncomfortable, aroused, nauseous, and amused all at the same time. A document created by a blazing, rage-filled, and insanely intelligent magpie with the darkest imagination you can conjure.

RIP Mr Coover. You almost made me feel sorry for Richard Nixon. show less

Summary: An accountant creates a fantasy baseball league that takes over his life.

Before modern fantasy baseball leagues. Before the invention of Sabremetrics to analyze every possible baseball statistic. In 1968, Robert Coover introduced us to J. Henry Waugh, sole proprietor of the Universal Baseball League. It is a league created in Waugh’s apartment. But no one else knows about it. He named the eight teams after early pro teams. He filled the rosters with players who he named, who took show more on lives of their own. Games were played by the role of three dice. Waugh had created an elaborate system for each possible dice combination.

As the book opens, the league is in its fifty-sixth (LVI) season of 84 games. But something is wrong, both with the league and with Henry. The league just doesn’t seem to have the same excitement. Yet it is taking over more and more of Henry’s life. His day job is as an accountant with a big accounting firm. Then he ran the league in the evening and weekends. His only social life is trips to the local dive bar, his friend Lou from work, and Hetty, his neighbor and “friend with benefits.” A local grocer delivers his food.

But it gets worse. Not only does he play the games, and keep records of all the statistics, promote rookies, and retire veterans. He also has allowed the players to occupy his mind with their lives–their off the field escapades and tragedies. There are long passages of imagined bar scenes with bawdy songs (including one with a rape). And as the league occupies more of his head space, his work suffers and his job is at risk. Sometimes, fantasy dialogue leaks out in real life conversation.

By Season LVI, star players have sons in the game. For example, Damon Rutherford is a rookie pitcher who looks like he will follow in the steps of his Hall of Fame Father Brock Rutherford. The book opens with him in the middle of pitching a perfect game. And Henry realizes that Damon hold the hope of a revitalized league. And then, in the next game it all changes with one roll of the dice that come up 1-1-1. That unlikely combination means a batter hit by a pitch that kills him. And who is at the plate when this unlucky role comes up? Damon Rutherford.

With that, it all spirals downward, for Henry and for the League. He even lets Lou help him with a game, letting him in on his secret obsession. It doesn’t go well. As his job hangs by a thread, he considers winding it all up and getting his life in order. But will he?

Robert Coover invents a character with an unusual fantasy obsession that holds up a mirror to our obsessions and addictions. With the advent of online sports betting, we hear more and more stories of those who have wrecked their lives and their families’ finances with their obsession. But Coover uncovers a more profound truth. What does Henry have to live for that is better than his personal fantasy league?

This is an adult book with adult language and sexual material, some of which may be triggering. But it also explores the adult obsessions and addictions with which we fill our lives when nothing greater and better does. It’s both fascinating and painful. But the life you save may be your own. show less