Customer Reviews

Ghost Town: A Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Well, this one I can fully blame on The New York Times Book Review:

My first contact with Coover's work came when a college girlfriend (an English major) gave me a few stories from "Pricksongs and Descants." I thought his meta-textual writing was interesting, but in the end, more akin to a linguistic experiment than to a work of fine literature: i.e., something that one would expect to be assigned for an English class.

My experience with Coover's "Universal Baseball Association..." was infinitely more satisfying, and that book remains one of the most imaginative and subtle works I have read to date. Coover's writing in that novel is not overtly gimmicky as in "Pricksongs..." and for that matter "Ghost Town." Rather than aim his irony at the text itself, he aims it at the subject matter, and the end result is a "meta-fiction" about baseball that brilliantly meditates upon the nature of loneliness.

Disappointingly, I found no such deeper, "human" message in "Ghost Town." The New York Times whet my appetite when it review of "Ghost Town" was combined with a journalistic narrative about the Southwest by "Balkan Ghosts" writer, Robert Kaplan. Being a southwesterner myself, I was anxious to read Coover's take on the American West. It was painfully obvious after a mere fifty pages that what I was going to end up with was not a commentary on the West, but rather on the Western literary and television genre...

...which is a neat idea, and Coover's deft prose style delivers just that: a neat novel. What is missing from this book, with its moonlit deserts, saloon brawls, bawdy brothels, upended wagons, gunfights and campfire tales, is any attempt at plumbing for the true significance of the American West. Coover is content to take L'Amour's and Grey's interpretation to its carnal extremes, but he does so without once supplying his own theory about that which is being interpreted.

It is not enough for Coover to subvert the Western genre without attempting to grasp its original subject matter. This fatal neglect turns "Ghost Town" into a comic book with big vocabulary, and ensures that its literary longevity is destined to ride off into a rather well-illustrated sunset.

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.

If you've read BRIAR ROSE (also by Coover) and liked it, you'll drool over this 'un. The western novel as epitomized by Zane Grey is deliciously lampooned in such a nightmarish style that I don't think I'll ever watch another western movie without thinking of this book. Everything's in here including the kitchen sink: campfire shootouts, grisly killings, barroom brawls, the sex-starved saloon chanteuse, endless wandering the plains on an indifferent hoss, the hero (if you can call him that) saving the schoolmarm on a traintrack that seems to move right under his feet. The dialogue is itself a hoot as Coover hits this dead-on. It's fun to recognize a character who's been killed earlier in the story; indeed, no one stays dead so as the book comes to an end you can imagine how it could go on and on and on...In all, a short, strange parody to end the western as we know it.

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.

Metafiction is not something I suffer well, but Coover is the perfect cranky, amusing old coot of a guide to lead a wary wanderer through one hell of a strange tale. Despite my initial misgivings, Ghost Town left a mark as indelible as any brand. Long after I finished, I'm still haunted by imagery which seems to penetrate the very heart of our shared American mythology. Saddle up and enjoy the ride.

This is the first Robert Coover book I have read, and I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed it! Some of the dialog was so funny, I had to laugh out loud. The style in which this was written is so refreshing; unlike anything I have read. It's like 'The Twilight Zone' meets 'Gunsmoke' or something. This book may not appeal to all readers, but for me, it was perfectly entertaining. I look forward to reading more of Robert Coover's books.

'Ghost Town' is a remarkable work of metafiction- the transitions and descriptions will absolutely blow your brains out. Amazing, amazing, amazing.

After I have read a book, it ends up in one of three places. It is donated to the library, it is donated to Goodwill, or it ends up on my bookshelf of "Keepers" to be read again.

This one is on my bookshelf of "Keepers".

Warning: This book should be read by those over 18 years of age because of several scenes in the book. Women may find it offensive.

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.

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.