John's Wife [Hardcover]

Robert Coover (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 11, 1996

A satirical fable of small-town America centers on a builder's wife and the erotic power she exerts over her neighbors, transforming before their eyes and changing forever their notions of right and wrong. 25,000 first printing. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Perhaps the most versatile?and funniest?of America's manically inventive postmodernist writers who came of age in the 1960s and '70s (a group that includes Donald Barthelme, John Barth and William Gaddis), Coover has always been the most adept at placing middle-American life under his looking glass and transmuting it into a metaphysical carnival. John is a mall-builder: "where he walked, the earth changed, because he wished it so, and like as not, his wishes all came true." John and his wife, in fact, are the twin suns of the small town where this raucous and disturbing novel is set. Everybody desires John's wife, "yet few of the town's citizens, if asked, could have described her." She is the screen on which everyone projects his or her desires. Floyd, the born-again tough who runs John's pharmacy, wants John's wife purely as an expression of his class animus. But her core is elusive, to say the least, as the town's minister can attest when, during a tryst with John's wife, she disappears after lifting her dress up over her head. John's wife begins, literally, to fade in increments?a situation for which some in town, latching onto superstition, consider blaming the local photographer, who has mades it his life's work to do "a complete study of her, in all her public and private aspects." As in Gerald's Party, Coover flits from one character's perspective to another's (but never that of John's wife). His prose is, as always, biting and suggestive, a spicy blend of erudition and scatology, epic and farce. It's the perfect vehicle for bringing the surreal action and manic cogitation of these characters into sharp detail?fitting ornamentation for his fun-house reflections of the shape of human desire. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

John may be a hotshot architect, but it's John's wife who has everyone in thrall in his small town. More sharp-edged observations from the author of A Night at the Movies (Dalkey Archive, 1992).
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1ST edition (April 11, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684818418
• ISBN-13: 978-0684818412
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,526,082 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A metronomic meditation on how we avoid our Selves, October 11, 1999

By 

Mark A. Furman - See all my reviews

This review is from: John's Wife (Paperback)

I had never heard of Coover before seeing the book in the discount section of a bookstore. The first paragraph of the book was on the cover, and it was so well written, so interesting, that I purchased it on the spot.

While I am glad to have met this obviously skilled writer, the book was tough to get through because it maintained one clever, ironic tone and never waivered (although it was well written). It was almost hypnotic in its metronomic leaping from character to character, and the omnipotent viewpoint of the narrator was claustrophobic and omnipresent. I wanted to grab the narrator and demand that he (yes, he) release his monopolistic grip on defining the reality of this town, and let the people in it define themselves.

I kept waiting for the characters to have even the slightest glimmer of self-awareness, and just when they appeared to reach this point, the author had them chicken out or choose the easy path and sink back into the self-deluded oblivion of their small town lives and loves.

And, in the end, that is what this book is all about--how we bury ourselves in self-delusions of grandeur, greed, sex, food, money, lust, work, religion, and art in order to obscure our own cowardice from ourselves. Coover leaves us with an incredibly bleak (if comedic) view of suburban life, but let's face it, like all dark comedies, it is the truth that makes it have relevance.

The title character, John's Wife, is the ultimate focal point of all of the character's neurotic longings. Not surprisingly, she is a total figment of their corporate imagination, so much so that she has no independent existence at all, not even a name.

As the characters become engulfed by their neurotic behavior and longings, they lose their focus on John's Wife and she starts to disappear and reappear in startling ways. At the climax of the novel, with the very fabric of reality tearing apart (all sorts of fantastic things occur with bewildering normalcy), John's Wife has disappeared altogether, except for a few mercy visits to try to heal the wounds like the Virgin Mary miraculously appearing. Life only becomes stabilized (if remaining incredibly vacuous) in the morning light when this central fantasy (John's Wife) reappears and is restored to centrality.

One can read each of the neurotic characters as one aspect of one personality--say, the author, who invites this transference through his "Artist as Editor" character. In a sense, we have internalized all sorts of neurotic habits in order to mask the larger unpleasant truth--that we are solely responsible for our own happiness and self-development, and that facing into our Selves is beyond our capacity. And we then focus our efforts on one unreal, externalized, unattainable goal--John's Wife--so as to fool ourselves into thinking that we are making progress.

Have I read too much into what other reviewers have seen merely as a dark comment on suburbanism? Possibly, but the author invites this speculation, which raises this book above the level of just a good read to, dare I say it, art.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A dense and difficult treat, July 1, 2000

By 

Garrett Rowlan - See all my reviews

This review is from: John's Wife (Paperback)

Is that a contradiction? Perhaps. The mountains of expository prose without dialougue breaks or chapter divisions make this a forbidding work, and yet Coover's prose is so incandescent, so witty with its turns of phrase, puns, and moments of sublime insight that I couldn't put it down. The first half of the book is a satire on small town life, the second half is both surreal and sad, but engaging throughout. I especially liked the contrast between John and John's Wife, between the man of action (destructive action) and his evanescent spouse, as if Coover were contrasting the world and the spirit in this unlikely paring. A excellent book, and I plan to read more by this author

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars James Joyce Meets Harold Robbins, September 1, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Fredericksburg, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: John's Wife (Paperback)

Coover's lengthy tome presents the intertwined tales of the lives of bizarre folks in a small town. The pseudo-stream-of-consciousness styling necessitates constant repetition of basic facts about the characters, so that the reader doesn't forget who's who. Despite my average rating, I stuck with it to the end, who knows, maybe you will too.