The Public Burning (Coover, Robert) [Paperback]

Robert Coover (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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

Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; 1st Grove Press ed edition (April 2, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802135277
• ISBN-13: 978-0802135278
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #224,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unstoppable..., October 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Public Burning (Coover, Robert) (Paperback)

So you read the prologue to this book ("Groun'-Hog Hunt") and you think, wow. That's one of the best, most energetic pieces of writing I've read in a long, long time. Too bad he can't keep it up for the whole book. But Coover does! He gives us over 500 pages of the best, sharpest, fastest writing you'll see. It's packed with so many references to so many historial/pop culture things that it's like a mini-history of the era. It's one of the funniest books ever, in my opinion, and one of the smartest. I've read it three times, and I'm still catching stuff. You can't do much better than this.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A cruel, yet sympathetic, view of Richard Nixon, April 23, 2000

By 

Daniel M. Conley (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Public Burning (Coover, Robert) (Paperback)

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.

In the wake of the Clinton impeachment, Coover's work has more resonance than ever. Americans ask the impossible of our public figures ... and then we glory in their failings. Coover brilliantly uses cruelty to reveal the sadism in the heart of our body politic.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tricky Dick's Comeuppance, June 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Public Burning (Coover, Robert) (Paperback)

The brilliance of The Public Burning can be seen on many levels. Artistically, it's a fascinating novel, structured in Coover's inimitable surreality, he finds the strange gray area between reality, history, and fantasy and constructs a convincing, working world out of it. His transition from known historical record (quoting court records, Time magazine, which he hilariously personifies as the US poet laureatte) to ribald fantasia (the Incarnation of Uncle Sam catching Nixon jacking off while fantasizing about Ethel Rosenberg) is astonishingly smooth. Hell, I firmly believe Nixon did this, just because Coover's representation of it is so believable! On a political level this book gives America's ultimate hypocrite his just deserts, and the funny thing is that as Coover so brazenly points out in the book's amazingly funny final 50 pages, Nixon was always his own worst enemy. Ultimately, Coover makes a very interesting statement about what it means to be in power in this country, and contrary to what conservatives might think, he doesn't leave the democrats out of his criticism. This book isn't about communism at all, but about 1950s America's perception of communism and our government's response to the general perception, or creation of it, to manipulate and control our citizens (isn't that the final goal of government these days, anyway?) As far as religious offense, I find nothing more offensive to me than religion, so I delight in any author willing to have the cojones to criticize it (although criticizing religion is often akin to taking a 12-guage to a pickle barrel full of catfish). Coover stands as an icon of postmodernism, along with Barth, Pynchon, Roth, et al, reinventing the novel form as he writes. This novel should stand the test of time as a beautifully funny reminder of how whacky things sometimes got during the 20th Century, despite all the technological advances.