Customer Reviews

The Public Burning

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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.

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.

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.

A brilliant, savage and unrelenting look at what the US is today. Not as subtle as Gaddis, more powerful than Pynchon, a fabulous and terrifying novel which would have made Swift and Joyce proud.

The sheer brilliance of 'The Public Burning' cannot be understated. From the virtuousity of the writing to the subtle intelligence of its criticisms, this book still stands as a classic. Importantly, this novel is not merely an unfavourable take on the culture of the cold war but is a broader interrogation of the ways in which history folds into fantasy in American life, how law becomes theatre, war becomes spectacle, politics an electrocution. Its cartoonish aspects are not simply Coover's attempt to indict the era through mockery nor an invitation to stand over people in the past. Instead, they are a representation of a culture that can only ever come to terms with itself through cartoons, a nation that needs its enemies animated, its champions superheroic, its values decomplicated in dusty bromides and staid clichés. Most intriguing perhaps is the treatment of Eisenhower: in Coover's world, an example of how even the most moderate and benign public figures are entangled in the extremities of violence and cynicism that are not just the work of the political fringes nor the province of any one political party over another but are instead the popular centrifuge around which the idea of America assembles itself. There is no doubt that this is a highly political book but it is not political because it is partisan (a work of the Left raging against the Right) but rather because it is sceptical of politics altogether. All Americans assemble to see the Rosenbergs fry -- wherever they may lie on the political spectrum, Democrat or Republican, conservative or dissident. What burns in this novel is the public -- the very idea of a public entity or a civic realm which is constituted through well-intentioned notions of truth, security, justice, freedom and faith, but which cannot have any of these without an allegiance to the idea of the nation itself, an allegiance which will allow dissent within tight bounds but which will put those too far outside this boundary - especially those who move against the state in a criminal way - to a showy, spectacular death. At the heart of all this lies Nixon, not just because the disgraced future President is an indication of democratic bankruptcy, a representative of how power has become so misplaced, but also because he embodies the emptiness of the idea of the nation itself, the coercive need to 'act American' which is necessary to put into motion this patriotic stir of activity, this great rollicking farce. I note that some reviewers here have taken issue with the apparent lack of depth in the characters Coover offers in this book - Uncle Sam as snake-oil salesman, Nixon as buffoon and so on -- but this misses the author's real aim: to assemble already well-worn clichés in such an intense concentration that they expose the impossibility of character in such a culture, to demonstrate how the idea of America strings itself together in a series of lip-service wisdoms about history and destiny that ultimately eclipse individuality and to place each and every person in proximity to the electric chair, implicating everyone in the violent lunacy of the legal execution, which, because it is carried out in the name of the people, cannot help but involve the people in their entirety. Too often authors attempt to criticise America by putting forward a vision of what the 'real' America actually is or what the 'true' America should be, an alternative in either way that 'sheds light' on how the 'actual' inherent worth of the country has been corrupted. Coover, on the other hand, will have none of this: the carnivalesque inferno he conjures out of the careful blend of fiction and fact is aimed at decimating any salvageable idea of the nation at all, of tearing the whole logic of allegiance to the ground. In this sense, and quite proudly and profoundly, 'The Public Burning' is as treasonous to America as the Rosenbergs were deemed to be themselves.

It has to be said, however, that this book is not so much a defence of the Rosenbergs themselves or their crimes as it is a critique of the law that convicted them. It is a misreading of this book to assume the Rosenbergs are made into heroes, or that their operatic casting as victims should make us excuse their proven or potential guilt. Rather, Coover looks to them not to pardon them but to tell a story that will act as a counternarrative to how guilt and innocence were decided in this case. To this day, the controversy surrounding the Rosenberg trial is not so much to do with whether they were foreign agents (it seems Julius Rosenberg was involved in espionage, though the evidence is still out on his wife, Ethel) or whether the information they provided to the Russians was of any actual use (there is still some debate over this) but rather the gross miscarriage of justice embodied in the way they were put to death. As Justice Douglas explains early in the book to Uncle Sam, the US Constitution states that "no person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court." In the Rosenberg case, there was only one witness - Julius' brother-in-law, David Greenglass - and no confession. As such, to get around this, government prosecutors tried the Rosenbergs on a lesser conspiracy law, a piece of legislation which had been enacted by Congress to circumvent the 'two witness' provision by revising it so that only one witness's testimony could permit a conviction. And yet the hypocrisy of this was not so much the law in and of itself but the fact that the Rosenbergs were convicted on this lesser law even as they were sentenced to death on a *higher* law. Their prosecution went against the provisions of the Constitution but they were also handed the maximum punishment for treason - death - that only the Constitution allows. In other words, what enabled them to be executed was the very document that was shunned by prosecutors in the first place. This kind of legal cherrypicking is at the heart of Coover's critique because it demonstrates how the Constitution - designed, remember, not only to protect the nation from traitors but also to prevent the misuse of power, a different kind of treason - was corrupted in this case to serve the so-called national interest. If Coover wants this book to be traitorous in its searing critique of the idea of America, he also wants it to be constitutional. In fact, what Coover ironically shows us is that to be treasonous and to be a constitutionalist is one and the same in the USA so many years on from its founding. To think ourselves outside the nation is to actually think toward the document that brought it into being. This is not to say that Coover believes he can discern some 'true' shape of the nation in the constitution. No, in adhering to the constitution so closely, he cleverly highlights how the self-autonomising nature of that document - as the 'thing-in-itself' of the nation, as that which declared it into existence and thus somehow simultaneously embodied a pure *arrival* at its essence, already, case closed, all those hundreds of years ago - is so routinely and naturally undercut by the manipulations inherent to the history of the nation's actual practice. In truth, there is no democratic ideal so guaranteed by that founding document that we can't find a way to detain it or delay it or circumvent it on the ground - and always in the name of that selfsame democratic ideal, of course, and in the name of the constitution that is meant to forever defend it. In this sense, 'The Public Burning' is neither a simple-minded polemic against the cynicism of a culture nor a ham-fisted attempt to excuse the inexcusable. In the end, and with great courage and sensitivity, it is one long oath to a nation we would like to think exists but never really does.

Every now and then I finish a book and ask, "Now why did this author write that?" I'm not talking about trash reading. We know what that's for; entertainment. No, when I ask "Why?" after finishing a book, it's generally a longer work with artistic ambitions and evidently an important point to make. I just can't tell what that point might be.

Take "The Public Burning". The author, Robert Coover, is widely considered to be one of the leading lights of American experimental fiction. The novel is a semi-fictionalized narrative of the days preceding the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, here as in real life convicted of treason for selling atomic secrets to the Russians. It's a good read, but what's the value in telling a true story in such an odd way? The true story is dramatic enough as is. Coover never quite answers that, and it weakens his book.

Feel free to skip this part if you know the historical facts:

Back in the 1950s, the Soviet Union exploded a nuclear bomb. Many assumed that the Soviets must have stolen nuclear information from the U.S. through a network of spies, and the FBI picked the Rosenbergs as the guilty parties. They were convicted and sentenced to death, and despite a last-minute stay of execution by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, they went to the electric chair on June 19, 1953.

In his novel, Coover recasts the Rosenberg execution as a piece of political theater, deliberately staged by the Eisenhower administration to boost American morale, and therefore set to take place as the novel opens not at the Sing Sing death house, but in the middle of Times Square. Uncle Sam, here a real person, is a sort of superhero, possessed of remarkable powers in his neverending battle against the Phantom, his appropriately shady Communist counterpart. And perhaps most bizarrely, while half the chapters have the usual third-person narrator telling the story in a kind of hyper-inflated circus language, the other chapters are narrated by none other than Vice President Richard Nixon.

Before we get to Tricky Dick, however, let's consider the carnival-barker narration of the other chapters. It's filled with comic-book jargon, interjections on the order of "Good Heavens!" and various other cheesy rhetorical devices. Uncle Sam himself speaks like a snake-oil salesman, tossing in many a "Whoopee-ti-yi-yo!" and things like that as the execution approaches.

Evidently, this book seeks to present the United States as a nation of con men and suckers, but in the midst of all the tinsel and ballyhoo (directed by Cecil B. DeMille, with sets by Walt Disney), it seems like a lot of fun. Coover shows a nice balance between the exhilaration of rah-rah Americanism and the horror of the rot under the surface. It's all part of the same long, strange trip, and you can't have one without the other.

With a similar schizophrenia, in his sections of this book, Nixon has a sort of poetry in his soul and genuine sense of mission, both of them about as banal as you please. That sounds like a contradiction in terms, I know, but what else can you say about a character who comes right out and says that he loves his wife primarily because she belongs to him? Who can't decide between serving his country and serving himself, and often conflates the two? And who spends half his time parsing every one of Uncle Sam's most moronic clichés like it was the entrails of some sacrificial chicken?

If this description reminds you of your favorite national politican, Republican or Democrat, I assure you that's not a coincidence. Nixon himself once said, in real life, that John Kennedy was what people wanted to be, and he himself what they actually were. In any case, his fictionalized counterpart here is doubtless what we're afraid we are. He is Vice President of the United States, for God's sake, and he's still a loser. He sweats and stinks through the pages in desperate need of a shave or a toilet, he strains to justify himself and his past in the middle of a national crisis, he can't even relax while playing golf. And needless to say, the more he struggles for victory, the more clownish he becomes. By the time the book is over, a jammed Times Square has had an eyeful of Dick Nixon with his pants around his ankles, and there are worse humiliations in store for him.

Okay, so far we've got an examination of the American split personality from two very different and complementary points of view, filtered through an actual historical event and featuring historical figures. I was intrigued. So why did I feel so let down when I reached the last page?

I think it's because, when you get right down to cases, nothing really happens in "The Public Burning". Ethel and Julius Rosenberg die, Uncle Sam taps Nixon as a future president, and things go back to the way they were before. For all the flash and dazzle, the comic book zip, the world of this book and the world we live in are pretty much alike. Which isn't a bad thing, but the flourish made me anticipate something more, some explosive scream at the end. Instead, "The Public Burning" reads like Coover simply observed these events through a literary kaleidoscope and wrote down what he saw. That makes for good painting sometimes, but not necessarily good novels; "The Public Burning" is an amusing experiment, but so what?

In short, this book would have made a truly fascinating short piece, and even as is it's a lot of fun to read for the language alone. Really good full-length novels, on the other hand, leave what Anthony Burgess called some kind of residue in the mind. "The Public Burning" just slides right through. Bring on the next one.

Benshlomo says, 500-odd pages ought to weigh more than this.

this is truly one of the great works of post-war american fiction. chapters alternate between a first-person account of the trial and execution of ethel and julius rosenberg written by vice president richard nixon and a surreal overview of the events surrounding the execution itself (changed from gas chamber in prison to electric chair in times square - "thieves of light to die by light"). coover integrates the icons of america with his fictional reworking of all-too-real events. worth reading just for the denouement involving nixon, pat, and uncle sam. don't miss it!!!

It's good to have red-baiting reviewers like Kevin Bowman to prove Robert Coover's point a half-century after the Rosenbergs died and nearly thirty years after his book appeared. Gee, even an evil intellectual ("vindictive college professor") turns up in Kevin's review. Talk about fully-formed characters.

It's a great book. You don't have to agree with the politics. There are parts where Coover goes way over the top, as you might expect with any 800 pound gorilla of a novel like this. It's true, it is a little "sophomoric" sometimes. It's profound more often, though, and not just because Coover takes potshots at Luce's Time Magazine.

Seriously, this is an unjustly ignored masterpiece. Let's hope there are more vindictive college professors out there.

This book should be required reading for all students of the novel as form and/or of recent American history. Far more compelling than the other books by Coover I've read (John's Wife, Pinocchio in Venice, Ghost Town), but with the same quirkiness & sense of dramatic scene. Excellent.

This is one of the most exhilarating pieces of fiction I have read.
The story, if there really is one, concerns the Rosenbergs- spies!- and the decision by the government to put them to death, in Times Square, as the climax of a televised, variety show event. Richard Nixon is the main protagonist, thoughtful, introspective, painted in a positive light (this book was published in '77) but ultimately humiliated in front of a nation. Uncle Sam is a foul mouthed, vulgar jerk. The Phantom terrorizes America, representing communism and McCarthyism and the patriotic hysteria of the '50s. The book is funny, irreverent, political, whimsical, philosophical, and somehow manages to be cutting edge and on-your-toes fresh for all 500+ of its pages.
Coover takes the facts of history- the text from actual speeches, news reports, actual people and events- shuffles them freely, and deals them out in comedic fashion with a satirical purpose. What James Michener has done for Alaska, Texas, Mexico and countless other locations- boiled their history down into epic novels that somehow capture the essence of a place- Coover has down with the '50s in America. It's all here- fear, repression, conformity, paranoia, cold war politics, hypocrisy- and presented ingeniously and brilliantly.