Customer Reviews

Spanking the Maid

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

 

 

This elegant, concisely written masturbatory farce, in which similar scenes of a maid's transgression and a master's punishment are played out over and over again, conflates the delicious repetitive nature of erotic fantasy with a send-up of "Last Year at Marienbad"-type fiction--to an effect that is both erotically arousing and hilarious. Coover's greatest tour-de-force and a tiny, but original, masterpiece.

Here's a book that's devilishly sadistic to its readers, as well as to its characters, with its "narrator" having the upper hand. Like much of Coover's work, it passes from reality to fantasy, teasing and taunting the reader's expectations. It's also very funny, and obviously well-researched. However, I don't think a screen adaptation would work too well (although this was done with some degree of success in "The Babysitter"--but would it get past the front office?). I suppose Liz Hurley might enjoy the starring role, or perhaps casting Madeleine Stowe and Alan Rickman would be more in order. Kudos to Coover!

Coover's brief tale takes a paper-thin premise and runs it right into the ground--yes, it's yet another one of those self-indulgent, self-conscious post-modernist novels seldom enjoyed by anyone who isn't an undergraduate English major. It's a very short book that you will likely wish were shorter. But though the plot goes (by design) nowhere, and the book is stuffed with the kind of affected whimsy employed by writers far too impressed with their own intelligence, there is some witty, bouncy prose to enjoy and a few inspired comic moments. For what it is, it's well put together.

While I did enjoy spanking the maid, I must warn other readers of my personal experiences following my reading this book. All was well for a few weeks, but (while not trying to spoil the plot) it was not long before I simply couldn't do anything but spank. My work and (already limited) social life began to suffer as a result. My girlfriend left me soon afterwards for another woodland creature, and even a pair of goats that had been given to me for my birthday soon began to fear my hand. Now the only thing that I have left to spank is my gibbon, but I'm afraid that if I spank it too much, I may hurt my pet. So: enjoy the writing and don't take things too seriously.

I did not care for the endless repetition with minor variations. I did not care for the one-sidedness of it all--man gets off, maid is out in the cold. I did not care for the endless repetition with minor variations. One had the feeling someone was trying out a lit'rary exercise and it got published by mistake. One had no sympathy for any one in the book, and one felt one was overcharged.

After seeing the book featured on the morning talk shows I was hesitant to try the latest trendy fiction, but I must say it was quite good despite the hype because of its deft use of suspense and I am already looking forward to the movie although I think the casting of Meg Ryan is dubious, if you have read the book.

Taking a cue from Raymond Queneau's "Exercises in Style," and his own short stories featured in "Pricksongs and Descants," what would seem to be only an experiment develops into a real commentary on self-reference and post structuralism. Coover's treatment of the master-slave, dominant-submissive relationship serves to show the sado-masochistic exchange that exists in language when that language becomes "meta" language, or language about language. In this way all "criticism" is "criticized," begging the question: if meta language is sado-masochistic, what is meta-meta language?

The novel also works despite its subject matter-- if Coover had chosen some other setting, one could still delight in the way he weaves repitition into an ongoing cascade, each permutation the same and wholly different. Chaos theory as literary genre? Now who's being sado-masochistic?

I did not find this book particularly erotic, and it was plotless to me.