Understanding Robert Coover (Understanding Contemporary American Literature) [Hardcover]

Brian K. Evenson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2003 | Series: Understanding Contemporary American Literature

In Understanding Robert Coover, Brian Evenson takes on the work of Robert Coover, a major figure of postmodern metafiction. In a careful analysis of Coover's short stories and novels, Evenson demonstrates how Coover writes in several different modes that cross over into one another. He explores Coover's concern with notions of community and the ways communities hold together through a series of shared stories and myths--myths that often, once they lose their effectiveness, come to justify violence.

In this comprehensive study, Evenson discusses Coover’s novels, from his award-winning first book, The Origin of the Brunists, to his controversial The Public Burning--which has as its narrator the young Vice President Richard Nixon. He studies the writer’s reworkings of fairy tales in Pricksongs & Descants, Pinocchio in Venice, and Briar Rose, as well as the revisionary Western, Ghost Town. Evenson also examines Coover’s latest novel, The Adventures of Lucky Pierre: Director’s Cut.

Evenson explicates Coover's rewriting of myths and explores his willingness to break the frame of his fiction so as to include both fantastic and realistic elements. Evenson also shows that, for Coover, storymaking is essential to what makes us human, and for that reason his ideas remain at the heart of what makes literature dynamic and intriguing. Understanding Robert Coover addresses these issues, and explicates Coover's often difficult and formally innovative fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The volumes of the Understanding Contemporary American Literature series are intended as "guides or companions for students as well as good academic readers." More than plot summaries or study aids, they help readers place some more challenging modern authors in the context of evolving literary traditions. Readers of postmodern metafictionist Coover (The Adventures of Lucky Pierre [BKL S 15 02]) especially stand to benefit from discussion of his aims, methods, and evolution. Evenson is not unbiased--he sometimes defends Coover from his detractors--but Coover's dense prose may require a fan to unravel it. In language that is refreshingly free from the autoerotic jargon that mars so much criticism, Evenson walks us through the canon, explaining from scratch, so even readers unfamiliar with the word metafiction (writing about writing) will find their way through the texts. One of Evenson's more interesting notions is that Coover's ideas are the same as when he started and that his works are related points on a plane, rather than sequential points on a line. A high-quality companion to Coover's challenging writing. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

BRIAN K. EVENSON is the author of five books of fiction, including Altmann's Tongue and Contagion. He is a senior editor for Conjunctions magazine and the director of creative writing at the University of Denver in Colorado. Evenson lives in Denver.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press (January 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570034826
• ISBN-13: 978-1570034824
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,899,296 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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