Robert Coover: the universal fictionmaking process PDF
Preview Robert Coover: the universal fictionmaking process
Robert Coover : The Universal title: Fictionmaking Process Crosscurrents/modern Critiques. New Series author: Gordon, Lois G. publisher: Southern Illinois University Press isbn10 | asin: 0809310929 print isbn13: 9780809310920 ebook isbn13: 9780585200552 language: English Coover, Robert--Criticism and subject interpretation. publication date: 1983 lcc: PS3553.O633Z67 1983eb ddc: 813/.54 Coover, Robert--Criticism and subject: interpretation. Page ii Crosscurrents Modern Critiques New Series Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli James Gould Cozzens: New Acquist of True Experience Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli Thomas Pynchon: The Art of Allusion By David Cowart Twentieth-Century American Literary Naturalism: An Interpretation By Donald Pizer John Gardner: Critical Perspectives Edited by Robert A. Morace and Kathryn Van Spanckeren Page iii Robert Coover The Universal Fictionmaking Process Lois Gordon Southern Illinois University Press Carbondale and Evansville Page iv For Alan and Robert Copyright © 1983 by the Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Edited by Teresa White Designed by Gary Gore Production supervised by John DeBacher Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Gordon, Lois G. Robert Coover : the universal fictionmaking process. Bibliography: p. Includes Index. 1. Coover, RobertCriticism and interpretation. I. Title. PS3553.0633Z67 1983 813´.54 82-10337 ISBN 0-8093-1092-9 82 83 84 85 5 4 3 2 1 Page v Contents Acknowledgments vii 1 1 The Universal Fictionmaking Process: An Introduction to Robert Coover and the Avant-Garde 2 19 The Origin of the Brunists: The Origins of a Vision 3 34 The Universal Baseball Association: The Props of Meaning 4 51 The Public Burning: The Making of the President 5 87 Pricksongs and Descants: An Introduction to the Short Fictions 6 122 A Theological Position: In the Beginning 7 142 More Innovations: Old and New Notes 169 Selected Bibliography 175 Index 179 Page vii Acknowledgments I am grateful to several people who kindly offered advice, information, and support: Richard Seaver and Fred Jordan, who furnished useful material about Coover's publishing career; Theodore Beardsley, who extended generous assistance in acquiring biographical and bibliographical data; Albert Soletsky, who provided thoughtful translations of Coover's Spanish in the Pricksongs and Descants; Melissa Montimurro, who listened to me think through some early ideas; and Lois Spatz, who provided some helpful discussion on comedy and tragedy. I also wish to thank Mary McMahon for her energetic and conscientious acquisition of library materials, and the staff at the New York Public Library for granting me the privilege of working in the Frederick Allen Memorial Room. I am especially grateful to Bernard Dick for suggesting that I contact Southern Illinois University Press with my idea for a book and to Matthew J. Bruccoli, who endorsed my project and encouraged its publication. I wish to make special mention of Gene Barnett who, here and in former work, carefully pondered my grammar and logic. For the sustained interest of old friends, Warren French, Ricardo Quintana, and Donald Hall, I am appreciative. My greatest debt is once again to my husband, Alan, for his indefatigable patience and optimism. He offered intelligent suggestions at every stage of this book. Finally, I must thank my young son, Robert, for his magnetic cheer and great forbearance on many a Sunday when my need to work restricted the family options. LOIS GORDON New York City 1982 Page 1 1 The Universal Fictionmaking Process: An Introduction to Robert Coover and the Avant-Garde While an impressive number of contemporary authors like Saul Bellow, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Heinrich Böll continue to publish traditional fictionwith linear plot, recognizable character, definable theme, and the unities of time and spacea growing number of writers have turned away from what Erich Auerbach termed mimetic fiction and created an entirely new form. Whatever its namemetafiction, postmodernism, postcontemporary fiction, surfiction, parafiction, fabulation 1it shares a number of specific stylistic characteristics and the notion that the old fictional devices are no longer appropriate to the modern world. Literature, it is implied, can no longer reflect a stable reality of fixed values, because the very existence of that reality and/or the possibility of accurately reflecting it are questionable. John Barth, in a much-discussed Atlantic Monthly essay (August 1967), described the demise or exhaustion of the modern novel and the dilemma of the writer working in a form whose plots, characters, and themes had all been tried and used up. For Barth, the only course left to the writer lay in extending the boundaries of form through radical changes in structure and statement, in writing about the only thing left to write about, the act of writing itself.2 His Notes from the Funhouse (1968), like some of his earlier work, exemplified this new direction, for its subject was exactly this, the difficulties of writing fiction. Samuel Beckett's earlier trilogy, Molloy, Malone Dies, and especially The Unnamable, and the fictions of the already well
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