Table Of ContentRobert 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
Description:With works ranging thematically and stylistically from The Universal Baseball Association to The Public Burning, from Pricksongs and Descants to Spanking the Maid, Robert Coover emerges as one of the most vibrant writers from a remarkable avant-garde that in the mid-1960s mounted serious assault
