The Origin of the Brunists


Book Description

Originally published in 1969, Robert Coover's first novel instantly established his mastery. A coal-mine explosion in a small mid-American town claims ninety-seven lives. The only survivor, a peculiar man subject to religious visions, is adopted as a prophet and quickly gains a following. Rapidly disseminated through the magic of media exposure, the cult spreads across America, and as its members gather on the Mount of Redemption to await the apocalypse, Robert Coover lays bare the madness of religious frenzy and the sometimes greater madness of normal citizens. The Origin of the Brunists is vintage Coover -- comic, fearless, incisive, and brilliantly executed.




The Public Burning


Book Description

Vice-President Richard Nixon - the voraciously ambitious bad boy of the Eisenhower regime - is the dominant narrator in an enormous cast that includes Betty Crocker, Joe McCarthy, the Marx Brothers, Walter Winchell, Uncle Sam, his adversary The Phantom, and Time magazine incarnated as the National Poet Laureate. All of these and thousands more converge in Times Square for the carnivalesque auto-da-fe at which the Rosenbergs are put to death.




Ghost Town


Book Description

A parody of the western novel featuring a hero who drifts into town to become both sheriff and outlaw. All the elements of the genre are present, from train robbery and runaway stagecoach, to cattle stampede. By the author of The Public Burning.




Understanding Robert Coover


Book Description

This text takes on the work of Robert Coover, a major figure of postmodern metafiction. In an analysis of Coover's short stories and novels, it demonstrates how Coover writes in several different modes that cross over into one another.




Huck Out West: A Novel


Book Description

"An audacious and revisionary sequel to Twain’s masterpiece. It is both true to the spirit of Twain and quintessentially Cooveresque." —Times Literary Supplement At the end of Huckleberry Finn, on the eve of the Civil War, Huck and Tom Sawyer decide to escape “sivilization” and “light out for the Territory.” In Robert Coover’s vision of their Western adventures, Tom decides he’d rather own civilization than escape it, leaving Huck “dreadful lonely” in a country of bandits, war parties, and gold. In the course of his ventures, Huck reunites with old friends, facing hard truths and even harder choices.




Going For a Beer: Selected Short Fictions


Book Description

“A mixtape of variations and a fugue on time from a postmodern master.… Familiar tales and conventional genres are made new, tinged with shuddering wonder and titillating humor.” —Yu-Yun Hsieh, The New York Times Book Review Robert Coover has been playing by his own rules for more than half a century, earning the 1987 Rea Award for the Short Story as “a writer who has managed, willfully and even perversely, to remain his own man while offering his generous vision and versions of America.” Here, in this selection of his best stories, you will find an invisible man tragically obsessed by an invisible woman; a cartoon man in a cartoon car who runs over a real man who is arrested by a real policeman with cartoon eyes; a stick man who reinvents the universe. While invading the dreams and nightmares of others, Coover cuts to the core of how realism works.










Johns Wife


Book Description

The bestselling author of "The Public Burning" spins a darkly magical tale about life in an ordinary small town and the woman who casts a spell on its inhabitants.




Briar Rose


Book Description

An allegorical retelling of Sleeping Beauty. It features a princess who dreams of a succession of kissing princes, and a fairy who inhabits her dreams, regaling her with legends of other sleeping beauties. A look at the power of romantic desire.