Coover is respected as a vital experimentalist among the vanguard of American postmodern writers. His challenging work offers insight into the nature of literary creation, narrative forms, and cultural myths. Convinced early in his career that traditional fictional modes were exhausted, Coover pioneered inventive narrative techniques. He employed complex metafictional structures and playful pastiches of various genres to satirize contemporary American society and the role of the author.
Fifty years after the original release of Coover's satire, this rollicking fable of the grotesque, unhinged Cat in the Hat (and the stuffed shirts who bet on his success) makes for a bitterly funny indictment of politics-as-usual in 2017.
A controversial best-seller in 1977, The Public Burning has since emerged as one of the most influential novels of our time. The first major work of contemporary fiction ever to use living historical figures as characters, the novel reimagines the three fateful days in 1953 that culminated with the execution of alleged atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. 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. And not a person present escapes implication in Cold War America's ruthless "public burning."
Here are 70 of the very best short-short stories of recent years, including contributions from such contemporary writers as Raymond Carver, Leonard Michaels and John Updike; a few modern masters such as Hemingway and Cheever; and an assortment of talented new young writers. Sudden Fiction brilliantly captures the tremendous popularity of this new and distinctly American form.
A satirical fable with a rootless and helpless accountant as the protagonist. Alone in his apartment, he spends all his nights and weekends playing an intricate baseball game of his own invention. The author has won the William Faulkner Award and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award.
Exploring the boundaries of reality and fantasy, this collection of short stories features whimsical and darkly humorous narratives that twist traditional fairy tales and bedtime stories. Characters embark on peculiar journeys, such as two children led into the woods by an old man, a husband confronting the surreal aftermath of his wife's death, and a babysitter caught in a web of erotic dreams. Coover's inventive storytelling showcases his unique voice and establishes him as a significant figure in American literature.
Set against the backdrop of the impending Civil War, the story explores Huck's journey after Tom Sawyer chooses to embrace civilization instead of escaping it. Left feeling "dreadful lonely," Huck navigates a treacherous landscape filled with bandits and war parties. As he embarks on his Western adventures, he reconnects with old friends and confronts difficult truths and choices, highlighting themes of friendship, isolation, and the struggle between civilization and freedom.
Robert Coover's wicked and surreally comic novel takes place at a chilling, ribald, and absolutely fascinating party. Amid the drunken guests, a woman turns up murdered on the living room floor. Around the corpse, one of several the evening produces, Gerald's party goes on - a chatter of voices, names, faces, overheard gags, rounds of storytelling, and a mounting curve of desire. What Coover has in store for his guests (besides an evening gone mad) is part murder mystery, part British parlor drama, and part sly and dazzling meditation on time, theater, and love.
Robert Coover's imagination blisteringly combines the sinister and the hilarious - in writing both wildly energetic and cruelly vaudevillian. In these three short stories, he conjures macabre scenes of a troubled circus romance, of a brutally comic traffic accident, and of a single night of babysitting where every hope or threat of violence or sex is done and undone.
A recreation of the tale of "Sleeping Beauty" tells of a prince tangled in the briars, a sleeping princess who dreams of a succession of kissing princes, and a grizzled fairy who inhabits the princess' dreams, inflaming her desires
Short Stories by Ann Beattie, John Updike, Cynthia Ozick, Louis D. Rubin, Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, Elizabeth Tallent, Hortense Calisher, Joyce Carol Oates, Elizabeth Hardwick, and many others.
«LA GENTE SEGUÍA RECIBIENDO HERIDAS DE BALA Y MURIENDO, COMO SIEMPRE, AUNQUE NO SIEMPRE POR ESE ORDEN». En un mundo que cambia a la velocidad de un juego de realidad virtual, un simple policía de a pie debe lidiar con todas las formas de violencia imaginables que produce una sociedad entregada a los excesos más variados: robots de reparto que se enfrentan a peatones, proveedores de drogas y drones ejecutores de presuntos terroristas. ¿Hay espacio para las emociones humanas en un universo tan tóxico... que se parece demasiado al nuestro? Un policía capaz de empatizar con estas circunstancias ¿no se convertirá en un peligro para el funcionamiento del sistema? A medio camino entre el relato de género y la distopía urbana, Street Cop sitúa la condición humana en el centro de una investigación policial insólita. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION Is there room for human emotions in this toxic universe... that looks too much like ours? Robert Coover's detective novelette, STREET COP, is set in a dystopian world of infectious "living dead," murderous robo-cops, aging street walkers, and walking streets. With drawings by Art Spiegelman, this short tale scrutinizes the arc of the American myth, exploring the working of memory in a digital world, police violence and the future of urban life. STREET COP is provocative and prophetic, asking us to interrogate the line between a condemnable system and a sympathetic individual.
wurde 1932 in Charles City, Iowa geboren. Eigentlich wollte er Journalist werden. Er lehrte an einigen Universitäten und gilt als einer der Vordenker der Postmoderne. 1966 veröffentlichte er seine erste Erzählung: „The Origin of Brunists“ und erhielt im gleichen Jahr den William-Faulkner-Preis. Lebt heute auf Rhode Island und lehrt dort Creative Writing. Dirk van Gunsteren, 1953 geboren, übersetzte u. a. Jonathan Safran Foer, Colum McCann, Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, T. C. Boyle und Oliver Sacks. 2007 erhielt er den Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt-Preis.
Robert Coover hinterfragt in seiner Neuinterpretation des Märchens, ob der Prinz tatsächlich Dornröschen küsst oder vielleicht die Dienstmagd. Er spielt mit der Idee, dass andere vor ihm da waren und die vielen Babys um Dornröschen erklären könnten, was die Brüder Grimm nicht erzählen.
Další ze skupiny amerických experimentálních autorů, který je stejně jako Donald Barthelme a Thomas Pynchon označován za satirika satirizujícího vše americké. Tato Cooverova hravá novela je malým literárním klenotem, v němž se přísný pán a jeho nepříliš pečlivá služka každé ráno znovu a znovu setkávají při opakujícím se rituálu zvláštního druhu vyplácení.
wurde 1932 in Charles City, Iowa geboren. Eigentlich wollte er Journalist werden. Er lehrte an einigen Universitäten und gilt als einer der Vordenker der Postmoderne. 1966 veröffentlichte er seine erste Erzählung: „The Origin of Brunists“ und erhielt im gleichen Jahr den William-Faulkner-Preis. Lebt heute auf Rhode Island und lehrt dort Creative Writing.
wurde 1932 in Charles City, Iowa geboren. Eigentlich wollte er Journalist werden. Er lehrte an einigen Universitäten und gilt als einer der Vordenker der Postmoderne. 1966 veröffentlichte er seine erste Erzählung: „The Origin of Brunists“ und erhielt im gleichen Jahr den William-Faulkner-Preis. Lebt heute auf Rhode Island und lehrt dort Creative Writing.
John hatte viele Dinge – Geld, Ansehen, Freunde und Macht. Er war ein Baumeister, der Strukturen abbrach und sie durch bessere ersetzte, aber es war Johns Frau, die die kleine Stadt, in der sie lebten, verzauberte und heimsuchte.
Zwölf Short Stories nordamerikanischer Autoren: Paul Auster, Harold Brodkey, Ethan Canin, Robert Coover, Irene Dische, Andre Dubus, Deborah Eisenberg, Richard Ford, David Gates, Lorrie Moore, Robert Olmstead, Thomas Pynchon, Christopher Tilghman und John Updike.
