Please remember that Robert Coover will be taking part in two events which will be broadcast live over the web tonight and tomorrow morning:
- Tonight (2/23) at 6:30 PM, Coover will be giving a reading at the Kelly Writers House
- Tomorrow (2/24) at 10:30AM, Coover and Al Filreis will have a conversation and Q&A session
You can (and should) tune in to these events through the KWH-TV website (follow the first link for "view live video") — the live feed should start shortly before the events themselves (so if you pull it up now, you'll get an error message). There are some troubleshooting tips further down the page itself, however as long as your browser and Quicktime are updated and working, it should play for you without any troubles. For more general information about Coover's visit, please check out the Kelly Writers House Fellows Coover homepage.
Please use this thread to comment on the reading, and especially Coover's answers during the Q&A session. I'll be giving extra credit for particularly thoughtful responses.
Please use this thread to comment on the reading, and especially Coover's answers during the Q&A session. I'll be giving extra credit for particularly thoughtful responses.
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The most thought provoking part from the Q&A for me was when Coover read from the Fall Guys Faith, the Humpty dumpy story. We all remember the story from childhood how simplistic it was. I never imagined someone could change it and put so much meaning into one short child story. As he was reading it I found myself nodding as if to say, yes this is the way that humpty dumpy must of felt as he was falling off the wall. I then found myself thinking that not only is this how humpty dumpy felt when times were down for him. But as humans this is how most all of us ponder life when something tragic happens to us.( ie: falling off a wall for humpty dumpy.) We count our chips and wonder how will we go on from here. But unlike humpty dumpy most of us still have a happy ending ahead of us. Plus I never really thought of Coover as a poetic writer till this Q&A.
ReplyDeleteI had the same question in mind as the person who asked how Coover came about his mini-stories and be able to compile them in a novel, like Pricksongs and Descants. His answer was particularly interesting because he called these stories "false starts" but still somehow make something out of them. I suppose that by starting a different story each day, he was able to completely change his writing style and tone in these stories.
ReplyDelete-Clarissa Curioso
Liz Hood’s Personal Reflections on Robert Coover’s Reading and Discussion at the Kelly Writers House, February 23-24, 2009
ReplyDelete"In Anticipation of the Question 'Why Do You Write?'"
Coover begins with the metafictional mini-story of how he formulated his answer to the complex question of why he writes and what it means to him. Coover begins with a voyage to China, and ends with his decision to formulate an answer using ludic process, a technique characteristic to post-modernist fiction. Coover composes a series of paradoxical statements and “impos[es] an order” to the statements by alphabetizing them. The Post-modernist technique Coover employs to discuss his writing is a joy that I anticipated and hoped for, in listening to a discussion with Robert Coover.
However, the darkness and disparity of Coover’s answer is also no surprise to me, because this notion of hopelessness is also characteristic of the sampling our class has read of Coover’s work. Coover describes his fiction as “imitat[ing] life’s beauty, thereby inventing the beauty life lacks”. Likewise, Henry invents the Universal Baseball Association, and even has top notch rosters of the players printed, in his quest to create a world to fill the void in his own world. Henry is a hopeless and doomed character, in the sense that Henry is never able to rise above alcohol and his fantasy baseball league. However, Coover’s novel presents the idea that the Universal Baseball Association may be preferable or even more real then Henry’s actual life. Coover’s states in the PennSound discussion that “art’s lie is preferable, in truth, to life’s beautiful terror”. However, by escaping his problems, Henry sacrifices the beauty of the exterior world, and the joy of having meaningful relationships with other people. As Henry falls deeper into the realm of the fantasy world, Henry’s problems with work, women, and growing old, are only exasperated, thus making it harder for Henry to ever believe that there is something worthwhile in the world that he could be missing out on. Ultimately, Henry’s fantasy world wins out. Thus Henry, and also the novel’s author, reject the idea that reality can ever be preferable to fantasy, and the idea that real relationships can ever be better than Henry’s Godlike reign over the players in the UBA.
Similarly, the Coover has doomed the characters in his most famous short story, “The Babysitter”, to never grow past their empty, unfulfilling, and destructive relationships. Coover says he writes because “fiction is the best position, at once exotic and familiar, for fucking the world”, thus comparing the act of reading his work, to a sexual act lacking in sincere intimacy, or love. Mr. Tucker is doomed to disillusionment and dissatisfaction with his wife. Mrs. Tucker and the babysitter are doomed to endure the predatory sexual nature of the male characters, as encroachments from patting Mrs. Tucker’s behind, to raping the babysitter, are passed off and unquestioned as normal male urges. The Tucker’s daughter refuses to take off her clothes to take a bath, foreshadowing that she as well is doomed to surrender to the whims of the stronger characters.
I wish I could say that hearing Coover read and discuss his writing has somehow awakened an appreciation for Coover that I didn’t have before. Coover’s work, like his answers in the discussion, is well written, and is admirable in how it is constructed using post-modernist devices. There isn’t really any argument that Coover’s work is anything other than art.
However, Coover’s hopelessly pessimistic view of the world poses an obstacle in the way of enjoying his work, or finding some deeper meaning that doesn’t require viewing the world to be an ugly, terrifying, and perverted place. Coover’s philosophy for writing reiterates the challenge in reading his work. What Coover offers to readers are fantasy worlds that mirror Coover’s own cynical outlook, complete with characters who lack the coping mechanisms to ever rise above their miserable situations. These fantasy worlds, like Henry’s UBA, serve their purpose of temporarily distracting readers from their so-called depressing existence. However, after having read Coover’s work, it is beyond me why anyone would want to be distracted by, or connect with, a fantasy that is so much worse than facing real life.