Reading Pricksong’s and Descants by Robert Coover is like riding a bike for the first time without training wheels, initially you wobble and have no idea what you’re doing, but over the course of time with patience, you’re enjoying the ride. At first, I had no idea what Coover was trying to say and frankly, I still feel as if I don’t fully grasp it, but with the more I read, the more I adapted to his quirky style and respect his work.
Fairy tales in their raw form (without the crayola colored Disney influence) have always withheld an eerie tone to them, Coover utilizes this aspect to beautifully blend the tales into his own. The Door: A Prologue of Sorts alludes to the tale of The Little Red Riding Hood, but instead of Riding Hood becoming surprised at the wolf waiting to devour her, she realized his naughty, sexual intents, and drops her hood in compliance. I find Coover’s allusions to fairy tails an interesting and engaging choice. Not only does he feed the reader with dewy dreamlike stories, but he pulls them out of that state and hits them with reality. “At times, I forget that this arrangement is my own invention. I begin to think of the island as somehow real, its objects solid and intractable, its condition of ruin not so much an aesthetic design as an historical denouement.” (33) This balance perfectly keeps the reader engaged in a roller coaster of emotions.
I especially love Coover’s unusual punctuation choices. Instead of following the proper rules, Coover fills the text with dense paragraphs, poppy exclamation marks, and un-capitalized beginnings of sentences. His choice to purposely stray away from the typical punctuation choices forces the reader’s trained eye to zoom in on the “mistake” and wonder why it is there. Take for instance the capitalization of the word prince in The Door: A Prologue of Sorts, “… I have watched my own beauty decline and still no Prince no Prince and yet you doubt that I understand?” (17) The capitalization of the word “prince” provokes the typical ideals of the feminine figure in fairy tales and their dependency on male characters. The boldness of the word “Prince” symbolizes the importance that the princesses place upon them, and the stark blandness of the word “no” that surrounds “Prince” doses the reader with a face full of reality; nobody will simply show up and free you from all of your difficulties.
Pricksong’s and Descants is not an easy novel to read, it requires time and patience, but gives a delightful reward for the reader’s efforts. Though his writing style at times makes me feel as if I am a five year old trying to read for the first time, I very much appreciate his modern stylistic approaches to literature. This work further bends my ideals of what good literature can be made of and inspires myself to embrace the notion that writing does not always have to follow the rules but in fact, twist and distort them.
"The Door: A Prologue of Sorts alludes to the tale of The Little Red Riding Hood, but instead of Riding Hood becoming surprised at the wolf waiting to devour her, she realized his naughty, sexual intents, and drops her hood in compliance."
ReplyDeleteThis line brought a smile to my face when I read it! Good observation. It's so dead on.
Your response was well written and succinct, which is great and hard to do sometimes, especially with a text that you are struggling to understand. Shoot, I am right there with you! You paid attention to how he used punctuation, which is really important. Why is that? You do ask that question in your response and I think you handled it very specifically, which is effective. On a more general level, why does he get funky with his punctuation? What does he accomplish by doing so?
Good use of the text as well. You also synthesize your ideas very nicely at the end.
Gettin it! 9