response 4

Jenna Wilhelmi

Robert Coover

October 10, 2010

Strange Happenings

In Panel Game, Coover satirizes and exaggerates the classic trivia game show. The players are all symbolic: the Aged Clown, the Lovely Lady, and fat Mr. America. Then there is you the “Unwilling Participant, or more simply, Bad Sport.” This story caught my attention because it is written in the rather uncommon second person format. It makes Bad Sport’s confusing yours and I must say I am quite confused. The question is impossible, the audience is incorrigible and the moderator is essentially evil. It seems that no matter what you answer, the audience is determined to see you hang (literally) because you are the Bad Sport. Then there is Mr. America who isn’t who he seems. Or is he? “The fat man, you see, was not Mr. America after all, but Mr. Amentia. Should have known.” I believe this is Coover’s jab at American society because amentia means a condition of low intelligence or a form of temporary insanity. The ‘should have known’ is the real kicker because, as Americans, we have all witnessed this insanity for ourselves but we just try to ignore it – even though that doesn’t make it go away.

In a Train Station starts out normally enough, with an old man waiting for his late train home, and then the illusion starts to crumble. Alfred is having a nice conversation with the Stationmaster, but he is forcing it out. It is all an act that is being repeated. “Alfred spins suddenly around to confront the Stationmaster, his pale blue eyes damp as though with tears. ‘Don’t ye think maybe this time I could - ?’” But the Stationmaster then prompts him back to the conversation. Alfred cannot leave until he gets the act right. When Alfred refuses to carry out his part and kill the drunken man that stumbles into the terminal the Stationmaster just looks disappointed. He then “opens the glass that protects the clock dial, moves the hands around until they read 9:26” – the time Alfred entered the terminal and the whole thing starts over again. What I think Coover is trying to say is that we can’t move to the next stage of our lives until we complete the task we dread the most. The train represents the gateway or ‘door’ to the next stage in our lives and the drunken man represents the obstacle. The drunken man could also possibly be the animal or primal part of us. Coover uses this metaphor a couple of times in The Magic Poker and Morris in Chains. In Alfred’s case the task of killing the natural side of humanity is extreme, but in most cases it is just something we don’t want to do or an apparent loss of innocence.

The Elevator shows this too. It all starts when Martin dares to push the basement button on the elevator instead of going strait up to his office like he usually does. Now, there is nothing in the basement, but by pushing that button he opens himself up to all the possibilities, which we are presented with in the next 15 chapters. We see him in the elevator all alone, with rude coworkers, a girl elevator operator, and maybe even Death itself. The vague presence of Death is interesting because in a couple of the chapters the elevator breaks and Martin plummets to his death. In the last chapter Martin breaks with ritual like he did in the first chapter. “Martin does not take the self-service elevator to the fourteenth floor, as is his custom, but, reflecting upon it for once and out of a strange premonition, determines instead to walk the fourteen flights.” Then, as he ascends the stairs, he hears the elevator crash. He had died in the previous chapters, so some part of him knew in the last one to avoid the elevator. He knew of his own death and this time was able to avoid it. It reminds me of one particular time I got a bad feeling and avoided doing something. I was going to go to downtown Salt Lake (back when I lived in Utah) but felt that I should not for some reason. An hour later, the news was on and I saw that a tornado – the only one in Utah’s history and a category 5 – had torn through downtown right where I was going to go. I probably would have died if I had gone downtown that day. So did I know not to go, just like Martin, because of a premonition? Or was it because I had already lived that outcome in one of my alternate chapters? Then again this opens up the discussion of alternate dimensions and while Coover is ready to go there I am not. The rest of his text requires my attention first

Overall, I found Coover’s book Pricksongs and Descants enduringly obnoxious. His text was sometimes hard to follow, because I tried to force it to fit a normal plot line, and at times downright uncomfortable to read. The humor in it is what kept me interested. Without the humor, Coover’s text would probably read a bit sexist. However, I would like to note that almost all the male characters in Coover’s stories had names whale most of the female characters were nameless. Even in J’s Marriage, which is about Joseph and the Virgin Mary of the Bible, only Joseph (J) retained his name. I thought this was an interesting choice because upon further inspection it made all the sexual things related to the female characters less offensive because it made them more of a player in a game rather than a real person. Isn’t Coover’s whole book just a game to trick your mind and to get you to think about how to write? If that is the case, and I do believe it is, then hats off to Coover. You got me to play your game, only time will tell whether I won or not.