Understanding Robert Coover (as a reader & a writer)- parts 1 & 2

To look through the lenses of philosopher Roland Barthes- we literally live in an environment of signs, advertising and representations, even in our art. Humankind can never again be simple nor feel naturally connected. Our technological culture is at the point of no return. In the 1960s, Robert Coover legitimized the genre of Metafiction. In fact, Coover upgrades to Postmodernism where the focus is no longer on finding universal truths (the modernist point of writing) but focusing on the structure of the story. This allows the reader to participate in deconstructing the text, especially, because Coover surrounds the readers in a somewhat familiar version of fairytales and myths, all which are universally known.

In The Door: A Prologue of Sorts, the reader enters the world of Little Red Riding Hood except things are not as they seem. We, as readers, understand the wolf will eat her and so does Red. There’s a great anxiety and tension built up in the voice as she reaches the door as referred to as a passageway into the rest of the book, “this was a comedy from which, once entered, you never returned…” (19). Coover expects us to know the ending and thus, never goes there, because he wants us to focus on other points. As confused as I was for what was beyond that door, or the rest of the book, I understood that I had to read into Coover and always keep in mind that he does control the narrative. And thanks to my teacher Eric’s interpretation and guidance, the theme to take away from Coover’s prologue is- all fiction is a form of propaganda.

Coover takes surrealism to the next level making the narrator, author and characters voices blend and play against each other in his stories. One of the best tricks of this genre is the ability to write outside the box, the voice and carry the story into different realms and perspectives. In The Magic Poker, there are no boundaries between the world of imagination and the world of the story. There are multiple “once upon a times” and multiple versions of how this island was invented. There is also a strong presence of Robert Coover himself, “No, no, there’s nothing to be gained by burdening our fabrications with impieties. Enough that the skin of the world is littered with our contentious artifice, lepered with the stigmata of human aggression and despair, without suffering our songs to be flatted by savagery. Back to the poker” (30). I love these interruptions because it not only shows Coover’s ‘musical quality of language’ (as my teacher puts it) but also just fucks with the boundaries of fiction itself. This is what Metafiction is all about! No matter how fantastical the different versions of the story and the characters in the story and the narrator get, there is a real sense of Coover himself- the writer. He puts in his two cents as if the story took control of itself. This is where the reader is expected to take a step back and re-evaluate what Coover is trying to do here by writing himself into the story as the writer which lost control of his own story. He is inviting us to interpret. Even if the reader wasn’t a writer and wasn’t clued into what is going on- he or she would still understand his or her own version of the story. The conclusive theme of The Magic Poker- reading is a process of writing.

I was writing stories about writing stories long before I understood what Metafiction was- fiction about fiction. Now, while reading Pricksongs & Descants by Robert Coover, I can further understand and develop how the process of writing becomes a process of telling. Also, as a writer, I have the power to create anything, to not be restricted by order or sense. For example, Coover writes a dedication five stories into the book in Seven Exemplary Fictions titled Dedicatoria y Prologo a don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. In which Robert Coover shows his inspiration for this postmodern way of writing, “But, don Miguel, the optimism, the innocence, the aura of possibility you experienced have been largely drained away, and the universe is closing in on us again. Like you, we, too, seem to be standing at the end of one age and on the threshold of another. We, too, have been brought into a blind alley by the critics and the analysts; we, too, suffer from a ‘literature of exhaustion,’ …” (78). It is exhausting to read works from authors who attempt to show the answers to all these universal truths. In this “threshold of another age,” a philosophical shift called postmodernism is born. It is no longer the writer’s job to guide the universe, but the reader’s job to deconstruct.

While reading J’s Marriage I was able to figure that this story was based off a religious figure. It wasn’t until the mention of carpentry towards the end had I fully known it was about Joseph and Mary. Maybe it’s years of Catholicism curriculum and thought which helped me to encode this sense, but I was aware of Coover’s hidden techniques from previous stories on how to read his book. It was how Coover described the character’s love for his wife- almost heavenly, but yet they couldn’t consummate their marriage. This trickery of fiction is what I love about Coover’s writing. The reader can only rely on his or her own knowledge to encode the stories in Pricksongs & Descants.

In the second half the book, Coover has prepared the readers with the ability to decipher imagination versus the real world just by recognizing the structure of the story itself. The Elevator is the best example of this technique and arguably the best story in the book. My first impression was similar to the plot of a Twilight Zone episode, more specifically the Tower of Terror ride at Disneyland, Ca. But, between reading this story and class, I stepped into an elevator. I reflected on the awkwardness between people you are trapped in such proximity too, also the fact that most buildings suspiciously don’t have a floor 13 (how our character Martin works on floor 14), and the danger of being trapped in a falling elevator. These are all connections I feel Coover wanted me to make (Obviously not the Disneyland ride because that was after his time- but still it is a ride about the elevator falling from the thirteenth floor). The reader steps into the elevator with Martin as reading it. Thus, the experience of reading the piece is the same of the characters. The story is the reader’s universe; “this elevator contains them all: space, time, cause, motion, magnitude, class. Left to our own devices, we would probably discover them” (129). To the reader, as to Martin in the end of #7- there is nothing outside of the elevator.

Since the story is in itself is numbered like floors and with various scenes and vibes of stepping into and out of an elevator, the structure is also a part of the plot. Coover’s choice in directly relating the form and the content exposes the architecture of what the narrative does- allows the reader to have even more power in interpretation. At the end of #7, Martin is trapped outside the elevator and Coover evokes a supernatural funny feeling because of it. Coover also leaves the ending sentence without punctuation or a particular end, just a run away sentence. This allows the reader to form the story’s outcome. Also, with having a chapter “15…” with the ellipsis, tells us that Coover wants us to keep thinking of possibilities for stories in the elevator. As a writer, it is a good habit to write the same story over and over again- in multiplicities. It is infinite what slight variations and cause and effect decisions can change the entire fate of the story. Coover’s underlying theme- Fiction always offers another option.

Another comical perspective into Coover’s work was how to work with your audience. In Romance of the Thin Man and The Fat Lady as well as The Hat Act, it is obvious that the audience in the stories itself dictate what happens to the main characters within the plot. The thin man and the fat lady want the story to be a romance but when it transitions into a happy ending for the couple, the crowd no longer is interested in them. This frightens the couple and turns them against each other and against their true selves. It is possible this can represent a writer in process of writing for a specific audience. There are certain frames -which can create a successful story- but it is not genuine. The writer, like the thin man and the fat lady, can doubt themselves and their meaning. “Maybe it’s just that we’ve lost a taste for the simple in a world perplexingly simple” (147). In The Hat Act, it is obvious that Robert Coover is the magician. There is also no plot to the story but nonetheless a narrative. The audience “boohs” and “ahhs” at Coover’s tricks. The magician produces pleasure (based of disgust-another demand of an audience) by building up his act. Like the work of a performer, writing is also based of the structure.

Finally, we come to one of the most talked about stories in the collection- The Babysitter. Did Coover mean for this to be confusing? Of course he did! He blurs the characters and doesn’t pick one plot, but all! Showing us that multiplicity is one of the greatest things about Fiction. This story is also a great example of one of Robert Coover’s favorite themes- sex! And sex does evoke an emotional response from the reader- always, even if you are a nun. As a human reader (you never know?), we are challenged to see how sex evolves on an individual level- from a baby to an infant and as a teenager to an aging adult. There’s a lot of sexual experimentation going on here. Coover has the babysitter seducing the little boy, the dad daydreaming about the babysitter, both the boy and the father touching the babysitter in the tub (two separate scenes), two teenage boys raping the babysitter, and the adults at a party which suggests some type of orgy. What is appropriate in life is not what is appropriate in Fiction. In life, you are curious, there’s puberty, experimentation, sexual love, and later- regret as the parents show us. In Fiction, the writer can show all! But there is a structure to how Coover set up the story. It does start off rather innocent and progresses into increasingly uncomfortable, all the way to scenes death and rape.

As a writer, there are endless choices. Coover wrote Pricksongs & Descants in order for the reader to uncover and interpret his writing choices. Why did he choose the have scenes in the bathroom in The Babysitter? Maybe because the bathroom evokes a sense of intimacy and vulnerability or maybe because you always feel like someone is watching you (and the reader is!) But, Robert Coover is a brilliant writer who engages and also relies on his reader to participate. It is this postmodern sense of deconstructionism that allows the writer to write outside the book. Every story is a lesson I can’t help but take into account when I am writing my own stories. I never realized that I had similar techniques as Coover does and I am appreciative to have read (and discussed in class) Pricksongs & Descants: a reader’s guide to the endless possibilities of how to write.

Response 3

by Alora Young

Pricksongs & Descants (Part One)

Robert Coover’s Pricksongs & Descants is a little (or, a lot) overwhelming. There’s a lot to take in, to wade your way through. We expect that the further we read, the more understanding we’ll gain, and yet with that understanding often comes even more confusion as the strangeness continues with a steady increase. Coover manages to shove us into his crazy, fabulist, and metafictionalised world right from the book’s opening.

‘The Door: A Prologue of Sorts’ confused me to no end. Part of that, I think, had to do with the fact that we are bombarded with a story we know we at first think we’re familiar with, and quickly discover that we aren’t. We start with Jack and the Beanstalk, and then some information is added that completely throws that theory off – this added information, however, doesn’t seem quite detailed enough, and leaves us with more questions the further we read, like, “Wait, what daughter?” By the end of this “prologue of sorts”, we find ourselves within some variation of Little Red Riding Hood, a variation in which “Something had changed”, and now we’re focusing quite obviously on the door. The door, which Coover has apparently been leading us towards this whole time, and will continue to lead us to throughout the rest of the text. As of yet, I’m unsure, though, whether he’ll ever push us through the door. Or, perhaps he wants us to walk through it ourselves. We are left wondering, and despite any (likely) instances of confusion, we are successfully drawn in.

‘The Magic Poker’ is the perfect story to kick us off completely and get us further acquainted with Coover’s brand of metafiction. Confusion once again ensued, but didn’t dilute my enjoyment of the story at all. The imagery was wonderfully crafted, giving us a detailed picture through carefully chosen wording that conveyed far more than just description. An excellent example of this is when Coover describes how “At the main house, the mansion, there is a kind of veranda or terrace, a balcony of sorts, high out on the promontory, offering a spectacular view of the lake with its wide interconnected expanses of blue and its many islands.” The tone of this, the exact picture of sophistication, is highly contrasted with the high-energy, impulsive, and animalistic feel we get from: “The caretaker’s son bounds about the guest cabin, holding himself with one hand, smashing walls and busting windows with the other, grunting happily as he goes.”

What I found to be the most intriguing part of this story, I only discovered upon analysis in class. The scene in which the girl in the golden pants is sketching the man with the pipe on the balcony, she mistakes him for the feral caretaker’s son, drawing “his buttocks” “bare and shaggy”. This is an intriguing implication, that we cannot truly separate ‘sophisticated’ and ‘civilised’ from ‘nature’, what has come to be seen by civilisation as ‘savage’. It seems to be a comment on humanity, that the further we attempt to distance ourselves from this notion of ‘savagery’ and ‘nature’ being one in the same, the more savage we actually become. This idea is repeated in ‘Morris In Chains’, as we see our ‘sophisticated’ characters acting in an entirely unnecessarily violent way towards the criminally ‘natural’ Morris. I find this disturbing, like all the stories in this book seem to be in one way or another.

In the reading so far, ‘The Gingerbread House’ was perhaps the most true to the well-known version as Coover’s fairytale “riffs” come. One of the major differences here is that the story ends us halfway through the commonly told plot-line. The fact that the story ends with, once again, a door, and this time also, with “that sound of black rags flapping”, leaves us without relief and with more questions than we have answers. Yet, after how dark and pessimistic the previous 42 chapters were, I feel like any ending provided would not have been happy, and so am left disturbed once more, still waiting outside Coover’s damn, cleverly used door.

Every one of the ‘Seven Exemplary Fictions’ was disturbing in so many ways. There was the common theme of death – the worst of which I think may have been in ‘The Marker’, because, really, the guy’s wife had been dead for three weeks, rotting in their bed, there’s a good chance he’d been having sex with a corpse all that time, and yet he was more upset about losing the place in his book – that kept finding new, uncomfortable ways to sneak up on us. Coover does a wonderful job in this case of placing the reader in situations (especially through the use of second person in ‘The Panel’) we would really rather not be in, let alone witness. On that note, I can’t help but notice that the final sentence of the collection is, “I enjoy my work.”

So far, Pricksongs & Descants has showed me a kind of fiction I’ve never read before, and I think a large part of the pleasure I take in reading it is simply in the fact that it is so different, and therefore feels so new. It feels like I’m learning about writing, and as a writer, I feel that should always be at least some part of my motivation to read. Even when I find myself with little comprehension of what is happening in the story, not to mention why it is happening, it doesn’t seem to matter because Coover keeps me holding onto this hope that the further I read, the more I’ll understand. He keeps me in front of the open door, waiting to be allowed through.

Response 3

Jenna Wilhelmi

October 4, 2010

Pricksongs and Descants and Insanity!

Robert Coover’s Pricksongs and Descants can best be described as a ride of sorts. In order to get into his text you must keep your knowledge of fairytales handy, but not expect him to follow the story exactly. You must also loosen your death grip on reality because, otherwise, Robert Coover won’t be any fun for you.

In The Door: A Prologue of Sorts, Coover weaves three endearingly popular legends into one story. The three tales are: Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Beauty and the Beast. Jack has become the woodcutter in Riding Hood, Grandma is wed to the beast that is the big bad wolf, and Red is all grown up and as gullible as ever. So, what exactly is Coover trying to say? I can only speculate at this point.

In the section narrated by the Grandma she complains about how she married the Beast, expecting him to become a handsome prince, only to be disappointed. It felt to me as though Coover was trying to say something about the illusions many people have when they get married. From an early age, most children are told the can have the fairytale life. Girls are told that the just have to wait for their prince to appear and all their dreams will come true. However, as we all eventually learn, a fairytale is just a fairytale. Grandma was the Beauty who married the Beast – the Beast who would never be a prince. Then she goes on to say that she has been with the wolf so long that she can’t life without him, that he has become a part of her life, and I was immediately reminded of my grandparents. They screech at each other like cats and dogs, but would never think to leave each other because they have grown too comfortable together. It seems that Coover, and a lot of other adult writers, speak of love as something you do when you’re young and that you settle into when reality kicks in later.

Speaking of reality, in the opening section following Jack, the narration suddenly shifts and an omnipresent voice steps in. It might be Coover, it might be a narrator, but what the voice says is more important that who says it. Either way the voice is a father who is afraid he failed his daughter. He is afraid he failed her because has shielded her from the outside world by only telling her fairytales and he knows she will soon have to face the real world. Of course this daughter is going to realize the world is no fairytale. Jack knows at this point in his life and Red seems to sense that she is about to reach this pivotal point in life when she approaches her Grandmother’s house, but she just keeps playing out the story.

But isn’t that what we all do? We know something bad will eventually happen to us, but we just keep playing our part despite our fear. Coover appears to believe in some concept of fate, that even if we knew our story we would just let our lives play out as if we didn’t. On one hand, when we know what is going to happen, even if it is horrible, we are not as afraid because we will no longer be surprised. This is why we enjoy haunted houses and roller coasters. You know it is going to be scary, but it can also be enjoyable as well. Fear is what makes us feel alive and therefore we crave it at some primal level. Coover shows several references in The Magic Poker and Morris in Chains that shows he thinks we must occasionally indulge this primal side of us. It is a rather large part of us after all.

Overall, I found Coover slightly confusing, but once I let go and just let him take me for a ride he made sense. It was almost as if I was reading a dream I had had. When in the dream, everything makes sense, but once I woke up it didn’t make sense at all. I could probably read this story a hundred times and find something different each time. It took several reads to get to what I wrote above. But there is something about the dreamlike quality of Coover’s writing that draws me to him and I’m not just saying that. I started this book fully intending to be frustrated, put-off, and end up hating this book. Then Coover had to go and surprise me. Maybe it was the fairytale references, maybe it was the insanity, but Coover caught my interest. If that makes me insane so be it! I would rather be crazy that boring old normal any day.

We Are All Geniuses

This book is already intriguing and confusing. There are parts where I cannot stop reading and others where I wish I did not have to read at all. And when I read the parts I did not have to, I read over them multiple times, because I want to understand what is going on. That is probably reason I like the other parts more, because even though I am still bit confused, I understand parts. Now to actually tell you what parts I am talking about.

First the Prologue, which seems like a mixture of the techniques Coover choses to use in this book. At first it seems like he is telling a different perspective of Jack and the Beanstalk. Then it turns out he is talking about his daughter and how fairy tales are lies. Since they really are. All they do is give gives false expectations, so when they grow up the world seems awful. When it’s just how it is. Then it skips to a weird perverted version of what seems to be Beauty and the Beast. Where it actually tells the story in first person. A very believable first person. The kind of First Person that has her own dialect and who is even not afraid to be too descriptive. Most of that part just made me think of bestiality. I was grossed out, but I liked that the author was not censoring a thing. I hate when authors censor their stories. One of my favorite writers, Chuck Palahniuk, is the kind of writers who loves to write because it gives freedom. Unlike all other kinds of entertainment you do not have to censor writing. "There are places only books can go. That is the advantage books still have. This is why I write," a quote from an essay by Palahniuk about his short story “Guts.” I think Coover is a writer who believes this as well, because he shows it in his work. Especially, in that prologue, because instead of starting off slowly he steps right into uncensored description. He also adds him some comedic values. My favorite part about the prologue is the last passage about Little Red Riding Hood. Mostly because it was about her thoughts as she entered her Grandmother’s house. Those were thoughts I had always wondered about myself, and the way the author wrote them was so descriptive that made me feel like I was in her head. Kind of like, I was her. That passage was the only one from the prologue that I actually understood. It kept me hopeful for the rest of the book. In in a way, it opens the door into Coover’s strange imagination.

Then “The Magic Poker” came along and I lost a little hope, but at the same time it was still lingering around there. In this story he is not afraid to make the reader realize that he is the one that made this place and that he can change details anytime he wants to. I loved that about it, because writers rarely even like to make their existence relevant to the reader. But I love how the writer gets so into the minds of the characters. I did find the structure of it confusing, because I was never really sure what exactly was going on. It reminded me a mixed up frog story. Although I do have two favorite parts: when the writer questions his own existence, and when the Carekeeper’s Son poops in a cup and calls it a love letter. They are my favorites because they were some of the oddest parts of the story. Since by questioning the writer’s own existence it makes him feel kind of god like. You know like you don’t know if he is really there, but he is. Writers are kind of like the gods of their own worlds. So it makes sense. Then the part about the love letter is so bloody obscene that I just can’t forget it, and makes me love it. It’s the strength about not censoring. You can’t forget the things that startled you, but you sure can try.

Then I absolutely loved “The Gingerbread House” because it was like the Riding Hood passage. It was basically, describing a classic tale in a very different way, and actually getting into the heads of everyone. It did not just tell you about the innocence of the Hansel and Gretel characters, it was showing you it. The writer adds in new elements, like the doves and the old man, to make the story much more suspenseful. Though I can admit I was confused a bit, because the writer did leave things out, but that only made me read on.

Kind of skipped “Morris in Chains” so I will talk about that one now. But I guess I skipped it because as I read I was confused. It was a hard read for me. Though I like how it challenged the idea of progression and modernism. Since on one hand you have the intelligent doctor who likes science and hates everything that is unexplainable. Then she as a name that rhymes with everyone else’s. Then you have an odd mythological shepherd that loves nature and parks. And his name also rhymes with everyone else’s. Ironic in a sense, because all the characters are quite different but they all flow together perfectly, like a rhyme. Probably has something to do with the fact that without mythology and classic literature we would not have modern anything.

Then the discussion opened my eyes on all the short stories, because it made them much deeper. Without it I would not have been able to talk about a lot of the things I did. And now I think that Hoover might be a genius. Since all these stories are far too thought out to be from anyone normal. Then again, I don’t think there is such thing as a “normal” writer. We are all geniuses.

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Response 3

Coover has a way of turning those fairy-tales we all know into something we could never imagine. In The Magic Poker, Coover takes the idea of kissing a frog prince and turns into a dirty poker. Two sisters come to an island only to find it constantly changing with the flick of a magic poker. The story is told from constantly changing perspectives which can be confusing at times. Is he trying to symbolize the constant change of tales through time? Or was it simply a choice of style?

The magic poker seems to reveal the overlooked rather than actually be "magical." At one point, Karen is messing around with the fancy man on the island and he suddenly turns into the beast known as the caretaker's son. It may seem like they are two different people throughout the story but perhaps it's only an illusion. An illusion that is only uncovered once the magic poker is brought about by ripping off the mask of importance that covers the animals we all are. The constant references to taking off the gold pants worn by the sister may symbolize the constant obsession humans have with sex for unproductive reasons. Even the poker is described like a man's penis, "She kisses the handle, the shaft, the tip."
We are led to believe the sisters grew up on this island by random flashbacks. At one point a grandmother and children come into the story. The children are playing on the green piano that is now dismembered and broken which means it must have been a flashback if it was still in working condition.

Robert Coover turns the already grim story of Hansel and Gretel even more disturbing in The Gingerbread House. Doves are constantly reoccurring in this short story. Doves typically symbolize peace; is this a symbol to show something the children will no longer have? It also seems like the Bad Witch may forewarn the children before they reach her house. She holds out a red, pulsing dove heart, which sounds much like her own door to her house of tricks.