The writer Robert Coover died Oct. 5 at the age of 92.
Coover was memorialized in a New York Times obituary, and yet, I’m going to guess that most readers of this column, people who are more inclined to be interested in books and writers than average, do not know his work. I’ve been thinking about what that means, how to square the fact that Coover is a giant of literature with the fact that he is not widely known today.
Coover published more than 30 books in his lifetime, starting with “The Origin of the Brunists” in 1966 and concluding with “Open House” in 2023. His best-known novel is perhaps 1977’s “A Public Burning,” a fabulist satire of the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg that features (among other things) a literal embodiment of Uncle Sam who sounds like a profane Foghorn Leghorn.
Coover’s short story, “The Babysitter,” is an oft-anthologized classic of postmodern pastiche that frequently disturbs and befuddles the students tasked with reading it, a condition I can testify to personally.
Coover’s work was frequently called “inventive” and “one-of-a-kind,” but this sells the uniqueness of his vision short. Often grouped with John Barth and Donald Barthelme as purveyors of postmodern satires, writers who messed around with the very nature of how we tell stories in ways that destabilize our sense of the world. This sensation can be discomforting and disorienting, even as he was primarily working as a satirist.
In the ’60s and ’70s, when Coover was being recognized as an important figure, audiences unsettled by the events of the times — the Vietnam War, political assassinations, the threat of nuclear annihilation in an exchange of missiles between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. — read these wild inventions and recognized them as faithful renderings of a senseless world.
The strangeness seemed more real than reality, if you will.
But underneath all that strangeness, a reader could find a deep reservoir of caring when it came to the unique properties of our humanity. By exploring the ways we come to feel alienated from the world, Coover could then deliver a significant emotional punch.
My favorite Coover novel of the ones I’ve read (eight or so) is “The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.” It tells the story of J. Henry Waugh, a reasonably successful accountant who is otherwise discontented by life except for an imaginary baseball league of his own invention whose games he conducts entirely through rolls of dice.
When a young phenom throws a perfect game — a near impossibility when it comes to the odds of the dice throws — Henry is happy, perhaps for the first time in a long time, and immerses himself more deeply in the game than ever, increasing that happiness along the way.
At least until there is an in-game tragedy that unmoors Henry in both his imagined and real worlds.
I won’t spoil the plot because it’s a book very much worth reading. First published in 1968, I feel as though it has significant resonances with the present day, where lots of people seem untethered from the genuine experiences of the world.
The novel asks us to contemplate what we are trying to escape from by removing ourselves from the friction of life, the pain of having to make choices, rather than give ourselves over to fate through the throw of dice.
Robert Coover is a writer worth reading, and worth remembering.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese
2. “Love and Other Consolation Prizes” by Jamie Ford
3. “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver
4. “Hello Beautiful” by Ann Napolitano
5. “The School for Good Mothers” by Jessamine Chan
— Elizabeth B., Chicago
This is the list of reads for Elizabeth’s book club of 38 years (!), which takes an annual trip to read a book related to a city. This year’s was Seattle, the setting of “Love and Other Consolation Prizes.” I’m going to take a bit of a risk and recommend another Seattle book, a more contemporary tale, “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” by Maria Semple.
1. “The Object” by Joshua Calvert
2. “James” by Percival Everett
3. “Shadows of Earth” by Nathan Hystad
4. “The Orphan Collector” by Ellen Marie Wiseman
5. “The Lost Van Gogh” by Jonathan Santlofer
— Sarah G., Downers Grove
Every so often when I feel a little stumped by a request, I look at the list of recent reads and then look over to one of the shelves in my office and see which title reaches out to me. The result this time: “Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi.
1. “James” by Percival Everett
2. “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus
3. “The Women” by Kristin Hannah
4. “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande
5. “Nobody’s Fool” by Richard Russo
— Mary M., Chicago
I recently received an advance copy of this author’s next novel coming in 2025 and I’m excited to read it. For now, I’ll dip into her back catalog and recommend “Want” by Lynn Steger Strong.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.