Robert Coover

"Coover" redirects here. For the inventor, see Harry Coover.

Robert Coover
Coover in 2000
Born	(1932-02-04) February 4, 1932 Charles City, Iowa, United States
Occupation	writer
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Indiana University
Period	1960s–
Genre	short story, novel
Spouse	María del Pilar Sans Mallafré (1959–)
Children	Diana Nin Sara Chapin Roderick Luis

Robert Lowell Coover (born February 4, 1932) is an American author and professor emeritus in the Literary Arts program at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction.

Life and works

Coover was born in Charles City, Iowa. He attended Southern Illinois University Carbondale, received his B.A. in Slavic Studies from Indiana University in 1953, then served in the United States Navy. He received an M.A. in General Studies in the Humanities from the University of Chicago in 1965. In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. Coover has served as a teacher or writer in residence at many universities. He was a professor at Brown University from 1981–2012.

Coover's wife is the noted needlepoint artist Pilar Sans Coover. They have three children, including Sara Caldwell.

Coover's first novel was The Origin of the Brunists, in which the sole survivor of a mine disaster starts a religious cult. His second book, The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., deals with the role of the creator. The eponymous Waugh, a shy, lonely accountant, creates a baseball game in which rolls of the dice determine every play, and dreams up players to attach those results to.

Coover's best-known work, The Public Burning, deals with the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in terms that have been called magic realism. Half of the book is devoted to the mythic hero Uncle Sam of tall tales, dealing with the equally fantastic Phantom, who represents international Communism. The alternate chapters portray the efforts of Richard Nixon to find what is really going on amidst the welter of narratives.

A later novella, Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears offers an alternate Nixon, one who is devoted to football and sex with the same doggedness with which he pursued political success in this reality. The theme anthology A Night at the Movies includes the story "You Must Remember This", a piece about Casablanca that features an explicit description of what Rick and Ilsa did when the camera wasn't on them. Pinocchio in Venice returns to mythical themes.

Coover demonstrating the "CaveWriting" software

Coover is one of the founders of the Electronic Literature Organization. In 1987 he was the winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story.

Awards and honors

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• 1967 William Faulkner Foundation Award for notable first novel for The Origin of the Brunists
• 1987 Rea Award for the Short Story

See also

• Electronic literature

Selected bibliography

Novels

• The Origin of the Brunists (1966)
• The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (1968)
• The Public Burning (1977)
• Gerald's Party (1986)
• Pinocchio in Venice (1991)
• John's Wife (1996)
• Ghost Town (1998)
• The Adventures of Lucky Pierre: Director's Cut (2002)
• Noir (2010)
• The Brunist Day of Wrath (2014)

Short stories, novellas, plays, and collections

• Pricksongs & Descants (1969) (collection)
• The Babysitter (1969) (short story)
• A Theological Position (1972) (plays)
• A Political Fable (1980) (novella)
  • Originally published as a short story "The Cat in the Hat for President" in New American Review, 1968.
• Spanking the Maid (1982) (novella)
• In Bed One Night & Other Brief Encounters (1983) (collection)
• Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears (1987) (novella)
• A Night at the Movies or, You Must Remember This (1987) (themed anthology)
• Dr. Chen's Amazing Adventure (1991) (novella)
• Briar Rose (1996) (novella)
• The Grand Hotels (of Joseph Cornell) (2002) (novella)
• Stepmother (2004) (novella)
• A Child Again (2005) (collection)

• Reprinted in Noir.

• Reprinted in The Brunist Day of Wrath, Chapter I.2

Non-fiction

• The End of Books (1992) (essay)

External links

• Faculty Home Page at Brown University
• – Interview
• IMDB
• The End of Books
• – Novelist Robert Coover's keynote address at the Electronic Literature in Europe seminar (elitineurope.net), September 13, 2008. Introduced by Scott Rettberg. Videography by Martin Arvebro.
• Radio Interview
• Bookworm Interviews (Audio) with Michael Silverblatt: December 2005, December 2005