#robertcoover

[impossiblesomething]

Some of my drawings are featured in the current issue of the Evergreen Review for a short story by Robert Coover titled The Enchanted Prince... fill up on it while taking the train to work or back home #evergreenreview #drawings #disembodied #anthropomorphic #transhumanism #robertcoover #shortfiction (at New York, New York)

[bookculturebookstore]

Go West! #exitwest #southandwest #huckoutwest #mohsinhamid #joandidion #robertcoover (at Book Culture on Columbus)

[shortstoryreview-blog]

Robert Coover’s “The Magic Poker”

Freedom is something that American storytelling just seems to aspire to naturally, instinctively. We keep looking for new ways to say. Even the thought of being confined by any particular mode or habit of expression appears to us like death itself. Of course we have one of the most irascible, rebellious, impolite, unconfined literary traditions already. A tradition that doesn’t even think about following a rule if it can’t be flouted, that breaks them concretely all the time—sometimes without even knowing whether they existed in the first place. An upstart tradition, never respectable, often disturbing, always odd. But instincts are instincts and pretty dumb by definition, so we continue restlessly to rebel.

 “Metafiction,” William Gass’ curious word for everything done by this next story, “The Magic Poker” by Robert Coover, is yet another way to get beyond constraints, this time of fiction itself. And it is one which American writers in 1970 were taking up with gusto. Not so much a movement as a series of maneuvers, metafictions resist the pull of narrative towards social realism, find Borges more literary than Bellow (whom Coover, upon reading, says he threw across the room), and above all speak frankly about writing as it is happening. They secure more freedom for literature by breaking out of the expectations that attend the occasion of fictionmaking itself.

 This sounds, of course, not just that it is unnecessary (what was fiction doing that so burdened writers?) but like it wouldn’t work. Things should be the other way around: writing stories that play with the very idea of storytelling should confine your writing to tedious self-commentary or self-criticism that gets nowhere. The story you write should be merely reflexive, self-involved, self-conscious. But it’s not because, as this story by Coover himself shows you, every time you write a story about writing stories you begin enacting that storytelling. The words that you use begin to reflect or challenge the things you are doing with them, the story you talk about gets into a tussle with whatever storytelling you do. And suddenly you’re in control of something much less like a series of sentences representing the actions of characters and much more like an editor’s reel or a can of paint ready to be dripped over a canvas.

 “The Magic Poker” enacts precisely this process. Indeed it serves as an introduction to one of the greatest story collections inspired by the metafictional breakthrough of mid-century, Pricksongs and Descants, which was published in 1969, right before BASS 1970 came out. It is a story about writing stories, and it slowly leads you from our normal representational view of telling and into this larger, weirder world where it is the whole idea that a story’s status is “fictional” that gets played with and questioned. It begins with a daydreamer, a writer, simply writing down objects that emerge before him and his attention. An island, two girls (one in gold hot pants), a man, and an iron poker are mentioned initially, in disconnected disjoined fragments, almost a list. He scuffs up the island in his head, making it a little rougher:

I arrange the guest cabin, I rot the porch and tatter the screen door and infest the walls. I tear out the light switches, gut the mattresses, smash the windows, and shit on the bathroom floor. I rust the pipes, kick in the papered walls, unhinge the doors. Really, there’s nothing to it. In fact, it’s a pleasure. 

Then, he gives all these things motion and purpose. Different fragments of action describe different scenarios involving the objects and the items. The nouns are related to the verbs you will, precisely in the manner of a structural linguist like A.J. Greimas, all the while the narrator agonizes about whether he got the grammar of storytelling correct.

 Eventually, more action happens, and the narrator worries less. These strings of actions coalesce into several more coherent narratives, which we get more in full. A family in Minnesota owns a mansion and has an island with cabins on it. They eventually abandon it, leaving an iron poker behind. Or: two girls go out to an island, rummage around, find a poker, and destroy the mansion and a piano inside, defecating in it and on the bathroom floor. Or: a medieval squire proves his manhood by taking a poker to destroy a maiden’s inviolable gold pants. Or: a group of three friends make their way to an island, find a poker, goof around with it, and leave it behind.

 What is the point? Well, you just got it: the action itself and the process of its assemblage, i.e. storytelling. None of the little episodes we get—the small paragraphs describing the items and the characters, or the small sections narrating possible stories—is “the story,” or “the fiction.” All of these components, which we see simply placed side by side in different paragraphs, each with a space between them, compose it. And the skill with which Coover introduces all this material, and brings you through all the possible combinations the components could take, is truly breathtaking. Not to mention the asides of narration, which grow more frantic as the action builds up and the narrator has to fade away before the world he is creating:

I am disappearing. You have no doubt noticed. Yes, and by some no doubt calculable formula of event and pagination… it’s just as I feared, my invented island is really taking its place in world geography. Why, this island sounds very much like the old Dahlberg place on Jackfish Island up on Rainy Lake, people say… perhaps tomorrow I will invent Chicago and Jesus Christ and the history of the moon. Just as I have invented you, dear reader, while lying her in the afternoon sun, bedded deeply in the blue-green grass like an old iron poker…

Metafiction like this achieves a freedom and a frankness about the action of written storytelling and its aims that convinces us words can talk about anything, even the process by which they are compelled to be put down and read. If there is a story, it is you, the reader, who really makes it so. You can suggest the necessities, you can suggest the connections. The narrator seems to be more in your position than his own, and far from hurling moralistic pronouncements about American Society down from on high, resembles more a partner with you on a strange roadtrip, simply tossing up some possible narrative options for your consideration hey you may have better ideas who knows.

 Ours is no longer a metafictional age, I don’t think. With hurricane Purity hitting shelves everywhere, the emphasis is on readability, and finding new ways to relate to old bookish uses rather than trying to upend everything we know about the whole reader-writer relation and the mimetic expectations in fiction to boot. It’s easy to get a little tired of the pretense to awareness, self-consciousness, in a story like this—especially after the critical consensus, led by Robert Scholes (when his critical article on metafiction appeared in 1970), made “self-awareness” and the awareness of the advances of literary criticism itself precisely the criterion of metafictionality, as if to oppose it to many other works engaged with much more popular and diverse historical concerns that do similar things. Also, it’s tiring having to interpret to such a degree, to make sense of something continually. It really is a lot of responsibility, and pretends as if participation is willing and ready—like a theatergoer’s attention—when it may well not be, when we use works of literature now in many more strange and interesting situations. Not that I like my fiction tame, just that I sometimes want stories I can use, and not every story that offers choices so abstract like this is one that is going to be a productive one to remix and reinterpret and rework. We would prefer stories where words may be actions, yes, but often we want these actions to work mostly like words.

 Then again I think that this is just a short story, and that as successful as Coover is in this smaller mode—especially in Pricksongs—metafiction was always a large scale venture, and still regularly appears in works of that size. Even works of the New Sincerity or “hysterical realism” (to drop a couple more terms here to confine our current tendencies), which seem almost overinvested in big thick tales realistically framed, and which claim to rebel in some way against the excesses of postmodern experimentation, have become the place for some of the most surprising narratives playing with narratives. And the new memoiristic and nonfictional turn would be unthinkable without it: far from representing a new “reality hunger” in many ways it just takes metafiction literally. If there is something that is lacking, perhaps, now, it is the sense that metafiction had of doing something new, of being “more aware” about fiction than traditional realistic realism. The sense of creating a break with, and being smarter than, a huge, smart critical consensus raised on Very Serious Literature like Tomas Wolfe and whose farthest idea of experimentation was Hemingway. But in America this is ever the problem with any technique that is really something deeper than that: it eventually has to appear to be broken with in its turn.

[stephsand14]

Women and Men: A Power Struggle

            Both Robert Coover’s Briar Rose and Angela Carter’s “The Lady of the House of Love” depict women who are powerful enough to kill the men that desire them.  These stories reflect popular culture’s infatuation with portraying women as someone dominant or as the femme fatale.  Yet Carter’s story is different and represents today’s culture the most because the Countess, who starts off as the domineering creature is in the end possessed by the male figure.  Although in today’s society women are more readily accepted outside of the domestic realm, and have therefore obtained important roles in the professional realm, they are still viewed as domestic beings whose purpose is to cook, clean, and take care of the children.  This perception of women has been altered, since in today’s world women are working professionals in the day and housewives in the evening.  Some women challenge the idea that a woman must marry and become a mother in order to be complete, and run the risk of being judged.  Others give in to tradition and risk becoming an invisible piece of furniture in the house.  The latter is what the Countess chooses.  On the other hand, Rose desires to find a prince in her unconscious world, but never obtains one because the conscious world, which represents the woods, forbids it.  Unlike the Countess, Rose is not overpowered by a man.  She will live eternally within the walls of her castle never to be a subject of the outside world that is dominated by men, an illusion that does not reflect today’s cultural reality.  

            Women like the Countess who are free from society’s norms and restrictions are inevitably overcome in the end by cultural traditions that submit them to domestic roles.  While the Countess was alone she was the female predator who had the power to devour young boys.  The Countess reigned in her domain, until a young officer’s intrusion proves fatal for her.  Through the eyes of the officer, the Countess transforms into a docile creature, who is “so thin [and] so frail” that she resembles a harmless child (Carter 128).  She is no longer the person the reader was first introduced to.  The Countess has turned into the prey and the young officer will capture her.  In solitude, the Countess was free of demands and of change.  Yet, with the young officer’s entrance into her realm, she will reach the “end of being” (136).  In other words, she will lose her independence and the power over her life.  This struggle for power is what women experience in today’s society.  Indeed, women are challenged with the notion of youth, motherhood, and femininity.   They must embody these characteristics or face social scrutiny.   The Countess is a savage who resembles an animal.  Due to this, the young officer is impelled to domesticate and change her into an ideal companion, he ponders: “We shall take her … to a clinic, she will be treated for nervous hysteria … and to a dentist, to put her teeth into better shape … we shall turn her into the lovely girl she is; I shall cure her of all these nightmares” (137).   The young officer represents society’s expectations for women.  They must be beautiful, docile, normal, and perfect.  These are idealistic notions that place an immense pressure on women.  In the end, all that is left of the Countess is a rose that is left in possession of the young officer.  She has been reduced to an object that can no longer act freely on her instincts.

            While the Countess loses her identity at the hand of a man, Rose maintains her independence.  Rose is proof that only in isolation can a woman be the master of her domain.   A woman like Rose is immune to our culture’s restrictions and expectations, unfortunately in today’s real world it is nearly impossible to ignore society’s rules.   Advertisements that display youth, beauty and thinness are pressures imposed on women by men who create these images.  These images inevitably penetrate the psyche of women, causing them to feel unworthy or insecure.  Rose is not at the mercy of a man so as a result she is repeatedly told that she is “one of the lucky ones” (Coover 36).  She is safe from these conditions that men demand of women.  Yet Rose finds her life unfair and does not understand why “she is the one” (44).  She cannot come to terms with lacking a prince, a family, and to only live in anticipation of happiness.   She is a woman who does not embrace the power she holds.  Many men have died in wanting to capture her existence and to “tame mystery” (1).  In Briar Rose, men are vulnerable and unable to fulfill their objective of dominating and molding a woman to their liking.  On the other hand, in today’s culture men are quite successful.  Evidence of this lies in the industries that exist and make billions of dollars on telling women that youth is obtainable with cosmetic surgery, creams and lotions that are claimed to be miraculous.  In today’s social environment women are vulnerable and men are the perpetrators.

            The Countess ceases to exist as soon as she becomes the officer’s object of “affection” demonstrating that a man is the cause of a woman’s second class position in society.  On the other hand, desolate Rose does not have a man that possesses her, and is free from any unfair expectations.  Rose lives in an unrealistic world, since men in our world are triumphant in violating a woman’s boundaries and in inflicting their image of the perfect woman, depending on trends and seasons.  The young officer in “The Lady of the House of Love” represents the ease in which men in today’s culture can trespass a woman’s domain and govern over it.  Subsequently, a woman’s identity is vulnerable to loss. 

  Works Cited

Carter, Angela. “The Lady of the House of Love.” The Bloody Chamber. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1979.Human

Coover, Robert. Briar Rose. New York: Grove P, 1996.

[colinwinnette]

He finds himself sitting in the neighborhood bar drinking a beer at about the same time that he began to think about going there for one. In fact, he has finished it. Perhaps he’ll have a second one, he thinks, as he downs it and asks for a third. There is a young woman sitting not far from him who is not exactly good-looking but good-looking enough, and probably good in bed, as indeed she is. Did he finish his beer? Can’t remember. What really matters is: Did he enjoy his orgasm? Or even have one? This he is wondering on his way home through the foggy night streets from the young woman’s apartment. Which was full of Kewpie dolls, the sort won at carnivals, and they made a date, as he recalls, to go to one. Where she wins another—she has a knack for it. Whereupon they’re in her apartment again, taking their clothes off, she excitedly cuddling her new doll in a bed heaped with them. He can’t remember when he last slept, and he’s no longer sure, as he staggers through the night streets, still foggy, where his own apartment is, his orgasm, if he had one, already fading from memory. Maybe he should take her back to the carnival, he thinks, where she wins another Kewpie doll (this is at least their second date, maybe their fourth), and this time they go for a romantic nightcap at the bar where they first met. Where a brawny dude starts hassling her. He intervenes and she turns up at his hospital bed, bringing him one of her Kewpie dolls to keep him company. Which is her way of expressing the bond between them, or so he supposes, as he leaves the hospital on crutches, uncertain what part of town he is in. Or what part of the year. He decides that it’s time to call the affair off—she’s driving him crazy—but then the brawny dude turns up at their wedding and apologizes for the pounding he gave him. He didn’t realize, he says, how serious they were. The guy’s wedding present is a gift certificate for two free drinks at the bar where they met and a pair of white satin ribbons for his crutches. During the ceremony, they both carry Kewpie dolls that probably have some barely hidden significance, and indeed do. The child she bears him, his or another’s, reminds him, as if he needed reminding, that time is fast moving on. He has responsibilities now and he decides to check whether he still has the job that he had when he first met her. He does. His absence, if he has been absent, is not remarked on, but he is not congratulated on his marriage, either, no doubt because—it comes back to him now—before he met his wife he was engaged to one of his colleagues and their co-workers had already thrown them an engagement party, so they must resent the money they spent on gifts. It’s embarrassing and the atmosphere is somewhat hostile, but he has a child in kindergarten and another on the way, so what can he do? Well, he still hasn’t cashed in the gift certificate, so, for one thing, what the hell, he can go for a beer, two, in fact, and he can afford a third. There’s a young woman sitting near him who looks like she’s probably good in bed, but she’s not his wife and he has no desire to commit adultery, or so he tells himself, as he sits on the edge of her bed with his pants around his ankles. Is he taking them off or putting them on? He’s not sure, but now he pulls them on and limps home, having left his beribboned crutches somewhere. On arrival, he finds all the Kewpie dolls, which were put on a shelf when the babies started coming, now scattered about the apartment, beheaded and with their limbs amputated. One of the babies is crying, so, while he warms up a bottle of milk on the stove, he goes into its room to give it a pacifier and discovers a note from his wife pinned to its pajamas, which says that she has gone off to the hospital to have another baby and she’d better not find him here when she gets back, because if she does she’ll kill him. He believes her, so he’s soon out on the streets again, wondering if he ever gave that bottle to the baby, or if it’s still boiling away on the stove. He passes the old neighborhood bar and is tempted but decides that he has had enough trouble for one lifetime and is about to walk on when he is stopped by that hulk who beat him up and who now gives him a cigar because he’s just become a father and drags him into the bar for a celebratory drink, or, rather, several, he has lost count. The celebrations are already over, however, and the new father, who has married the same woman who threw him out, is crying in his beer about the miseries of married life and congratulating him on being well out of it, a lucky man. But he doesn’t feel lucky, especially when he sees a young woman sitting near them who looks like she’s probably good in bed and decides to suggest that they go to her place, but too late—she’s already out the door with the guy who beat him up and stole his wife. So he has another beer, wondering where he’s supposed to live now, and realizing—it’s the bartender who so remarks while offering him another on the house—that life is short and brutal and before he knows it he’ll be dead. He’s right. After a few more beers and orgasms, some vaguely remembered, most not, one of his sons, now a racecar driver and the president of the company he used to work for, comes to visit him on his deathbed and, apologizing for arriving so late (I went for a beer, Dad, things happened), says he’s going to miss him but it’s probably for the best. For the best what? he asks, but his son is gone, if he was ever there in the first place. Well . . . you know . . . life, he says to the nurse who has come to pull the sheet over his face and wheel him away. 

-Robert Coover