coover & tyrone's magic poker

[ray gonne]

dennis grace wrote:
> 
> BTW, where do you situate Coover's "Babysitter" or "The Magic Poker" in this
> reality scale?
> 
i'd put the two pricksong coover stories in with t.v. realism; the way
one who has grown up with instant replay and subjective flashback--not
to mention good old melodrama and what-if--would percieve a scenario. in
coover's case, the t.v. baby is the reader, perhaps more than he is any
character in either story. he seems to direct the way we might ourselves
daydream the story. in the end, he is more realistic than barth, who
seems to exist as a sort of metafictional orator. coover takes a fable
and modernizes it to the point in which the characters seem
indistinguishable from sitcom actors stuck in rewind, watching the
reflection of themselves on the tube in the mirror.
ray