Coover

[David Morris]

<<what I find missing from Don B. and DFW for that matter is some sense of 
surrealistic absurd and funny as heck terror, as in the works of my hero, 
Robert Coover. ... folks like DeLillo deal with dread and terror but it's 
more a statement of terror, not the evocation of same.>>

>MalignD:
>I agree (although I can't see any similarity between Barthelme and 
>Wallace).
>
>Coover's simultaneously funny and disturbing and his novels are, taken
together, rich and varied.

I haven't read any Coover yet, so I searched a bit for descriptions of his 
work.  It seems he's very taken w/ the concept of hyperfiction (from The End 
of Books: "True freedom from the tyranny of the line is perceived as only 
really possible now at last with the advent of hypertext, written and read 
on the computer, where the line in fact does not exist unless one invents 
and implants it in the text.").  I take it that this "freedom" is what he 
seeks in the structure of his work.  But personally I find this notion dated 
(does anyone even use the word "hyperfiction" anymore) and essentially 
lauding gimmickry.

Salon.com's review Coover's "Ghost Town" seems at odds w/ the richness 
described at the top of this post (but since he also applies this to Pynchon 
I wonder about its worth):

"Coover's concern is with the mythology of the western, but your reaction to 
"Ghost Town" is less likely to hinge on your feelings about westerns than 
about metafiction in general. There are those who find the works of William 
Gaddis, William Gass, John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, John Hawkes and others of 
this group of middle-aged Northern and Midwestern WASPs to be more fun to 
discuss as theory than to read, and there's no denying that Coover shares 
their bias for self-conscious technique over content and narrative."








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