We start this week off with the sad news that postmodern novelist Robert Coover passed away on Saturday, October 5th at the age of 92.
In his New York Times obituary, John Williams situated Coover "along with Donald Barthelme, John Barth and others" as "the vanguard of postmodern American fiction in the 1960s and 1970s" and hailed his "long and prolific career writing and teaching" at Brown University. The tribute also quoted Michiko Kakutani, who "called Mr. Coover 'probably the funniest and most malicious' of the postmodernists, 'mixing up broad social and political satire with vaudeville turns, lewd pratfalls and clever word plays that make us rethink both the mechanics of the world and our relationship to it.'" While best known for the workshop staple "The Babysitter" (no, I had no clue that the Alicia Silverstone film was an adaptation) or The Public Burning, his critique of wrongheaded American politics from McCarthyism to Watergate, but my favorite will always be The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., which I taught many times in my Baseball Literature course over many spring semesters.
While not many novelists have PennSound author pages, Coover does. It houses audio and video footage from the his two-day visit to UPenn as one of the 2009 class of Kelly Writers House Fellows. The February 23rd reading includes excerpts from The Public Burning, Pinocchio in Venice, and Noir, along with "The Grand Hotel Nymph Light" from The Grand Hotels (of Joseph Cornell), "In Anticipation of the Question 'Why Do You Write?,'" and "The New Thing." You can also listen to his complete conversation with Al Filreis from the following day, as well as a condensed version and several excerpts cut from the longer conversation. Click here to start exploring.
We send out our heartfelt condolences to Coover's family and friends, as well as his generations of fans worldwide.
