The Modern Novel

Biography

Pomo has probably gone the way of those others -isms. You know – minimalism, structuralism, deconstructionism, communism, all of those. It has left a few bodies behind and maybe a few worthwhile writers. Coover is one of the worthwhile ones and he is still turning out good, pomo books, while the others are dead or turning out work of dubious quality. So let’s hear it for post-modernism and Robert Coover. Oh, and the books are listed to the right and they are pretty well all worth reading, while The Public Burning may be one of the best US late 20th century and pomo novels ever.

Robert Coover was born in Iowa City in 1932. His father was a newspaper editor but had to move around a lot. After studying two years at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, he read Slavic studies at Indiana University and then joined the navy. After the navy, he stayed abroad, marrying a Spanish woman. This led to rumours that he had been working for the CIA. He was apparently also friends with the very elusive Thomas Pynchon. On returning to the USA, he took an M.A. at the University of Chicago. He has taught at various educational institutions but remains best known as one of the leading post-modernist authors. It was the critic Robert Scholes, in his seminal book, The Fabulators, who placed Coover firmly in the category of fabulator, i.e. writers whose writing is akin to magic realism but whose characters are aware of their fictionality (what a horrible word and not even recognised by my spell-check) and who consciously create and examine myths. He died in 2024.

Other links

Robert Coover
Robert Coover
Robert Coover
Featured Author: Robert Coover
Interview
Interview
Interview
Going For A Beer (story by Coover)
The End of Books (article by Coover)