Robert Coover





Robert Coover

Author profile


born
in Charles City, Iowa, The United States
February 04, 1932

gender
male

genre


About this author

Born Robert Lowell Coover in Charles City, Iowa, Coover moved with his family early in his life to Herrin, Illinois, where his father was the managing editor for the Herrin Daily Journal. Emulating his father, Coover edited and wrote for various school newspapers under the nom-de-plume “Scoop.” He was also his high-school class president, a school band member, and an enthusiastic supporter of the Cincinnati Reds. In 1949 Coover enrolled in Southern Illinois University, and, after transferring to Indiana University in 1951, earned his bachelor's degree in 1953 with a major in Slavonic languages. While in college, he continued editing student papers, as well as working part-time for his father's newspaper. The day he graduated, Coover receive...more


Average rating: 3.78 · 4,632 ratings · 540 reviews · 55 distinct works · Similar authors
The Universal Baseball Asso...
3.86 of 5 stars 3.86 avg rating — 788 ratings — published 1969 — 11 editions
Pricksongs and Descants
3.83 of 5 stars 3.83 avg rating — 603 ratings — published 1969 — 18 editions
The Public Burning
by
4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 avg rating — 410 ratings — published 1977 — 8 editions
Briar Rose
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Spanking the Maid
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The Origin of the Brunists
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Noir: A Novel
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A Night at the Movies, Or, ...
3.81 of 5 stars 3.81 avg rating — 166 ratings — published 1987 — 9 editions
Gerald's Party
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Ghost Town
3.62 of 5 stars 3.62 avg rating — 117 ratings — published 1998 — 4 editions
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“The superhero, his underwear bagging at the seat and knees, is just a country boy at heart, tutored to perceive all human action as good or bad, orderly or dynamic, and so doesn't know whether to shit or fly.”
Robert Coover, A Night at the Movies, Or, You Must Remember This: Fictions

“Black holes are the seductive dragons of the universe, outwardly quiescent yet violent at the heart, uncanny, hostile, primeval, emitting a negative radiance that draws all toward them, gobbling up all who come too close. Once having entered the tumultuous orbit of a black hole, nothing can break away from its passionate but fatal embrace. Though cons of teasing play may be granted the doomed, ultimately play turns to prey and all are sucked haplessly―brilliantly aglow, true, but oh so briefly so―into the fire-breathing maw of oblivion. Black holes, which have no memory, are said to contain the earliest memories of the universe, and the most recent, too, while at the same time obliterating all memory by obliterating all its embodiments. Such paradoxes characterize these strange galactic monsters, for whom creation is destruction, death life, chaos order. And darkness illumination: for, as dragons are also called worms, so black hole are known as wormholes, offering a mystical and intimate pathway to the farthest reaches of the cosmos, thus bring light as they consume it.”
Robert Coover, A Child Again

“Oh, he shouldn't be surprised, he's a Marxist and has nothing but contempt for the bourgeois capitalist press, yet paradoxically he is also somehow an Americanist and a believer in Science and Freedom and History and Reason, and it dismays him to see cruelty politely concealed in data, madness taken for granted and even honored, truth buried away and rotting in all that ex cathedra trivia--my God! something terrible is about to happen, and they have time to editorialize on mustaches, advertise pink cigarettes for weddings, and report on a lost parakeet! Ah, sometimes he just wants to ram the goddamn thing with his head in an all-out frontal attack, wants to destroy all this so-called history so that history can start again.”
Robert Coover, The Public Burning

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