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105th out of 400 books
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524 voters
Spanking the Maid
"Though Coover's message is bleak, his delivery is wonderfully comic" (Bharati Mukherjee, "The Globe & Mail" (Toronto)) in this spare, tantalizing, and perfect book, named by Daphne Merkin in "The New Yorker" as one of her "favorite" S/M books.
Paperback, 112 pages
Published
December 18th 1997
by Grove Press
(first published January 1st 1981)
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For the entire book: two characters (both with no names), one setting. The characters: the master and his maid. The setting: his bedroom, with an adjoining bathroom. It happens everyday: the maid comes in early in the morning, with her cleaning paraphernalia (a mop, bucket, soap, etc.), the master either still in bed or already in the bathroom taking a pee. The maid would sometimes accidentally see his morning erection, sometimes while he's still in bed as she pulls off the blanket, sometimes in...more
Robert Coover is one of the most interesting writers from that generation of meta-fictionists--he is what I think of when I think of a writer taking apart a narrative strategy and making the parts fit in new and maddening ways. Spanking the Maid was deliciously skewed where Robert Coover retells, reshapes, reformulates a hackneyed seduction scenario which adheres, in all the twisting and colorations, to the classic line of erotic writing; the excitement isn't in the getting , but in the anticipa...more
There's something nice about coming across a book and then suddenly realizing you've read the author before but like him/her better then second time around. That just happened to me with Danilo Kis and that's my experience with Coover now. His book, the Universal Baseball Assoc. was an interesting idea, but I couldn't actually get through to the end. Spanking the Maid is nice and slim so the circularity of the novella doesn't have time to ware on you or make one feel like they're lost in the act...more
Feb 28, 2012
J. Ergo
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Shelves:
erotic,
favorites,
fiction,
reviewed,
consciousness,
esoterica,
fantasy,
horror,
humor,
metastruction,
novella,
transgressive
I got this in the mail when I was about halfway through Coover's first book of stories Pricksongs and Descants, which is amazing and I should be finishing soon, but also quite long for a short story collection, at almost 300 pp., and a bit of a roller coaster as well. It feels as if he had quite a load of ideas ready to go, and at the same time didn't hold anything back, possibly thinking he might not get another chance. Having read several of his books, I find this sort of hard to reconcile. As...more
Premessa: da sempre divoro i libri di Coover, e mai ne sono rimasta delusa.
“Sculacciando la cameriera” è un racconto lungo, con due soli protagonisti.
L’attempato padrone di casa e la giovane cameriera.
Ed anche i luoghi sono sostanzialmente due: la camera da letto ed il bagno.
Con l’aggiunta, sporadica ma preziosa, del giardino.
Non vi racconto la storia: è di una brevità così perfetta che vi rovinerei la lettura.
Però posso anticiparvi cosa vi aspetta.
Vivere, nel pieno senso della parola, no...more
“Sculacciando la cameriera” è un racconto lungo, con due soli protagonisti.
L’attempato padrone di casa e la giovane cameriera.
Ed anche i luoghi sono sostanzialmente due: la camera da letto ed il bagno.
Con l’aggiunta, sporadica ma preziosa, del giardino.
Non vi racconto la storia: è di una brevità così perfetta che vi rovinerei la lettura.
Però posso anticiparvi cosa vi aspetta.
Vivere, nel pieno senso della parola, no...more
Due soli personaggi, il padrone e la cameriera.
Una routine che si ripete, sempre uguale a se stessa.
La cameriera entra nella stanza da letto e sveglia il padrone, che le racconta frammenti di un sogno confuso e ricorrente.
La cameriera apre le finestre, e mentre il padrone è in bagno la cameriera rifà il letto; tra le coperte trova sempre qualche brutta sorpresa: un mucchio di vermi, cocci di vetro, delle vespe morte.
Il padrone esce dal bagno, scopre una mancanza della cameriera, e la sculaccia....more
Una routine che si ripete, sempre uguale a se stessa.
La cameriera entra nella stanza da letto e sveglia il padrone, che le racconta frammenti di un sogno confuso e ricorrente.
La cameriera apre le finestre, e mentre il padrone è in bagno la cameriera rifà il letto; tra le coperte trova sempre qualche brutta sorpresa: un mucchio di vermi, cocci di vetro, delle vespe morte.
Il padrone esce dal bagno, scopre una mancanza della cameriera, e la sculaccia....more
It's repetitious but in that best minimalist style something else comes to the forefront with each new pass. I liked the motif of his waking up from dreams with a cutesie homonym thing being all he remembers about his dream. The escalation of the titular activity never really added much for me, Oh well.
Cute. The first time I read this, I totally missed the point. Duh. This time, it was almost sad to see that the Master was just as obligated to his "rules" as the maid was to him. Never thought of this dynamic in this way. Recommended read.
This experimental novella has almost no plot, yet is enthralling. Scenes repeat again and again, altered each time, and words take on new meanings with each permutation. The result is a compelling psychological study that, unlike most experimental works, remains immediate and thoroughly readable. It's a wonderful demonstration of how experimental devices can be used in an engaging way -- a way that's narrative, without being ostensibly narrative, and immediately approachable, despite being so ou...more
I wasn't really enjoying this until I realised that it could be read as a Marxist allegory of the clash between capitalists and workers - then I had more fun with it. Still just about 'ok' though. On to better things.
Another one of those books where the writing is impeccable but what the writer says is awful. This work reminds me of Barry Hannah's Ray, which I both loved and hated. For exactly the same reasons. Sigh.
Sometimes I think I ought to give up on erotica; with very few exceptions, I don't find it erotic. That said, this was an ok book, not bad, but, not great either.
My least favorite of the Coovers. It doesn't add much to what he did better elsewhere. Interesting, but a retread.
Jun 12, 2008
John
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
readers who like a challenge
Shelves:
american-novels-that-matter
This one strikes me as the best, the most brilliantly incisive, of all Coover's toying with genres and their cliches -- and the zippy and often hilarious reiterations in this novella poke fun (to use an irresitable pun) at Victorian pornography. Coover takes the stern Master and submissive Maid through one fine spanking after another, in which the abuse is always skewed away from anything like actual titillation or simpleminded politics. Yet this brief dry-humored dream winds up exciting the hig...more
Repetition doesn't kill the soul, it spanks it into awareness.
1 like · like · see review
7/10
Only slightly less disturbing than "The Babysitter." I sometimes confuse Coover with Barthelme and then I think about how he hired those guys to mug Dan Rather and while they were beating him up they kept saying "what's the frequency Kenneth?" and then REM wrote that song that also makes me think of that other one they wrote, "Everybody Hurts" and then I just get bummed out and look out over a pond or something.
I have clearly outgrown this kind of Freudian, quasi-intellectual romp.
Interesting book. The Spanking the Maid theme runs throughout this novel which is quite troubling in places. One must wonder where Coover's imagination moves. Fascinating, but troubling.
This was an excellent quick read. Coover has a ton of fun and shows brilliant lyrical skills in this comic novel. Hard to describe and I'm not going to bother because I'm lazy right now.
It's perfectly executed for what it is, but again, I'm pretty much over the metafiction. Plus, how embarrassing was it to be reading something with this cover on the subway.
a harold bloom pick for the western canon. numbingly repetitive and dull. read the same author's
babysitter." It's 100 times better.
babysitter." It's 100 times better.
Given to me as a gag gift, but I read it. A bit kinky!
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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...more
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“Le piccole cose di ogni giorno, le sue banali mansioni, pensa mentre si prepara ai compiti mattutini, le forniranno tutto ciò di cui ha bisogno, spazio per negare se stessa, una strada per avvicinarla quotidianamente a Dio.”
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According to the preface, nobody knows. He/she wrote under the pseudonym "G. Donville". They have a v...more
May 12, 2011 06:29am
May 12, 2011 06:31am