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A Night at the Movies or, You Must Remember This
From B-movies to Hollywood classics, A Night at the Movies invents what "might have happened" in these Saturday afternoon matinees. Mad scientists, vampires, cowboys, dance-men, Chaplin, and Bogart all flit across Robert Coover's riotously funny screen, doing things and uttering lines that are as shocking to them as they are funny to the reader. As Coover's Program announc...more
Paperback, 197 pages
Published
March 1st 1997
by Dalkey Archive Press
(first published 1987)
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Dec 30, 2007
Melanie
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
cinephiles and postmodernists
Shelves:
2007,
short_stories
Oh, this collection is delightful! It's structured like a night (or, more aptly, a whole glorious day) at the movies, complete with features, short subjects, and an intermission. Coover moves gracefully through, between, and around genres; he also uses the language and logic of dreams to capture the feeling of being deep within a movie and within the culture of the cinema. Stories like "Charlie in the House of Rue" and "You Must Remember This" seem to exist in the spaces between frames--familiar...more
Dec 24, 2007
R.
added it
The Charlie Chaplin story sounds like its worth the price of admission.
Not the Vincent Price of Admission which is your mortal soul, frog! Wait. Did V.P. try to steal Kermit's soul? No. That was Alice Cooper. And he bought Gonzo's. Alice Cooper, Robert Coover. Alice Coover, June Cleaver, John Cheever. June, John. John, Alice. Alice, June. Robert, John. Vincent! Vincent, you already know Alice. June, this is Vincent. Vincent, John and Robert. Oh, all those holiday party introductions.
Not the Vincent Price of Admission which is your mortal soul, frog! Wait. Did V.P. try to steal Kermit's soul? No. That was Alice Cooper. And he bought Gonzo's. Alice Cooper, Robert Coover. Alice Coover, June Cleaver, John Cheever. June, John. John, Alice. Alice, June. Robert, John. Vincent! Vincent, you already know Alice. June, this is Vincent. Vincent, John and Robert. Oh, all those holiday party introductions.
Should I write that the title story's pretty smutty? Or can you just guess that from the name on the cover? How about that that same story is also pretty great (though, yeah, again, that name on the cover), not because of the smuttiness, but because of the melancholia that is always its wake, that desiccating House of Rue just beyond the pleasures of the local Palace? By that part of the program, of course, Coover's patrons are shuffling out of the theater, the only smacking sounds their shoes f...more
I'd like to write that this was a truly fantastic book, but it wasn't. Like Coover's Pricksongs and Descants--and unlike his wonderful, propulsive, and thoroughly immersive Ultimate Baseball Association--A Night at the Movies struck me as a text that was intended for the aspiring writer, not the avid reader. In that sense, it's quite useful--there's a lot to learn here, and Coover's techniques are easy enough to grasp, even if their execution, however skillful, can be quite tedious--but I expect...more
Reading "The Public Burning" and "The Origin of the Brunists" has made me Robert Coover's biggest fan, but I can't recommend "A Night at the Movies" unreservedly. It's a collection of short pieces which, as far as I can tell, are meant to give the reader the experience of being in a movie theater and watching several features, from the coming attractions to a cartoon to the main event. Even an intermission. Some of the stories are better than others; some of them were a chore to read. The last s...more
Great concept -- Coover clearly revels in the old movie mythology. "You Must Remember This" is (fittingly) the most memorable for me, mostly because it riffs -- in a very sexualized Coover way -- on Casablanca, which, natch, is my favorite movie.
I did not love this book. The stories were clever enough, but Coover seemed to hit the same notes in each one. Maybe it just seems dated; I'm sure if I'd read this in grad school, I would've enjoyed it a lot more.
I didn't enjoy it. There were clever parts but mostly confusing and it didn't flow. Not for me at least.
Unsettling deconstruction of "Casablanca."
We get it, Robert Coover. You like to experiment with conceptual ideas and what characters would do that we don't see on screen. Most of these stories don't nescesitate their (relatively short) lengths, and continue to (in the case of "You Must Remember This", literally) bang you over the head with his cool idea. The concept is great, just not very gratifying to read.
Following John Barth's postmodern circle jerk for as long as I did probably ruined this for me. I feel like I'm too cynical to enjoy this book, but it's precisely books like this (Lost in the Funhouse, *ahem*) that make me cynical in the first place.
Weirdly, Coover keeps growing on me.
Very smart book.
Reread: 2/14/10-2/19/10
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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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“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.”
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