Product Description
Magisterarbeit, die am 01.04.1996 erfolgreich an einer Technische Universität in Deutschland eingereicht wurde. Abstract: Reading postmodern fiction - once a term limited to denote a decidedly US-American tendency in contemporary literature but now applicable to a whole range of works that have in recent years been published by an international group of writers - one almost invariably gets the uneasy feeling of having read it all before. Recognizing some passages, the reader feels a strong sense of deja vu and keeps wondering whether the passages he or she does not recognize are just from those books he or she has not read. Surely enough, an increasingly large number of postmodern authors tend to conceive their books as a jumble of allusions to themes, structures and scenes from earlier texts, so-called master- or parent texts. Others go even further in alluding to previously published texts. They deliberately draw an one particular, generally acknowledged and highly acclaimed master text or classical piece of world literature and read it parodically against the grain, thus re-writing and re-working a renowned classic into a new work of art. Still others overtly appropriate and even plagiarize titles, paragraphs and whole passages from a variety of literary predecessors. However, allusions, appropriations and plagiarisms are only an the surface of postmodern fiction; beneath are other things, which are formally more interesting: parodistic intertextuality as a leitmotif central to a postmodern synthesis, challenging traditional literary concepts, such as author, genre and literary period an the one hand and originality and inventiveness an the other hand, fragmentation of literature and simultaneous presentation of literary and cinematic scenes and events from a variety of perspectives - also referred to as synchronic approach of telling a story, deconstruction and re-presentation of texts, and, ultimately, recognition of fiction as a world of its own, a... ... Read more

Product Description
Originally published in 1966 and now back in print after overa decade, Robert Coover's first novel instantly established hismastery. A coal-mine explosion in a small mid-American town claimsninety-seven lives. The only survivor, a lapsed Catholic given tomysterious visions, is adopted as a doomsday prophet by a group ofsmall-town mystics. "Exposed" by the town newspaper editor, the cultgains international notoriety and its ranks swell. As its membersgather on the Mount of Redemption to await the apocalypse, RobertCoover lays bare the madness of religious frenzy and the sometimesgreater madness of "normal" citizens. The Origin of the Brunists isvintage Coover -- comic, fearless, incisive, and brilliantlyexecuted. "A novel of intensity and conviction . . . a splendid talent. . . heir to Dreiser or Lewis." -- The New York Times Book Review; "Abreathtaking masterpiece on any level you approach it." -- Sol Yurick;"[The Origin of the Brunists] delivers the goods . . . [and] says what it has to say with rudeness, vigor, poetry and a headlong narrative momentum." -- The Plain Dealer (Cleveland). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

I NEVER RECEIVED THE BOOK
I emailed this seller twice and never received a reply and I never received the book.

Brilliant
Having read Coover's later books, I was rather skeptical if his earlier ones would be as good - and was pleasantly surprised. In fact, I would rate Coover's first novel as his best work: taut, earthy and powerful, it chronicles the rise and fall of a cult group called the Brunist (following the name of the so-called founder of the group, Giovanni Bruno) and how even a small, seemingly harmless and insignificant group of people can become potentially threatening to the larger community. But what I truly admire about this novel is the slow, subtle building of the narrative terror and hysteria. Coover is indeed a master of suspense and anti-climaxes, building up very tensed episodes to end them in slick, sometimes frustrating, bathos. But this only makes the novel more rewarding as the reader is never on solid ground. The prose continuously shifts and distabilises the reader's suppositions, making it almost impossible to stop reading (this is not an exaggeration). I highly recommend this electrifying novel and hope that it will reach a very wide audience.

Origin of the Brunists - B-grade people meet religion
Robert Coover's first novel, Origin of the Brunists, shows how he won so many awards for his poetry and short fiction.This is a book you won't forget. The book throws a strange group of definitely substandard people together, adds a set of bizarre events, shakes, and comes up with the most bizarre - but plausible - religion you have ever seen.Metaphysics, virtual Forteanism, downright stoicism, you name it, it gets thrown in and sort of works.The book is a study of the individuals, not the religion, but the religion serves to hold the people together. I haven't read this book in 15 years, and I'm aching to get another copy. If you like this book, try Coover's Universal Baseball Association - J. Henry Waugh, Prop., or a collection of his poetry and shortstuff, Pricksongs and Other Delights.At least one of these is in print. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

We all want to be a football star!
On Memorial Day 1937, at a union protest in Chicago, Gloomy Gus, an all-American gridiron hero, took his last catch and dash to the great touchline in the sky.How he came to be there and what his life represents is the subject of this story.Gus is the fulfillment of the American Dream.He was a very successful student at school.He is prodigious in bed with women.He is a talented actor, able to truly move the audience.But Gus is also an enigma.What is the mystery at the heart of his life?The story is narrated by Meyer, who knew Gus in his final days.Meyer is a Jew and a committed Communist.He works as a WPA sponsored sculptor, and he lives in his studio, which is in an old warehouse.The warehouse is rumored to have once been used as a liquor depot by Bugs Morgan's gang.The warehouse is in the Old Town district, and though Meyer has abandoned his Jewish heritage, he is surrounded by Jewish people.This is also the story of Meyer, who searches for the meanings in life so he can express them in his art.

We should try to do our very best!We should be as successful as possible!We should be admired by our contemporaries!We all know these catch cries, but what truly lies at the heart of the American Dream?This book is subversive and at times uproariously funny.I found myself laughing out loud on quite a few occasions, and this is certainly an achievement as I have no sense of humor.This is a philosophical book without in any way being a heavy academic tome.It is short even for a novel.It is very readable.But it beguilingly tempts the reader to think.

Gus certainly stands out as a memorable character and Meyer is skillfully drawn in such a way that he too lives.The style of writing is inner-monologue and this too is handled with skill.Meyer of course does not have all the answers and we are left to ponder the enigma of Gus on our own.The book takes two or three chapters to get going but once it does I think you will find it, as I did, very entertaining.

For its humor and for its spurring me to think I am happy to award this book five stars.
... Read more

Product Description
"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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Not an etude, but better
Taking a cue from Raymond Queneau's "Exercises in Style," and his own short stories featured in "Pricksongs and Descants," what would seem to be only an experiment develops into a real commentary on self-reference and post structuralism. Coover's treatment of the master-slave, dominant-submissive relationship serves to show the sado-masochistic exchange that exists in language when that language becomes "meta" language, or language about language. In this way all "criticism" is "criticized," begging the question: if meta language is sado-masochistic, what is meta-meta language?

The novel also works despite its subject matter-- if Coover had chosen some other setting, one could still delight in the way he weaves repitition into an ongoing cascade, each permutation the same and wholly different. Chaos theory as literary genre? Now who's being sado-masochistic?

Old fashioned spanking
I did not find this book particularly erotic, and it was plotless to me.

Clever but light-weight exercise
Coover's brief tale takes a paper-thin premise and runs it right into the ground--yes, it's yet another one of those self-indulgent, self-conscious post-modernist novels seldom enjoyed by anyone who isn't an undergraduate English major.It's a very short book that you will likely wish were shorter.But though the plot goes (by design) nowhere, and the book is stuffed with the kind of affected whimsy employed by writers far too impressed with their own intelligence, there is some witty, bouncy prose to enjoy and a few inspired comic moments.For what it is, it's well put together.

It may be lit'rary, but I cannot like it
I did not care for the endless repetition with minor variations. I did not care for the one-sidedness of it all--man gets off, maid is out in the cold. I did not care for the endless repetition with minor variations. Onehad the feeling someone was trying out a lit'rary exercise and it gotpublished by mistake. One had no sympathy for any one in the book, and onefelt one was overcharged.

A comic-erotic send-up of Nouvelle Vague fiction
This elegant, concisely written masturbatory farce, in which similar scenes of a maid's transgression and a master's punishment are played out over and over again,conflates the delicious repetitive nature of erotic fantasy with a send-upof "Last Year at Marienbad"-type fiction--to an effect that isboth erotically arousing and hilarious.Coover's greatest tour-de-forceand a tiny, but original, masterpiece. ... Read more

Product Description
This edition of Fiction International features fiction, nonfiction, reviews, and art from a variety of writers, poets and artists. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

one of the best collections ever
Coover is a master, and this is his masterpiece of short story writing.these reworkings and absurdist tales are so well written and funny that i've been obsessed with this book for over ten years (i may have some problems!).read it.

Exquisitely crafted metafictional short stories.
_Pricksongs and Descants_ (P&D) is the book which seems to have inspired Robert Coover's current book _The Awakening_ (please refer to http://search.nytimes.com/books/97/02/16/reviews/970216.gorra.html for a NY times review.)

In P&D the reader will find one of the best examples of metafiction ever created.Metafiction can loosely be characterized as those fictional works that force the reader to reevaluate the role of the story they are reading, the role of themselves as the reader, as well as the role orfunction of the storyline and the characters themselves. It allows the reader examine a story in terms of how it relates to it's genre and the elements associated with that literary classification. Metafiction enables the reader to contextualize (and decontextualize) the roles of a particular story and it's necessary elements.

Coover examines classic tales such as Sleeping Beauty, The Babysitter, and Jonah & the Whale, reinterpreting them into new forms.What are the possible tales within each tale?With each possibility, what becomes of the original tale?The reader is left to interpret and reinterpret, considering new relationships within or between the stories.Further, the reader his/herself may well question their role in reading each of these well crafted tales. Questions arise such as, "why do we keep retelling these stories?, what makes these stories good? ...why do I find my self compelled to keep reading this?"

In the metafictional tradition (as much as one might argue anything like a tradition might exist here) of Marquez, Calvino, Borges, Pynchon, Barth and Bartheleme, Coover has staked out his own territory.P&D is a wonderful read, and a great introduction to metafiction for those who haven't read anything like this before.

It's probably safe to say most people haven't read anything like this before.Which is one half the reason this book is so appealing:It's (probably) unlike anything you've ever read. The other appealing half of P&D is the effect reading it will have on you: it's exhilarating, thought provoking and inspiring.

I give P&D a 10 and highly recommend this collection of metafiction for both newcomers to this "new tradition" and those familiar with it as well.

--Pete Wendel ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

"Cat in the Hat for President"
This was originally published in the NEW AMERICAN REVIEW in 1968 as a long story entitled, "The Cat in the Hat for President."That was the year that Richard Nixon was first elected president and, according to a grand jury, the police rioted at the Democratic National Convention, where hippies and Yippies were protesting the Vietnam War--then at its height.Coover presents the Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat as the ideal presidential candidate because he can transform himself in an instant, appearing to be one thing before one audience, another before a different audience.The story is a brilliant satire of American politics that culminates in a hallucigenic view of American history that includes much of the sex and violence generally omitted from traditional histories.In the long run, the story celebrates the energy of creation and imagination, which is also the energy of destruction and devastation, that lies at the heart of American culture. I highly recommend it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not Free SF Reader
A Science Fiction Story

Everything cut off.


4.5 out of 5 ... Read more