Tag: Robert Coover
‘The Frog Prince’ by Robert Coover
The Frog Prince by Robert Coover, 2014 Continue reading
February 2020 favorites
February 2020
The February stories ordered solely on my personal tastes.
- ‘Lunch At The Loyola Arms’ by Stuart Dybek
- ‘The Most Girl Part Of You’ by Amy Hempel
- ‘The Proxy Marriage’ by Maile Meloy
- ‘Snow’ by Ann Beattie
- ‘The Metal Bowl’ by Miranda July
- ‘A Talking Cure’ by Justin Taylor
- ‘Turgor’ by Mary Gaitskill
- ‘The Sock’ by Lydia Davis
- ‘The Tree Of Knowledge’ by Henry James
- ‘Life After High School’ by Joyce Carol Oates
- ‘My Sister’s Marriage’ by Cynthia Marshall Rich
- ‘Reading Lessons’ by Edwidge Danticat
- ‘Northeast Regional’ by Emma Cline
- ‘Show Don’t Tell’ by Curtis Sittenfeld
- ‘The Hanging Of The Schoolmarm’ by Robert Coover
As always, join the conversation in the comments section below, on SSMT Facebook or on Twitter @ShortStoryMT.
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‘The Hanging Of The Schoolmarm’ by Robert Coover
The Hanging Of The Schoolmarm by Robert Coover, 2016 Continue reading
June 2019 favorites
June 2019
The June stories ordered solely on my personal tastes.
- ‘The Surrogate’ by Tessa Hadley
- ‘The Card Trick’ by Tessa Hadley
- ‘Silk Brocade’ by Tessa Hadley
- ‘A Bundle Of Letters’ by Henry James
- ‘Cecilia Awakened’ by Tessa Hadley
- ‘The Sound Of Summer Running’ by Ray Bradbury
- ‘The Long QT’ by Hilary Mantel
- ‘Paste’ by Henry James
- ‘Clever Girl’ by Tessa Hadley
- ‘Agatha’ by John O’Hara
- ‘Greville Fane’ by Henry James
- ‘One Saturday Morning’ by Tessa Hadley
- ‘Second-Hand Man’ by Rita Dove
- ‘The Special Type’ by Henry James
- ‘Miss Gunton From Poughkeepsie’ by Henry James
- ‘Principal Alpaca’ by Richard Leise
- ‘Reading The Paper’ by Ron Carlson
- ‘Invasion Of The Martians’ by Robert Coover
As always, join the conversation in the comments section below, on SSMT Facebook or on Twitter @ShortStoryMT.
Subscribe to the Short Story Magic Tricks Monthly Newsletter to get the latest short story news, contests and fun.
‘Invasion Of The Martians’ by Robert Coover
Invasion Of The Martians by Robert Coover, 2016 Continue reading
November 2014 favorites
November 2014
The November stories ordered solely on my personal tastes.
- ‘Chickamauga’ by Ambrose Bierce
- ‘Paul’s Case’ by Willa Cather
- ‘The Veldt’ by Ray Bradbury
- ‘The Story Of An Hour’ by Kate Chopin
- ‘Of This Time, Of That Place’ by Lionel Trilling
- ‘The Nose’ by Nikolai Gogol
- ‘A White Heron’ by Sarah Orne Jewett
- ‘A Circle In The Fire’ by Flannery O’Connor
- ‘Going For A Beer’ by Robert Coover
- ‘Two Thanksgiving Gentlemen’ by O. Henry
- ‘Dawn Of Remembered Spring’ by Jesse Stuart
- ‘The Middle Years’ by Henry James
- ‘The Catbird Seat’ by James Thurber
- ‘The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story’ by Joel Chandler Harris
- ‘The Peach Stone’ by Paul Horgan
- ‘Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ by Jorge Luis Borges
- ‘An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving’ by Louisa May Alcott
- ‘Who Lived And Died Believing’ by Nancy Hale
- ‘The Devil And Tom Walker’ by Washington Irving
- ‘The Facts Concerning The Recent Carnival Of Crime In Connecticut’ by Mark Twain
‘Going For A Beer’ by Robert Coover
Going For A Beer by Robert Coover, 2011
The magic trick:
Smashing a lifetime into a single paragraph
This is Robert Coover, so we shouldn’t expect the normal rules of the space-time continuum to apply. Still, he never fails to jolt with his uncanny ability to distort chronology and reality.
In “Going For A Beer,” we get the story of a man’s life, from dating to marriage to parenthood to death. The quick-firing plot points, often joined as non-sequiturs, recreate the jumble of memories one finds later in life, looking back (especially where alcohol is involved). The protagonist forgets crucial information but remembers comparatively pointless details, such as the many carnival toys his date has won. It’s disjointed, funny, sad, and occasionally off-putting. So… basically just like life. And that’s quite a trick on Coover’s part.
The selection:
During the ceremony, they both carry Kewpie dolls that probably have some barely hidden significance, and indeed do. The child she bears him, his or another’s, reminds him, as if he needed reminding, that time is fast moving on. He has responsibilities now and he decides to check whether he still has the job that he had when he first met her. He does. His absence, if he has been absent, is not remarked on, but he is not congratulated on his marriage, either, no doubt because—it comes back to him now—before he met his wife he was engaged to one of his colleagues and their co-workers had already thrown them an engagement party, so they must resent the money they spent on gifts.
July 2014 favorites
July 2014
The July stories ordered solely on my personal tastes.
1. ‘Hot Ice’ by Stuart Dybek
2. ‘The Babysitter’ by Robert Coover
3. ‘Jeeves And The Impending Doom’ by P.G. Wodehouse
4. ‘A Solo Song: For Doc’ by James Alan McPherson
5. ‘City Boy’ by Leonard Michaels
6. ‘You’re Ugly, Too’ by Lorrie Moore
7. ‘The Flats Road’ by Alice Munro
8. ‘Greasy Lake’ by T. Coraghessan Boyle
9. ‘Train’ by Joy Williams
10. ‘Testimony Of Pilot’ by Barry Hannah
11. ‘The Joy Luck Club’ by Amy Tan
12. ‘Liars In Love’ by Richard Yates
13. ‘How To Date A Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, Or Halfie)’ by Junot Diaz
14. ‘A Poetics For Bullies’ by Stanley Elkin
15. ‘Greenwich Time’ by Ann Beattie
16. ‘Pretty Ice’ by Mary Robison
17. ‘Lechery’ by Jayne Anne Phillips
18. ‘Here Come The Maples’ by John Updike
19. ‘Territory’ by David Leavitt
20. ‘Bridging’ by Max Apple
21. ‘The Circling Hand’ by Jamaica Kincaid
22. ‘Are These Actual Miles?’ by Raymond Carver
23. ‘The Other Wife’ by Colette
24. ‘A.V. Laider’ by Max Beerbohm
25. ‘White Rat’ by Gayl Jones
26. ‘Search Through The Streets Of The City’ by Irwin Shaw
27. ‘The Dead Man’ by Horacio Quiroga
28. ‘A Life In The Day Of A Writer’ by Tess Slesinger
29. ‘In The Heart Of The Heart Of The Country’ by William Gass
30. ‘The Indian Uprising’ by Donald Barthelme
31. ‘The Facts Of Life’ by Somerset Maugham
‘The Babysitter’ by Robert Coover
The Babysitter by Robert Coover, 1969
The magic trick:
Presenting the real and the imagined without telling the reader which is which
Robert Coover doesn’t have time for your boring, old straight-line stories. Sure, he could tell you what happened in the order that it happened. But why bother when he can make an even more powerful point by scattering events – both real and imagined – throughout the text with no adherence to chronology?
“The Babysitter” is separated into different chunks, each from a different character’s point of view. The real kicker: Coover oh-so-cleverly uses pronouns in place of names, so it often is not clear from whose point of view we are reading. Very quickly, the reader becomes aware that some of these chunks – maybe most of these chunks – detail events that are only imagined. It all becomes chaotic and cacophonous in the best possible way.
This is not to say the story fails to build tension and drama and danger. Even if the reader doesn’t know which of these sections is really happening, the mere possibility that any could be reality causes anxiety enough.
The swapping of points of view and pronouns also further emphasizes the sense of sexuality. There is a massive sense of aggressive sex, repressed sex, obsessive sex. And since we don’t know which character is imagining which sexual scenario, it begins to just feel like the whole world – adults, adolescents and children alike – is lost in paranoid delusions of sexual tension. Which of course is the whole point. And that’s quite a trick on Coover’s part.
The selection:
She’s watching television. All alone. It seems like a good time to go in. Just remember: really, no matter what she says, she wants it. They’re standing in the bushes, trying to get up the nerve. “We’ll tell her to be good,” Mark whispers, “and if she’s not good, we’ll spank her.” Jack giggles softly, but his knees are weak. She stands. They freeze. She looks right at them. “She can’t see us,” Mark whispers tensely. “Is she coming out?”“No,” says Mark, “She’s going into – that must be the bathroom!” Jack takes a deep breath, his heart pounding. “Hey, is there a window back there?” Mark asks.
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