Robert Coover & the Generosity of the Page / Stéphane Vanderhaeghe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Vanderhaeghe, Stéphane.

Series:

Dalkey Archive scholarly series

Scholarly series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Coover, Robert--Criticism and interpretation.

Coover, Robert.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

608 pages ; 23 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Robert Coover and the Generosity of the Page

Place of Publication:

Champaign [Illinois] : Dalkey Archive Press, 2013.

Summary:

Robert Coover and the Generosity of the Page is an unconventional study of Robert Coover's work from his early masterpiece The Origin of the Brunists (1966) to the recent Noir (2010). Written in the second person, it offers a self-reflexive investigation into the ways in which Coover's stories often challenge the reader to resist the conventions of sense-making and even literary criticism. By portraying characters lost in surroundings they often fail to grasp, Coover's work playfully enacts a "(melo)drama of cognition" that mirrors the reader's own desire to interpret and make sense of texts in unequivocal ways. This tendency in Coover's writing is indicative of a larger refusal of the ready-made, of the once-and-for-all, or the authoritative, celebrating instead, in its generosity, the widening of possibilities-thus inevitably forcing the reader-critic to acknowledge the arbitrariness and artificiality of her responses. Book jacket.

Contents:

Variations (On Mediation) 37

Theme 37

Writing Thresholds 42

In-Between Texts-Debase & Erase 79

Hic!-Requiescet Corpus Tuum! (Textual Intercourse) 114

Extravagance 148

The Frame of the Game-Eventually 179

Variations (On Singularization) 217

Theme 217

"Character Counts!"-Singular Figures 223

American Fundamentals; Or, Historical Humbuggery 266

The Recommencements 302

The Real-the Virgin & the Child 341

Critique Critical 388

Variations (On Oblivion) 425

Theme 425

The End-At L(e)ast, Perhaps... (Or, "The Death of 'The Death of [...] "The Death of the Novel"'"?) 429

A Cathectic Brush with Eternity (Or, The Invention of the Novel) 457

Cumming soon! The Pornographic Aura 488

The Adventures of the Novel in the Age of Digital Simulation (the Loss & Profits thereof) 518

Brief Encounters-a Poet(h)ics of the Ephemeral 551.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781564788078

1564788075

OCLC:

783162559