The Public Burning Summary
Robert Coover

Everything you need to understand or teach The Public Burning by Robert Coover. Products may contain comprehensive summaries, analysis, notes, articles, essays, lesson plans and more. See below for details on what is included.

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The The Public Burning Study Pack contains about 237 pages of study material in 14 products, including:

The Public Burning Short Guide

Characters

Social Concerns

Techniques

Robert Coover Biography (2)

Robert (Lowell) Coover

11,215 words, approx. 38 pages

Even before the publication of The Public Burning (1977) made him famous, Robert Coover had already achieved a solid reputation, mostly among academics and college audiences, as one of the most origi... Read more

Robert (Lowell) Coover

8,483 words, approx. 29 pages

Robert Coover is one of America's most distinguished writers. His eminence is to be measured not by the size of his current readership, which remains select, but in terms of the technical resourcefuln... Read more

Essays & Analysis (11)

Critical Essay by Benjamin Demott

195 words, approx. 1 pages

Critical Essay by Benjamin Demott Richard Nixon's inward ruminations in [The Public Burning] offer a view of the then Vice President's adolescence, college experience, early years, and s... Read more

Critical Essay by Michael Mason

364 words, approx. 2 pages

Critical Essay by Michael Mason One thing [the sodomy episode in The Public Burning] brings out is how boringly enthralled and confused [Coover] is by sex, like many contemporary American novelists. T... Read more

Critical Essay by Tom Paulin

159 words, approx. 1 pages

Critical Essay by Tom Paulin Coover is an ambitious and gifted writer who has made the mistake of treating a distressing and important subject in a kind of surrealistic razzamatazz which rapidly becom... Read more

Larry McCaffery

10,044 words, approx. 34 pages

McCaffery is an American educator and critic. In the following excerpt, originally published in slightly different form in 1979, he examines Coover's portrayal of the human tendency to manufact... Read more

David C. Estes

7,563 words, approx. 26 pages

In the following essay, Estes examines Robert Coover's use of folk styles, particularly an unsentimental type of humor, in The Public Burning. Robert Coover has shown a continuing interest in t... Read more

Critical Review by Paul Quinn

1,617 words, approx. 6 pages

In the following review, Quinn praises the reissued edition of The Public Burning and offers a positive assessment of Ghost Town. Imagine a re-worked Mount Rushmore, sculpted in dynamite. Looming larg... Read more

Critical Essay by Frank L. Cioffi

6,767 words, approx. 23 pages

In the following essay, Cioffi explores the problematic representation of real and fictive worlds in The Public Burning, particularly as evident in the character of Richard Nixon, whose fictional pers... Read more

Critical Essay by Marcel Cornis-Pope

5,218 words, approx. 18 pages

In the following essay, Cornis-Pope discusses Coover's evocation of “otherness” and marginality in The Public Burning, especially as portrayed through the novel's composite... Read more

Interview by Robert Coover and Larry McCaffery

5,472 words, approx. 19 pages

In the following interview, Coover discusses the cultural impact of the Rosenberg trial and the creative process behind his writing of The Public Burning, as well as the potential of hypertext literat... Read more

Critical Essay by Richard Walsh

7,170 words, approx. 24 pages

In the following essay, Walsh examines Coover's reinterpretation of the Rosenberg trial and McCarthy-era hysteria in The Public Burning, arguing that the novel's carnivalesque satire... Read more

Critical Essay by Daniel E. Frick

5,020 words, approx. 17 pages

In the following essay, Frick explores Coover's preoccupation with Richard Nixon, as evidenced in The Public Burning. Frick contends that Nixon represents an authorial alter-ego through whom Co... Read more

The Public Burning SummaryRobert Coover

Study The Public Burning

The Public Burning Short Guide

Robert Coover Biography (2)

Essays & Analysis (11)

The Public Burning Summary
Robert Coover