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...
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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...
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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 ...
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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. ...
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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 beco...
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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...
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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 i...
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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 l...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Robert (Lowell) Coover
Critical Essay by Benjamin Demott
