Robert Coover Critical Essay | Critical Review by Brooke Horvath

SOURCE: A review of Pinocchio in Venice, in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 11, No. 3, Fall, 1991, pp. 267-68.

In the following, Horvath offers a favorable review of Pinocchio in Venice.

I'm afraid I know how we may soon hear Pinocchio in Venice described: as tour-de-force postmodern intertextuality and "superposition" amenable to Bakhtinian analysis, as an allegorical account of all of us puppets ravaged by childhood traumas in our yearning for selfhood, as … But let's leave all that for somebody else to say. What Pinocchio in Venice more simply is, amico mio, is a very adult (mature, that is, not pornographic, though often ribald and decidedly irreverent) appropriation of and sequel to The Adventures of Pinocchio, a book already rich in psychological and fabulistic (whoops!) implication (if you don't believe me, check out the Carlo Collodi entry in Children's Literature Review). As such, Pinocchio is perfect source...
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