Robert Coover Critical Essay | Critical Review by Robert L. McLaughlin

Critical Review by Robert L. McLaughlin

SOURCE: McLaughlin, Robert L. Review of Ghost Town, by Robert Coover. Review of Contemporary Fiction 19, no. 1 (spring 1999): 174.

In the following review, McLaughlin provides a positive assessment of Ghost Town, commenting that Coover “has hit his target with brilliant force.”

Throughout his career, Robert Coover has examined, parodied, and deconstructed the conventions and discourses of a plethora of literary genres. In Ghost Town he turns his attention to that most American of genres, the Western.

The novel follows a nameless drifter, familiar from any number of stories and movies, yet also vague, more a type than a character. He moves from adventure to adventure, or, more accurately, the adventures—all recognizable from the conventions of the Western—come to him: he makes a name for himself in a barroom brawl; he's tricked into a wedding ceremony with a brassy chanteuse, while he pines for the prim, unattainable schoolmarm; he's...
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