So Sayeth The Ringmaster

Since the 1966 publication of The Origin of the Brunists (which won the William Faulkner Award for Best First Novel), renowned novelist, short story writer, and hypertext pioneer Robert Coover has been a one-man fictional tour-de-force, negotiating the elusive boundary between the real and the illusory with intrepid, unerring vision. Described by the New York Times as “one of America’s quirkiest writers, if by ‘quirky’ we mean an unwillingness to abide by ordinary fictional rules,” Coover makes fiction that examines darkly laughable elements of the human experience, drawing upon fairy tales, the history of baseball, religious cults, and perhaps most famously the presidency of Richard Nixon and the Rosenberg trials.

Writer Robert Coover for a three-day residency at UB this week

He has played many roles in his many, varied books: author, ringmaster, wizard behind the curtain. Coover’s work relishes mythmaking, with none of the avuncular simplicity that tends to accompany washed-up notions of the surreal that dominate the present moment. In his world, the imagination is perilous and heady, the origin of infinite creation, and therefore the source of all downfall—a place of fetish as much as fantasy. But what is clear above all is that Coover is not so much a master of illusion as its willing servant, lavishing its many secret nooks with an elegant hand and a cheeky slap. His work ethic is outrageous: 20 books in 40 years. He is always on the move.

Like his long list of well-told fictions such as Briar Rose and Pinocchio in Venice, Coover’s most recent novella, Stepmother, gives the infamous fairytale figure new life and a modern edge. Carefully peeling back layers of easy narratives that have conventionally portrayed stepmothers as self-centered and cruel, he instead reveals a powerful woman—trickster and temptress both—who is as loyal as she is full of equivocation; above all, a protector of the women who fill the text: frisky maidens who aren’t willing (or capable) of behaving as they should, even when their missteps get them into trouble they can see coming miles off. In this case, the stepmother’s efforts are wholly directed at saving a daughter who has been accused of castrating the king’s addle-headed son (a crime she did not commit). Though impressive and full of magical powers, the stepmother’s skills prove off the mark; her daughter is executed—drowned as a witch—in a particularly horrifying way. The reader knows it’s coming and wishes it otherwise. But both their fates were written long before the book began: The stepmother’s revenge will certainly be deadly, vile, and deserved in the face of a mother’s incalculable loss.

One of the most renowned American novelists writing today, Robert Coover will take part in a three-day residency at the University at Buffalo, March 25-27, under the auspices of a Morris Visiting Artist Grant. His visit—designed to highlight UB’s long tradition of fostering eminent avant-garde and postmodern fiction writers such as John Barth, Donald Barthelme, J.M. Coetzee, Raymond Federman, and Samuel R. Delany—is the signature fiction event of the Spring 2009 season of the Exhibit X Fiction & Prose Reading Series.

Coover’s residency will culminate with a fiction reading at the Albright-Knox Gallery on March 27 at 8pm. The event is free and open to the public.

For more information about Robert Coover’s visit, see the Exhibit X Web site: www.english.buffalo.edu/exhibitx.

—christina milletti