Coover Interview on KCRW
There is a superb interview of Robert Coover available in RealAudio from KCRW’s Bookworm program. The first part of a two part interview was broadcast December 8th, and the other half will be broadcast on the 15th. The first part of the wide-ranging interview provides an overview of Coover’s career and some insights into his process, themes, methods and interest in formal innovation. There are some gems in the interview, such as the fact that Coover finished writing The Public Burning, his novel about the Rosenberg execuations and Nixon, in the British Library while sitting on the same hard wooden benches where Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto.
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I just finished reading John’s Wife the other day, a book that I’ve owned & been meaning to read for eight years. Rod Coover told me that it was his favorite of his father’s books, and I can see why. It’s quite a performance. A grotesque, contemproary fairy-tale about a small Midwestern town featuring a cast of dozens, the novel shifts its focalizing perspective from paragraph to paragraph. It is a bit dizzying and first, but gradually the characters come into focus – with the exception of John’s Wife, the obscure object of desire for the townsfolk. She literally begins to disappear, and things turn really twisted. Anyway, I’m curious whether or not Coover talks about this book at all, which was overlooked by critics. It reminds me in many ways of DFW’s Infinte Jest, which came out around the same time and completely overshadowed John’s Wife in terms of press coverage.