Robert Lowell Coover was born on February 4, 1932, and passed away on October 5, 2024. He was an American novelist and short story writer. He also served as a retired professor in Literary Arts at Brown University, known as the T. B. Stowell Professor Emeritus. Coover is often recognized for writing stories that use fabulation and metafiction. He supported the development of electronic literature and helped start the Electronic Literature Organization.

Background

Coover was born in Charles City, Iowa. He studied at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and earned his B.A. in Slavic Studies from Indiana University Bloomington in 1953. He then worked in the United States Navy from 1953 to 1957 and became a lieutenant. In 1965, he received an M.A. in General Studies in the Humanities from the University of Chicago. In 1968, he signed a pledge called the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" to show he disagreed with the Vietnam War by promising not to pay taxes. He taught at many universities as a teacher or writer in residence. He worked at Brown University from 1981 to 2012.

Literary career

Coover's first novel, The Origin of the Brunists, tells the story of a man who is the only survivor of a mine disaster. He starts a religious group. His second book, The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., explores the idea of a creator. The main character, J. Henry Waugh, is a quiet and lonely accountant who invents a baseball game. In this game, dice rolls decide each play, and he imagines players to match the outcomes.

In 1969, Coover published a short story collection titled Pricksongs & Descants. One of its most famous stories, "The Babysitter," was later adapted into a 1995 movie with the same name, directed by Guy Ferland.

Coover's most well-known work, The Public Burning, examines the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg using a style called magic realism. Half of the book focuses on Uncle Sam, a mythic hero from tall tales, who faces a character named Phantom, representing international Communism. The other chapters describe Richard Nixon's attempts to stage the Rosenberg execution as a public event in Times Square. As reviewer Thomas R. Edwards wrote in The New York Times, "Astonishingly, Nixon is the most interesting and sympathetic character in the story."

Coover's 1982 novella Spanking the Maid was one of his favorites. When asked, "Which of your books will get you into heaven?" Coover joked, "Spanking the Maid. God's deep into S&M." A later novella, Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears (1987), presents an alternate version of Nixon who is equally devoted to football and sex as he was to political success. The story collection A Night at the Movies includes the story "You Must Remember This," which describes what Rick and Ilsa did in Casablanca when the camera was not watching them. Another work, Pinocchio in Venice, returns to themes from myths.

In 1987, Coover won the Rea Award for the Short Story. In 2021, he collaborated with Art Spiegelman to release Street Cop.

Electronic literature

Coover supported early electronic literature and was one of the founders of the Electronic Literature Organization. He taught electronic literature at Brown University and organized events, such as the Technology Platforms for 21st Century Literature (TP21CL), which took place at Brown in 1999. In 1992, he published an essay titled "The End of Books" in The New York Times, introducing the public to this new genre for the first time. The essay, now well-known, caused a stir in the literary world and stated that the novel might soon disappear. Many scholars of electronic literature reference the essay, including J. Yellowlees Douglas, who used its title in her book, The End of Books–Or Books Without End? Reading Interactive Narratives. In 1993, Coover published another essay in The New York Times about electronic literature, titled "Hyperfiction: Novels for the Computer."

Coover created the Master of Fine Arts program in Digital Language Arts at Brown University. He also helped bring several writers of electronic literature to the university, including John Cayley, Talan Memmott, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, William Gillespie, and Samantha Gorman. Talan Memmott became Brown University's first graduate fellow in electronic writing.

Personal life and death

Coover's wife was the well-known needlepoint artist Pilar Sans Coover. They had three children, including Sara Caldwell.

Coover passed away on October 5, 2024, at the age of 92 in a care home located in Warwick, England.