COOVER, Robert (Lowell)

(1932-)

   US writer who has established a considerable reputation with his novels, in which FABULATION and political scatology mix fruitfully. His work might be seen to represent a POSTMODERNIST intensification of the same milieu excoriated by Richard CONDON. The Origin of the Brunists (1965) subverts the millennial fantasy tropes at its heart. The Universal Baseball Association Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (1968) also denatures its FANTASY premise, the eponymous dreamer's creation of a baseball world to be safe in. The Public Burning (1977) can be read as an alternate history (ALTERNATE WORLDS) of the early 1950s, taking in the death of the Rosenbergs and examining Richard Nixon - a figure RC also anatomized in Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears? (1987). A Night at the Movies, or You Must Remember This (1987) is a Hollywood fantasia. In Pinocchio in Venice (1991) the Pinocchio of human flesh, slowly reverting to wood in his old age, returns to his origins. Pricksongs and Descants (coll 1969) contains some stories of sf interest.

   JC

   Other works: Aesop's Forest (1986 chap dos); A Political Fable (1968 New American Review as "The Cat in the Hat for President"; rev 1980 chap).