Cooverthon: "Pinocchio in Venice"

"Pinocchio in Venice" (1991) was the first Robert Coover novel I read. Having just finished it now for the third time -- and in the midst of a chronological re-reading of all his books -- I can best sum it up as...weird.

It's "weird" because it's an uneasy mixture of his already well-established styles, and because it comes perilously close to actually "saying something," which few of his books ever do. I'm not entirely sure WHAT (if anything) it is trying to say, but if you pressed a gun to my head and demanded a moral, I might just say: "Selfish prigs are bound to suffer, both outside (because people resent their priggishness) and inside (because prigs cannot achieve the high standards they set for themselves)."

Part of the book is -- simply -- a playful reinterpretation of the Pinocchio story. By claiming that all of Pinocchio's adventures (somehow) happened in Venice, Coover can push the well-known character (now an ancient and venerable scholar) through all of his old haunts, where his friends and enemies are far more complex than we'd ever thought. Coover takes the black-and-white morality of the original book and applies it gruesomely to the more "human" characters in Venice, and suddenly the Blue Fairy's moral lessons and Pinocchio's upstanding actions seem as sinister as...well, moral ideologues really ARE in real life, when their beliefs collide with flesh-and-blood.

The book's first third is in Coover's "languid phantasmagorical" style, wherein Pinocchio -- returned to wintry Venice to write a manifesto which summarizes all his moral precepts -- suffers a series of terrible indignities, either thanks to long-ago villains or his own personal failings (which might best be summarized as lust, ease of distraction, and an unyielding priggishness). This style also returns in the final third, which is more "frantic phantasmagorical," wherein Pinocchio's sins REALLY come out to get him. And...err...he gets baked into a donkey-shaped pizza.

It's the section between these two thirds that I've never really liked, mainly consisting of meditations on art and theatre, subjects which Coover has been dabbling in since "The Public Burning." It reads like an essay and a "guidebook to Venice," made even more tedious by the fact that the protagonist has been rendered totally immobile through most of it. Many of Robert Coovers novels seem to be about 15% too long, but while in other cases this tends to manifest as a protracted ending which tries to cover its tracks by being as ambiguous as possible, in "Pinocchio and Venice" the extraneous pages are all in the middle, and caused -- perhaps -- by Coover trying to say too much.

Then there's the ending, the final chapter which -- after 300 pages of playful allegory and abstract theorizing -- is an ACTUAL HONEST-TO-GOODNESS STORY. It contains exposition and straight-forward revelation. It's beautiful and moody and strange, yes, but it also adds to the book's confusion as a whole: if there was never supposed to be a point, why did it end like that? If there WAS supposed to be a point...what was it?

At its best, "Pinocchio in Venice" is an adventure story, overlaying a deconstruction of the original children's book, and also combining the unrealistic morality of the children's book with the facts of the real world. At its worst it's...well, an awkward partnering of those "best" elements with dense art criticism interspersed with repetitive action sequences. I wouldn't consider it to be an essential Robert Coover book, necessarily, but it's an interesting experiment nonetheless (and darn fun when it works!)

Greg Allman in Kitchener

I escorted my parents to see Greg Allman at the Kitchener Blues Festival on Thursday. I have almost no recollection of Allman from my youth (other than wondering why there was an enormous spherical blob of jello on the back of his fruit truck) but I'm always intrigued by ace musicianship. Also I figured I could keep my folks from whooping it up too much, which in fact wouldn't happen, so I was making a joke there.

My immediate perception: blues is a little boring in a large venue, especially when performed in a manner that our town paper called "workmanlike." It seemed like every single song followed the same exact formula: a vocal introduction, followed by a piano solo, then either a sax or a guitar solo, and then a refrain of the vocal for the big finish. The musicians were amazing, as expected, but if there is such a thing as "too many piano solos" then I witnessed it several times over.

There was little variation. There was precious little soul. Even Allman's Hammond B3 sounded "workmanlike," having been played with much more verve and style by opening band "Aphrodite's Bodice."

I'm not sure if anybody else felt this way. There was certainly a lot of whooping and cheering going on, though mostly by Kitchener's life-long all-day porch-party brigade. We sat behind the cutest middle-aged German couple you've ever seen: both of them portly and homely, and when Allman sang "Melissa," the woman put her head on her husband's hamhock shoulder and gently held his hand. So that was sweet.

Maybe it's just a "blues thing." I felt that the spectacle would have been much better in a more intimate venue. It was a rush to see such talented guys put on a show, even if I still don't understand why there was a blob of jello on that album cover way-back-when.

Sow Geraniums and Reap Orchids

My impromptu "Weirdest Metaphor" award goes to Madame Nina's geranium cream (New Yorker, November 22, 1930), which confuses a debutante's face with...a map of Manhattan. Really.

When going to bed, she dips a slim finger in the fat glass jar and rubs contents across the map of Manhattan in the mirror, paying particular attention to the bright lights that so easily run to dark circles on the morning after. Incipient crosstown lines are refused police protection. General traffic conditions are improved. And the Great White Way gets a gentle bleach all over.

In the morning, she uses the same specific as a foundation for make-up that looks more natural than little sister's first blush. Rouge--if she follows the revived vogue for it--can never be mistaken for a stop-signal. Powder doesn't skid. And the first aid work begun for the entire facial countryside goes on all day.

 Now you know how to flatter a dame: "Darling, your face...it's like the street map of a huge metropolitan area. Your nostrils: the north and south subway lines. That freckle: city hall..."

Just Revealed! Our New Model

Okay, sure, in the brains of horny consumers you MIGHT find a link between CARS and sex. But MODEMS?

I have previously mentioned the trashy nature of early British computer magazines. This advertisement is from a publication which positioned itself as more respectable than the rest ("Your Spectrum," January 1984), but I guess you can't pick your advertisers. And maybe there IS something sexy about modems that I've never noticed before...it's an acoustic coupler, after all.

Take the Rank Out of Drank

Advertising came into its own during the '20s, having learned that nothing sells a product like fear. I imagine executives sitting around in a plush highrise meeting room somewhere, staring at each other with bug-eyes, saying "How can we scare people into buying all this CRAP?"

Social anxiety always helps. From the November 22, 1930 New Yorker I bring you "The Savoy Cocktail Book," which you'd better buy if you don't want your parties to suck.

Of course, you have a bar in your pent-house, but even that does not insure social success!

Do you find that guests are glad to put their foot on the rail the first time, but seldom return? Do you feel like the girl who was often a bridesmaid but never a bride?

Of course, you have all your liquor analyzed, so you can't blame your bootlegger.

Perhaps the trouble is with you. Perhaps it's the way you mix the cocktails that bars you from the popularity you feel that you deserve.

"Whew!" Said a bunch of advertising executives. "That's done! Now how can we make them frightened of RADIOS..."

Incidentally, "The Savoy Cocktail Book" was "compiled and amplified" by Harry Craddock of London's Savoy bar. As his biography at the bottom of the advertisement says, he was "the man who took the rank out of drank."

Three Arrivals, Always in the Morning (Part Two)

The shopping mall is only open because winter shelters require arbitrary schedules. Now, before 9am, it entertains the elderly and the workers themselves. Bored security guards fold their arms over their windbreakers and lean on empty kiosks, talking about hockey. There are beautiful young women everywhere, dressed immaculately, with elaborate hairdos and high-heeled footwear. Their faces are closed and inwardly-turned, they carry bagged breakfasts in as-yet functional hands.

Only the lunch ladies are eternal, always halfway between exhaustion and crisis, constantly patrolling the tables in this cavern which is spotless, sad, echoing, and almost empty.

I barely exist here. The lights serve no purpose but to guide the labour and to keep the elderly from falling down. The lights are not meant for me, they're brilliant point-of-purchase spotlights and soft pink gels that stupidly reach out to the very people who work there. The music sounds strange in a maze of caverns without enough moving bodies, like it's pushing hard to enter the world. No patrons, just the employees, who don't know each other well enough. They walk around, killing time, still wearing their winter jackets, from store to coffee shop and back again.

But for the elderly, this is their adult education center. They are friendly and familiar with each other. At tables they sit side-by-side, their eyelines parallel in the manner of old married couples who know each other so well. They've brought newspapers and they feel safe leaving their belongings behind during their frequent trips to the bathroom. They support each other and they have nothing to steal except porkpie hats and keyrings and pictures of the grandchildren that are too small for blunt fingers to handle.

A painted woman on the window has vibrant betty-bangs and she's promising to reveal a secret. Even at the best of times that secret would be elusive, but now her presence is taunting and irritating, signaling "Come in!" beside a door that's been locked all night.

What Does It Mean?

I think this picture is very funny. At the very least it makes a stoic ritual look as ridiculous as it probably is.

Caption contest! No prize! What's up with these guys?

Bells Bring Birds and Memories

Far off to my right, churchbells ring an epiphany of dubious quality. God says, "This is it, Creation! You are on to something!" It is no louder than the children squealing in the splashpark or the overworked cicadas, but the bells grab my attention because they are musical and they are novel.

Called by the bells and looking for the origin, a chorus line of geese begin their long slow march across the grass. They are not deterred by anything except for the Korean woman who wants her husband to stand with them for a photograph. It is impossible to coordinate: he approaches, they veer away, each goose turning diagonal for a moment to yield their passage. Thwarted, the Korean man attempts to corral ducks instead, and then he gives up and walks away.

The heat and the bells blur yesterday into today: there's nobody here to tell us about slaughter. No man offers cures for laryngitis as suffered by sloe-eyed and apparently vacant waitresses. Tourists do not gasp for the last drop of lemon water from an antique glass. Yesterday continues to intrude: the arts are overpriced, the elderly move slowly, papa-goose grunts his dissatisfaction and the children are making animal noises. The Goose Girl isn't here...I'm 42 days late.

The churchbells stop and are replaced by the sound of a dump-truck in reverse.

Throb of Tom-Tom Cats!

Here's a wonderful advertisement from Womrath's bookstore, intended to convince us that READING about stuff is more exciting that actually EXPERIENCING it. They make a strong case for the joy of delightful puns and alliteration, at least...

Ankles aweigh! All abored the SS. VAN DINE...sailing to darkest Boop-a-Doop...land of mystery and philovances. Star-drenched daze. Sunkist knights. Drone of dramaturgic dromedaries...drowse of drastic dhuhinkies. Lots of good fellahs. Oil-burning cannibals...ready to take pot-luck with missionaries. Pooh yourself! More fun to stay home...

The advertisement mentions fiction, travel, biography, and history, so I suppose the dense wordplay is meant to evoke all those things: the mystery books of Philo Vance, the "darkest Africa" travel literature, Hollywood biographies, and...whatever "dhuhinkies" are.

(The New Yorker, November 15, 1930)

Quick Acknowledgement of a Cooverthon

For the past six weeks or so I have been engaged in a Cooverthon...that is, I've been re-reading all of Robert Coover's books* in chronological order in an attempt to get a sense of his development and his themes.

Doing this same thing with John Barth a few years ago pretty much destroyed my enjoyment of his work, so I'm aware that this is a dangerous and stupid thing to repeat with another of my favourite authors. One reason I'm doing this is to prove to myself that I didn't sell John Barth short; that other authors CAN stand up to such a rigorous and exhausting re-reading without becoming repetitive.

In some ways, Coover has an edge on Barth because his fiction is so unabashedly repetitive to begin with. My impression after years of fandom has been that -- following "The Public Burning" -- Coover used the same structure over and over again in all subsequent books: a protagonist is stuck inside a nightmarish (and usually genre-specific) environment from which he cannot escape, and as the book progresses the environment becomes increasingly horrifying.

That assumption was incorrect. Coover has been dabbling with that "nightmare" structure since his 1969 collection "Pricksongs & Descants," and while the structure DOES become a regular background feature of most of his subsequent novels, those novels ALSO contain many other novel elements: distinctive characters, bizarre authorial quirks, new types of focus.

We'll see if that impression continues to hold as I make my way through "Pinocchio in Venice" (1991) for the third time. Halfway through "Gerald's Party" (1986) my enthusiasm flagged a bit -- particularly discouraging because it has always been and still remains my favourite Coover novel by far -- but that's to be expected: most of Coovers books are INTENDED to exhaust you ("Gerald's Party" more than most).

I wish I'd rigorously blogged the earlier novels while I was reading them (and I wish I could guarantee that I'll continue to blog them as they come), but here are some scattered impressions:

• Coover has dabbled occasionally with theatre, but his plays are underwhelming. Having just read "A Theological Position" (1972) for the first time, my belief that Coover is not a great playwright is further reinforced.
• The real joy of "The Public Burning" (1977) is Coover's characterization of Richard Nixon: insecure, self-centered, nervous, awkwardly outgoing. Much of the book is just Richard Nixon endlessly pontificating in his head, and this is some of Coover's best writing. He's masterful at distinctive and consistent characterization (see "Gerald's Party" for the extremes of this), and it's easy to lose sight of that with all the experimental flim-flammery going on.
• On the other side of this, however, is "Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears" (1987), whose Jewish socialist sculptor is Coover's biggest failure: he never comes to life.
• "You Must Remember This" (the concluding short story in his "A Night at the Movies" collection) is, I think, his crown jewel. Although "The Babysitter" and "The Magic Poker" tend to be his most anthologized stories (probably because they're early works and -- more importantly -- do not have extended scenes of outrageously graphic sex), "You Must Remember This" sums up everything Coover does well. A close second is "Charlie in the House of Rue," also in the same collection. If you only read one Coover short story, pick one of those.

And now, a list of common Robert Coover themes.

• Women with big hips and butts. This obsession tends to taper off eventually, but it begins right there in 1966 with the introduction of the wonderful nurse "Happy Bottom."
• Cartoon/vaudeville mime routines. This again is more a feature of his early work, and again begins with "Happy Bottom."
• Bawdy songs.
• Vicious, fickle audiences.
• The protagonist is trapped inside an environment which he cannot escape, and the environment degrades over time. The landscape is usually disconnected -- doors never lead to predictable places -- and often chronology is confused as well.
• As a continuation of the nightmare environment, the protagonist usually suffers most when he is feeling proud or confident.
• In addition, the protagonist is constantly being punished for failing to follow rules, through no conscious fault of his own.
• Sometimes the environment and protagonist are part of an obvious genre.
• A large cast of couples who screw around with each other.
• Scatology. People tend to poop their pants.
• Puns.
• Extremely dense, impenetrable, high-brow concepts introduced in tiny snippets within the most banal of events, with the result that the concepts themselves seem banal. This starts happening during Coover's middle period.
• Sex with strangers.

* ...with the exception of independently-published pieces, which are difficult and expensive to find.