Gerald's Party

--it would look something like the shindig being thrown in Robert Coovers *Geralds Party.* Think Sartres *No Exit* but with a lot more guests, a lot more sex, and a lot more dead folks. Youre not reading this book for plot, anymore than you'd read Samuel Beckett for plot, so don't expect anything to really `happen' in the conventional sense. Nor should you expect anything to be resolved--or even make `sense.' In other words, this novel is a lot like life, only without all the humanizing illusions that ordinarily shield us from what lies just beneath. As such, Coover throws a party that is largely a battlefield of warring lusts, jealousies, rages, and largely futile yearnings after transcendence--a party that reveals the radically anti-social beneath the social conventions that draw us together. Having said that, this is an extremely funny text, a comedy, if you will, in the classical sense of that term, in the Dantesque sense, surely...this being a party that could easily be taking place in Hell, if Hell were the home of a typically married couple in suburbia, which, of course, it all too often is. Language, too, is an important part of this novel--the sensual labyrinth of expression that words, as words, can take and Coover is a master at weaving words into a reality all their own. He has, in fact, `reinvented' the world in his unique and distinctive style which is an accomplishment only the very best writers of any generation achieve. Coover is, indeed, one of the very best, and *Geralds Party* may be his finest book.

"Gerald's Party" depicts a single evening in the life of Gerry, a married man who has opened his home to a flood of strange friends, and describes the chaotic string of strange events which occur. The book is written in real time, its 300 pages comprising a single narrative, unbroken by chapters, from the party's beginning to its end. Gerry is the narrator, proceeding from event to event, unable to control anything, and hardly able to understand anything, including himself.The book is experimental, but does have a plot, concerning a murder-mystery at Gerry's party of strange guests. The story is told in the tradition of surrealists, however, and not a straightforward narrative. Once the reader settles into understanding how the story works, it becomes a joyful romp through mad times.The theme of the book is very simple: life is a major mess, and it just keeps going. People eat and drink, sleep and sex, live and die, digest and waste, kill and protect, mate monogamously and share polyamorally, control themselves and let themselves go, have children and have fun, grow up and act childish, dirty and clean, dress and undress, lie and speak true, think scientifically and think artistically, fantasize and live pragmatically, search for philosophical meaning and live hedonistically for today. And they never stop! Robert Coover pushes all the buttons in the psyche of the human animal, as if writing a reference manual for an extraterrestrial, telling it: "Here's humanity. Welcome to it!"This book is experimental and surreal, but arguably more accessible than Beckett, and certainly more earthy and explicit. (This is so Coover can push all your buttons.) It uses an interesting form of dialog occasionally: two or three different conversations interweave their lines, making it a joyful challenge to follow along, and creating interesting intersections at times. There are two dozen characters, all with their own independent dynamic, and Coover mixes them with entertaining effect. Some are consistent, such as the wife, the son, the mother-in-law, and others, who exercise their own unique idiosyncracies steadily throughout the book, like pschological points of reference interweaving with the other characters.This book is very well done. I cannot praise it highly enough. Coover deserves immense credit for pulling it all off. Once the reader understands the story is meant to be absurd, not literal, it becomes great fun, very vivid, and memorable. Coover is extremely imaginative, and "Gerald's Party" is a fantastic riot.

Here is a book that is apparently about decadence. All of the characters are in some way connected to the theater community and artifice is therefore their business. There is a great deal of confusion between what is real and what is feigned, imagined, projected or merely confusing. The reader sees everything through the eyes and mind of the eponymous party host. Gerald is a womanizer and a hopeless relativist. For most of the evening he tries to understand and rationalize increasingly outrageous behavior on the part of his party guests and the police who come to investigate the murder of one his party guests.Yes, this is a murder mystery, or at least it is a parody of one. The number of dead bodies that turn up is never certain, but there at least four. The first body (and the only murder that the police investigate) is that of Ros, a bad actress and a loose woman who is much beloved by everyone at the party, male and female. She is an innocent, a creature of pure impulse and she is beautiful. But as the evening progresses you realize that no one really knows her and that she is perhaps unknowable. At some point Coover suggests that she is the personification of Truth; the police detective reveals that Ros looks exactly like a mysterious woman who he has met only in his dreams and who his therapist has told him symbolizes Truth.Coover uses people's memories and ritual use of the body of Ros to show that this community (apparently representing all of us) has a very shakey relationship with the Truth. Ros is all things to all people. Some party guests initially keen hysterically over her loss, while others simply shake their heads and pretend to have seen it coming. In the course of the evening, however, she is reduced to a memory and her body to a stage prop and a symbol.Coover repeatedly juxtaposes the mundane with the horrifying. Policemen eat sandwiches while they are beating recalcitrant guests. Gerald's wife shows off the sewing room to the new neighbors while he is lying on the floor of the same room unable to remove his penis from a teenager that he has just (accidentally) deflowered. In order to get better light on the shot a cameraman asks Gerald to move to one side while he is comforting his best friend, who as been shot in the heart by the police.This is a hilarious and depressing book. If you don't have a strong stomach for irony or don't think that debauchery is funny, then it probably isn't for you. If you enjoy being told that the bourgeoise are going (have gone) to hell in a handbasket, then read with pleasure.

This was my third Coover novel. I had read "Origin of the Brunists" and "A Night at the Movies" a few years ago. "Gerald's Party" is an account of a party gone wildly out of control in every way possible. The story climaxes with an impropmtu and highly metaphorical theatre production in Gerald's living room, mind you, involving all the (surviving) characters (clothed and unclothed) that summaraizes the whole concept of the book. How many parties have you been to like that?! The dialogue is from people all over the house (in whatever room Gerald is in at the time), all mixed in with, and at the same time as his own conversations. The prose gets hazier as the night goes on and the multiple-conversation thing does too but it's all in the name of an accurate party aesthetic. It's difficult to latch onto at first but well worth it. Up there with Barth's "Lost in the Funhouse" as an important and tricky but really fun fiction work about fiction. Sit back and enjoy it like I did, but don't get fooled. Sweet vermouth on the rocks is never a good idea. I don't care who's drinking it or what they look like.

I have long admired Robert Coover's work and GERALD'S PARTY is among my very favorite novels. This is a party like no other you've attended, unless you count the ones where you were in an intoxicated haze most of the time, the ones where you awakened the following morning to find Randy Newman's "Mama Told Me Not to Come" playing over and over in your head. Delicious. One word of warning: Watch your step in the back yard!