The Public Burning

The sheer brilliance of 'The Public Burning' cannot be understated. From the virtuousity of the writing to the subtle intelligence of its criticisms, this book still stands as a classic. Importantly, this novel is not merely an unfavourable take on the culture of the cold war but is a broader interrogation of the ways in which history folds into fantasy in American life, how law becomes theatre, war becomes spectacle, politics an electrocution. Its cartoonish aspects are not simply Coover's attempt to indict the era through mockery nor an invitation to stand over people in the past. Instead, they are a representation of a culture that can only ever come to terms with itself through cartoons, a nation that needs its enemies animated, its champions superheroic, its values decomplicated in dusty bromides and staid clichés. Most intriguing perhaps is the treatment of Eisenhower: in Coover's world, an example of how even the most moderate and benign public figures are entangled in the extremities of violence and cynicism that are not just the work of the political fringes nor the province of any one political party over another but are instead the popular centrifuge around which the idea of America assembles itself. There is no doubt that this is a highly political book but it is not political because it is partisan (a work of the Left raging against the Right) but rather because it is sceptical of politics altogether. All Americans assemble to see the Rosenbergs fry -- wherever they may lie on the political spectrum, Democrat or Republican, conservative or dissident. What burns in this novel is the public -- the very idea of a public entity or a civic realm which is constituted through well-intentioned notions of truth, security, justice, freedom and faith, but which cannot have any of these without an allegiance to the idea of the nation itself, an allegiance which will allow dissent within tight bounds but which will put those too far outside this boundary - especially those who move against the state in a criminal way - to a showy, spectacular death. At the heart of all this lies Nixon, not just because the disgraced future President is an indication of democratic bankruptcy, a representative of how power has become so misplaced, but also because he embodies the emptiness of the idea of the nation itself, the coercive need to 'act American' which is necessary to put into motion this patriotic stir of activity, this great rollicking farce. I note that some reviewers here have taken issue with the apparent lack of depth in the characters Coover offers in this book - Uncle Sam as snake-oil salesman, Nixon as buffoon and so on -- but this misses the author's real aim: to assemble already well-worn clichés in such an intense concentration that they expose the impossibility of character in such a culture, to demonstrate how the idea of America strings itself together in a series of lip-service wisdoms about history and destiny that ultimately eclipse in

It's good to have red-baiting reviewers like Kevin Bowman to prove Robert Coover's point a half-century after the Rosenbergs died and nearly thirty years after his book appeared. Gee, even an evil intellectual ("vindictive college professor") turns up in Kevin's review. Talk about fully-formed characters. It's a great book. You don't have to agree with the politics. There are parts where Coover goes way over the top, as you might expect with any 800 pound gorilla of a novel like this. It's true, it is a little "sophomoric" sometimes. It's profound more often, though, and not just because Coover takes potshots at Luce's Time Magazine. Seriously, this is an unjustly ignored masterpiece. Let's hope there are more vindictive college professors out there.

A brilliant, savage and unrelenting look at what the US is today. Not as subtle as Gaddis, more powerful than Pynchon, a fabulous and terrifying novel which would have made Swift and Joyce proud.

The brilliance of The Public Burning can be seen on many levels. Artistically, it's a fascinating novel, structured in Coover's inimitable surreality, he finds the strange gray area between reality, history, and fantasy and constructs a convincing, working world out of it. His transition from known historical record (quoting court records, Time magazine, which he hilariously personifies as the US poet laureatte) to ribald fantasia (the Incarnation of Uncle Sam catching Nixon jacking off while fantasizing about Ethel Rosenberg) is astonishingly smooth. Hell, I firmly believe Nixon did this, just because Coover's representation of it is so believable! On a political level this book gives America's ultimate hypocrite his just deserts, and the funny thing is that as Coover so brazenly points out in the book's amazingly funny final 50 pages, Nixon was always his own worst enemy. Ultimately, Coover makes a very interesting statement about what it means to be in power in this country, and contrary to what conservatives might think, he doesn't leave the democrats out of his criticism. This book isn't about communism at all, but about 1950s America's perception of communism and our government's response to the general perception, or creation of it, to manipulate and control our citizens (isn't that the final goal of government these days, anyway?) As far as religious offense, I find nothing more offensive to me than religion, so I delight in any author willing to have the cojones to criticize it (although criticizing religion is often akin to taking a 12-guage to a pickle barrel full of catfish). Coover stands as an icon of postmodernism, along with Barth, Pynchon, Roth, et al, reinventing the novel form as he writes. This novel should stand the test of time as a beautifully funny reminder of how whacky things sometimes got during the 20th Century, despite all the technological advances.

This book should be required reading for all students of the novel as form and/or of recent American history. Far more compelling than the other books by Coover I've read (John's Wife, Pinocchio in Venice, Ghost Town), but with the same quirkiness & sense of dramatic scene. Excellent.