Volume 24, Number 15 · September 29, 1977
Nixon's Seventh Crisis
By Robert Towers
The Public Burning
by Robert Coover
Viking, 534 pp., $12.95
As all the world must know by now, The Public Burning is about the Times Square auto-da-fé of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and its principal character is Vice President Richard M. Nixon, who at the end is buggered by Uncle Sam in an act of Incarnation. Unless at this late date Nixon's lawyers or the Rosenberg sons decide to sue, the book may have a chance to enjoy the moderate success it deserves on its own. The conspiratorial secrecy, the ballyhoo, and the extravagant claims accompanying its publication can only distort the true shape and magnitude of the novel. Whether the hoopla will much affect sales without the goosing of an outside legal intervention, I have no way of knowing, but certainly it can lead to inevitably disappointed expectations and a consequent revulsion from the actual achievement. Mustering whatever objectivity remains possible after the assault, I would maintain that this angry, cruel, obsessively detailed, intermittently powerful, sometimes funny, and often tedious book is Coover's best work since The Origin of the Brunists (1966), though not—sensationalism aside—as impressive a work of fiction as that very interesting first novel.
Review, 2915 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |