Declare About Books The Public Burning
| Title | : | The Public Burning |
| Author | : | Robert Coover |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 544 pages |
| Published | : | April 2nd 1998 by Grove Press (first published 1977) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Novels |
Robert Coover
Paperback | Pages: 544 pages Rating: 4.02 | 1150 Users | 109 Reviews
Chronicle Toward Books The Public Burning
A controversial best-seller in 1977, The Public Burning has since emerged as one of the most influential novels of our time. The first major work of contemporary fiction ever to use living historical figures as characters, the novel reimagines the three fateful days in 1953 that culminated with the execution of alleged atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Vice-President Richard Nixon - the voraciously ambitious bad boy of the Eisenhower regime - is the dominant narrator in an enormous cast that includes Betty Crocker, Joe McCarthy, the Marx Brothers, Walter Winchell, Uncle Sam, his adversary The Phantom, and Time magazine incarnated as the National Poet Laureate. All of these and thousands more converge in Times Square for the carnivalesque auto-da-fe at which the Rosenbergs are put to death. And not a person present escapes implication in Cold War America's ruthless "public burning."Be Specific About Books Supposing The Public Burning
| Original Title: | The Public Burning |
| ISBN: | 0802135277 (ISBN13: 9780802135278) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Richard M. Nixon |
| Literary Awards: | National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (1978) |
Rating About Books The Public Burning
Ratings: 4.02 From 1150 Users | 109 ReviewsComment On About Books The Public Burning
This review says: Burn me down, Amazon, burn me down!This Is a Job for Uncle Sam!A very exciting way to write history, at least political history, which is simultaneously personal and public, psychological and strategic, irrationally rational and therefore so dense with meaning it defies conventional narrative. As Richard Nixon says in The Public Burning, ... just as a nation has neither friends nor enemies, only interests, so there are no enduring loyalties in politics except where they are tied up in personal interests. And personal interests
His clumsiness, I thought, is part of his disguise, part of his armor, a kind of self-defense mechanismhe seems most sincere just when he makes the least sense.Thats Ike Eisenhower.Let the best man win so long as its me I wanted it to be played with rhetoric and industry, yet down deep I knew that even at its most trivial, politics flirted with murder and mayhem, theft and cannibalism.Thats Dick Nixon.He parades through like a peacock, sporting all his medals, and jabbing his stubby fingers in
It is with some consternatin that I do believe the Holy Ghost Himself, one Mr. Sam Slick, Uncle Sammy, plug-hatted prometheus is the butt-kickin, freedom taring ethos of these here YOU-nited States, a tulpa of our ancestors devisin that we keep churrnin up with our idealisms and religionisms and tribality, and that in so en-body-ing that old SPIRIT of America as a homunculus, Mr. Coover here, the confabulator-in-chief of this so-called The Pubic Burningerm, pubLIC!has recast the electric glow of
The Public Burning is a curious mix of fact and fiction whose characters include: Betty Crocker, Jack Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, the Marx Brothers, Mamie and Ike Eisenhower, Billy Graham, and starring Dick Nixon, Uncle Sam, The Phantom and Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. The story of Americas extreme fear of communism during the 50s and the execution of the Rosenbergs (the only American civilians to be put to death for espionage) is told primarily through Vice President Nixon, (who is depicted to be
Five stars, no kidding, if I could give six or seven I would. This is a Great American Novel, in lurid stars and stripes and in gorgeous multilayered language and characters. The plot is the runup to an imagined execution of the Rosenbergs in a orgiastic death-fest in Times Square. Not all of the characters were familiar to me as the action is a little before my time. But you'll sure recognize the main ones, Uncle Sam, and Tricky Dick Nixon. Nixon is (as William Gass says in his introduction)
Robert Coover recently published The Brunist Day of Wrath, revisiting earlier territory in a highly anticipated (by hundreds at least) mammoth new novel. One of the thoughts I had reading The Public Burning was that Coover could have easily returned to The Public Burning by looking at a recent era in American history. Imagine a novel where a Vice President named Dick, a cynical operator and foil to a relative political amateur from Texas, is seduced by the idea of becoming the living
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