The Babysitter

by Robert Coover

'She arrives at 7.40, ten minutes late...' She babysits for Mr and Mrs Tucker. She has left a boyfriend alone for the evening. From this seemingly simple start Robert Coover masterfully explores the subtle barrier between 'reality' and thought. As the babysitter triggers the men's sexual fantasies, their erotic imaginations twist into alternative narratives simultaneously experienced by the reader: she does or does not take a bath; she does or does not invite her boyfriend over; she does or does not get caught unawares by Mr Tucker. In a profusion of happenings and imaginings, Coover layers moment upon moment, narrative upon narrative, to shatter the timeline of one evening into a multiplicity of events - contradictory, simultaneous, but all equally 'real'.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Read For School, American, School, Literary Fiction, Adult

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Robert Lowell Coover was an American novelist, short story writer, and T. B. Stowell Professor Emeritus in Literary Arts at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction. He became a proponent of electronic literature and was a founder of the Electronic Literature Organization.

Reviews

[Zala]

Very disturbing. A commentary on American society at the time that explores many possible realities, though one might simply be changing the TV channel.

[Maria · Rating 1 out of 5]

What? No. No matter how great a piece of literature this may be (and I do kinda understand that and why it is), it really made me sick. Everything is just distorted and full of different scenarios of violence... Murdered babies, various men planning to rape a young girl... While the writing is great and captivating, the plot is just disturbing. I really feel like this story is going to stay with me for a while but not in a good way.

[Mala · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mind-blowing! Talk about layered narratives!! There's a reason why 'The Babysitter' is Coover's most anthologized story. In 107 paragraphs it teaches you more about metafiction & the nature of postmodern aesthetics than many theory books put together. And if that sounds excessive, remember that this story thrives on excess: a plethora of narrative strands coexisting in the same time but multiple spaces & the readers can choose their own adventure (or can they?!). 'The Babysitter' forms part of Coover's Pricksongs and Descants story collection & truly exemplifies that title. An American masterpiece!
Here's a blog from someone who has been fascinated with this story for the last thirty years:
http://www.flashpointmag.com/mayasone...

[Esme · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite literally have no words for this short story. I am writing an essay about it and its so fuckef up that at 4am last night I started literally crying with sheer delusion because this, my friend, is fucked up. it appeals to me literally only in the sense that I have babysat for attractive dads in the past. everything else... welll... post modernism can go fuck itself. A dead baby in the bath and three different rape scenes? tell me more, I am intrigued, said no one ever. My lecturer who set it for this module has a lot to answer for. Tim, I'm coming 4 u. Not in a threatening way x

[Lars Meijer · Rating 4 out of 5]

What just happened?

[ariana · Rating 1 out of 5]

if i could erase one work from cultural consciousness it would be this

[Jake · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m not sure what’s more disturbing: that Robert Coover wrote The Babysitter or that someone, somewhere, thought it was a good idea to let the rest of us read it. From the moment I cracked it open, I was greeted with the sort of domestic horror I haven’t felt since I accidentally signed up for a family cruise. It starts innocently enough—a babysitter, three children, parents heading out for the evening—but it quickly devolves into a night of increasingly bizarre and unsettling scenarios that make you wonder what Coover’s babysitters were like growing up. Or maybe it’s best not to ask.

The premise is simple: a young babysitter arrives at a suburban home to watch the children while the parents go to a party. But then Coover does that thing certain writers like to do where he refuses to settle on one version of events, preferring instead to unravel multiple simultaneous realities. One minute, the babysitter is making herself comfortable on the couch, and the next, she’s being attacked in the bathroom, seduced by the father, or harassed by the teenage boy next door. It’s like being forced to watch a malfunctioning washing machine: everything’s spinning, but nothing’s getting any cleaner.

Now, I enjoy a fractured narrative as much as the next person—I really do. But The Babysitter isn’t content to just play with structure. No, it insists on slathering itself in all the worst tropes of ‘60s male fantasy: barely legal girls, innocent-yet-sexualized babysitters, and men who seem ready to pounce at the first whiff of babysitting-induced pheromones. Every character is either a predator or prey, with poor Mrs. Tucker—the mother—being relegated to a barely present afterthought in the chaotic, testosterone-fueled mess.

Let’s talk about the fantasies, shall we? Because that’s where things really take a turn. It’s as if Coover went through a checklist of “every inappropriate thing that could happen on an ordinary night of babysitting” and decided to do them all at once. The babysitter, at various points, is molested, attacked, spied on, and—depending on which version of the story you’re reading—possibly killed. It’s hard to tell, since Coover’s narrative jumps around so much it makes Quentin Tarantino look linear. If you’re hoping for clarity, you’re out of luck. You’ll be lucky to finish this book without a mild case of vertigo.

At some point, it becomes less about the characters (who are flatter than yesterday’s champagne) and more about Coover seeing how much he can get away with. “How far can I push the babysitter trope?” he seems to ask. But instead of pushing boundaries in a thought-provoking way, he just throws a whole bunch of sexual, violent, and absurd scenarios at the wall and hopes they stick. Spoiler: they don’t.

The ending—or endings, because Coover doesn’t seem to like the idea of settling on just one—leave you in the same place you started: confused and a little queasy. Does the babysitter live? Die? Get assaulted? Does any of it matter? Probably not, because Coover’s less interested in the actual story than in showing off how many different ways he can manipulate it. By the time you’re done, you feel like you’ve been gaslit by the book itself.

And yet, critics adore this book. They call it a “bold exploration of form,” which is a polite way of saying, “This book is a mess, but it’s a smart mess, and I’m too afraid to admit I didn’t understand it.” Maybe they’re right, and I’m just missing the point, but I have a hard time believing anyone could read The Babysitter and not feel a little violated by the end.

In short: If you like your babysitting stories served with a side of psychological trauma and sexual objectification, The Babysitter is the book for you. If you’re looking for something with characters who make even a little bit of sense, might I suggest literally anything else?

[nika · Rating 3 out of 5]

cudna so pota postmoderna

[Circa Girl · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Babysitter is ,as Emily Temple from LitHub put it, the "schrodinger's cat of literature". It's also an experiment to see what it read like to flip between story mood and themes and point of view as swiftly as we (theoretically- I'm fully converted to ad free netflix and hulu) change the television station. It's like a choose your own adventure story except there's no real choice and every deviance of perspective, fantasy, imagination or desire is given equal weight until the very end when two outcomes are possible. You can search and dissect the branches of story for one "real" thread but they are all real and unreal. The babysitter is both responsible and a selfish baby killer, the babysitter is both safe and brutally raped, the men are both quietly looming over their male gazes fantasies and living them out to violent effect, the bath is being neglected to catch a late night show and being run for a quick dip. Everyone is dead and everything went according to plan for another mundane night visiting friends at a party. It's all possible.

[cait · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m so sick and twisted this story is just a normal one to me 💔

LOVEEEEE the narrative possibility in this: you can read any which way you want and yet everything in the end is terrible bc the least terrible thing to happen is babysitting, which is torture in of itself. the fragmentation is just so jarring too like it really felt like I was losing my mind taking care of kids while a woman is at a party getting buttered up bc she can’t fit back into her girdle like hello??

[Katelyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to read this for a class. I certainly wouldn't have of my own free will or enjoyment. The biggest sin of this short story is how disgusting and disturbing it is. You can read the rest of the reviews on here if you want to hear about that, but I'm done thinking about it. But if we look past that, I don't usually have qualms about dark things, I don't find anything of much interest or merit. The concept of flipping between these perspectives/different timelines as if channel surfing is an ambitious and interesting idea, but in execution it only led to confusion beyond understanding. During the last two paragraphs were the only time I felt as if I was reading something even a bit clever. And even then only a bit. As for the actual style of the writing, if we take away the confusion, I didn't find that worthy of much extraordinary praise either. Just convoluted. The ramblings of a man trying to sound provocative for the sack of shock value and trying to make readers think he has something of especially profound to impress upon them.

[terka · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an amazing short story. I have no clue what did really happen, and my notes everywhere in it aren't helping... But damn, this style just doesn't take any breaks, it was impossible to put down.

[Komal Hashmi · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried to make sense of it, but failed. I tried reading it word by word but it was so disgusting, scary, weird, and traumatizing with all sorts of sh*t going on. I rarely do one-star reviews, but this was absolutely disgusting.

[maja · Rating 1 out of 5]

so disgusting 🤢

[_anastrophe]

what an awful day to know how to read

[Aleksandra · Rating 1 out of 5]

What has happened!?!? I don't think I understand

[Chloe Salveson]

It’s meta fiction. I questioned what this STORY is and what THIS story is. A wild ride is my answer to both.

[aleksandra]

weird? morbid? disturbing ? idk

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

WTF! Can't quite believe what I have just read.

[Sadie Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't really know what to make of this. I *think* this is the story of a normal evening of babysitting, in which nothing untoward actually happens except in the imaginations and fantasies of the various characters, and on the television. It was certainly a gripping read and I finished it in one sitting. More reflection needed.

[Courtney Schafer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know what I just read. Was it all scenarios? What the final paragraph the real deal? A definite gripping read.

[Myrthe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Difficult postmodernism work of literature. A puzzle with too many pieces. But very fun to read.

[wiktoria · Rating 2 out of 5]

a big ew men
hate the sexual theme

[eda · Rating 2 out of 5]

i am not sure if i understood the story, but what i can say is that i found the violence to be gratuitous and unnecessary.

[Lannie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Babysitter is about a single evening where a few parents leave their children in the hands of a teen babysitter. Instead of telling a cohesive plot, however, it tells snippets of possibilities throughout the evening, ranging from the harmless to the outright perverted, from the romantic to the comedic, etc., like flipping aimlessly through TV channels on a boring evening.

However, rather than just being a curious, stylistic choice that, perhaps, has some commentary on the way we scrub through media half-interested, there is a point of gravity. The gravity is the sexuality of a young woman.

Everything revolves around the babysitter, even the scenes that don't involve her directly. On one "channel," we catch a glimpse of the mother being squeezed into her garter with butter and a turkey baster—comedy you might find in a show like I Love Lucy. Even this, with its focus on fading beauty and an aging woman's weight, is a knowing juxtaposition to the way the men of the story feel about the babysitter.

One of the heartbreaking aspects of this story, however, is that when we're "watching" the babysitter from her own perspective, all of her sexual curiosity is framed innocently. She is still a young woman, after all. She doesn't realize she is surrounded by sharks. She plays around with her bare tummy, wondering what that little rubbery thing that men have would be like. She puts on adult men's underwear and stick her thumb through and goes Golly Gee! When watching romances on the TV, she doesn't fully understand the reactions the male characters are having to the young female characters. All the while, the adult husband is having adulterous fantasies about her, and young men her age are, perhaps, hiding in the bushes outside, trying to get a free show while she bathes.

It's gross, but it's not gross in the way that it indulges in the grossness. It's gross because it depicts a thing—a thing we consider with a bit of sadness. No matter which genre of "show" we are presented in this story, whether it's a slapstick comedy or a slice-of-life or a mystery, they all have a touch of horror hiding behind them.

[BOOK BOOKS]

I RLY WISH I REMEMBERED WHAT THIS FUCKING LOL EDGY BOOK THAT SOMETIMES HAUNTS ME WAS. IT WAS ABOUT A COUPLE WHO GOES OUT TO A DINNER PARTY WITH FRANDS AND LEAVES THEIR KIDS WITH A BABBYSITTER, AND FROM THERE, IT'S LIKE A FIVE THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED FIC, EXCEPT IT'S MOAR LIKE 25 THINGS. IT WAS WRITTEN IN A VERY INTELLIFICCY STYLE, AND IT JUST SORT OF EXPLORES A BUNCH OF DIFFERENT WAYS THE NIGHT COULD GO WRONG. IT'S LIKE A LITERARY ANXIETY ATTACK. I REMEMBER IN ONE OF THE TIMELINES, THE BABBYSITTER ACCIDENTALLY DROWNS THE BABBY IN THE BATHTUB AND IN ANOTHER, THE HUSBAND CHEATS ON HIS WIFE WITH HER FRAND. I THINK THERE'S ALSO ONE WHERE HE FUCKS THE BABBYSITTER, BUT I'M LESS SURE OF THAT. I ALSO THINK THERE MAY HAVE BEEN ONE WHERE SHE AND THE KIDS ARE MURDERED, BUT I AM EVEN LESS SURE ABOUT THAT.

[cant bug · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent example of when unconventionality and experimentation goes well in a short story.

This story would be just your typical shock value injected piece of cliched writing without the weird timelines and choppy hallucinations.

Someone from Paper Wings mentioned how the Male Gaze applies to this story - 100% agreed, the babysitter is central to the story and each character's perspective aside from Bitsy and Dolly (the other female characters) focusses on how the male characters view the young female protagonist.

This short story is a massive highlight for me, definitely not one if you're easily disturbed, but deserves to be appreciated for the dark and hallucinatory feel of the plot.

[Vlad Babei · Rating 2 out of 5]

A narrative of deceit: layers upon layers of possibilities inundate Coover’s short story, continually toying with the reader’s expectations of what storytelling should or could do. Rather intriguing to see how the experimental narrative – with its superimposed strands – plays out, albeit I couldn’t shake the feeling that the story didn’t age too well. Barren of its technical pyrotechnics, the resulting piece is nothing to write home about: there might be some implicit criticism of media consumption and the ubiquitous nature of TV, which eventually leads to desensitisation to violence, but all of this is just too thin to stand on its own.

[ani]

Got a massive migraine, felt nauseous, wanted it to end as soon as possible.
Is it sensationalising assault? Perhaps. Do these means justify the end? Perhaps.
It's almost like The Martian, in a way, but Coover does not allow for numbness; a fever dream that continuously throws you into new loops. The story does not define itself; even at the end, we are left in the dark of the abyss. But anything that could have happened, happens in real life. The true horror of its dizzying flashes of hypotheticals, is in the existence of the non-hypothetical case.

Unable to rate. (As is the case with most literature I read. How crude it feels, to rate art so simplistically.)

[Akje · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yes, I get what it's all about, or not about. Yes, I understand all about the juxtaposition of reality and fantasy, both in real life and on television. Yes, I see how clever and brilliant the author is.

I just didn't like the story. ¯\_(ﭢ)_/¯