Open House

by Robert Coover

One hundred floors above Manhattan, a diverse group of guests and gate-crashers come together in a luxurious penthouse. The down-and-out blend seamlessly with the well-to-do. Scammers find themselves the target of a con so twisted that by the time they begin to figure it out it’s too late to extract themselves. But what’s the occasion? Is it a party? A religious congregation? A real estate listing? Or is there something else going on? For over half a century, Robert Coover has been one of the most inventive and unpredictable writers in the American academy. Long heralded for his commitment to formal as well as technological innovation, with Open House , Coover reminds readers that his work is as steeped in literary history as it is forward-thinking experimentation. This tension—between old and new, between a romanticized past and a future we only pretend we can predict—animates Coover’s latest metafiction, where narrative is at once the point and so beside the point that it calls into question all the myths by which we organize our lives. From Evergreen Review Books, an imprint of OR Books

122 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2023

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

[Vit Babenco]

There is a party going on at full tilt in a ritzy penthouse… The party is cosmic… The party is apocalyptic…

The bartender, though cute, is, alas, an ill-tempered devotee of that which he serves, the caterer has telltale needle tracks up both her arms, the saxophonist is rude and, like my husband, is all too full of himself, and the crazed pianist never actually plays anything recognizable, just keeps his fingers moving fast and his body bouncing, as though that’s all that popular music is: overwrought gesture. A fake; he can’t be trusted, none of them can.

The narration segues from character to character without any warning… And all the heads are laden with sick thoughts… The carnival of vacuousness… The feast of the wicked…       

“We cannot let such evil prevail.” I ask her, massaging my bruised thumbs, if she has the least notion of what evil truly is, and she replies coolly, as something else is taken away, that it is whatever disturbs the way things are.

Intruders and impostors… Everybody present is a vehicle of some vices… Festivity is uncontrollable… Everyone can join in and no one can leave the party… And a mysterious nun exuding some peculiar stench is roaming all around the place… The atmosphere is eerie and chilling…   

If this were one of my stories, I’d probably imagine this penthouse as the melancholic setting for the universal metaphor, the experience of nothingness, afloat in or on darkness. A romantic image, to be sure; melancholy is romantic.

Is our ark slowly drifting straight to hell? Are we already there?

[Kerrysue]

As always, a pleasure to wander through the pages of a new Coover book. This is no exception. As I am a Reader and not a Writer, you will just have to take my word that it’s a truly enjoyable trip. 🌸

[conor]

Coover’s back with more sex, more booze, more farts, and more delicious prose. A comical, quick whirlwind.

[Grant]

My first Coover read. An entertaining but unhinged energy to the musician/writer/murderer narrator's voice. Bizarre, sometimes overly so, but a reasonable length, as the reader tries to figure out what is going on here. The zaniness reminds of Pynchon; there is some odd juvenilia throughout, such as dick jokes, and one is sometimes amazed (and amused) that this was written by a 91 year old.

Not sure what this amounts to, though, as it is meandering and feels random. A meditation on death, on one level. I suppose the "open house" can be interpreted as a microcosm of an out-of-control society that has gone too far with debauchery, prurience and relative nihilism. Sometimes, in this Internet era of information overload, it feels as though we live in such a world, but I don't really look for this in my literature, either. "Mindlessness may be the only survival option left on this sick planet."--Hmm. If that is this author's final conclusion after such a long writing career, then there is something sad about that.

[Matt Gillick]

Brilliant, but not for everyone. The experimental, sweeping nature of the novel is a Beckettian funhouse of desperation, grief, depravity, sexual hijinks and violence, surreal set pieces, commentaries on art, and religion. The plot is non-existent, but it is a ride that you can glide through, though the theme and context may be lost on you. While going through twists and loops of linguistic mastery, you begin to meditate on yourself.

[michal k-c]

Dynamic but fewer pyrotechnics than say, Gerald’s Party, though there are shared affinities between the two works (beyond just the party setting). Don’t want to spoil anything about the ending here but despite the goofiness (aesthetically I would compare it to strolling through a particularly well-stocked Spirit Halloween) it really is quite moving, made especially so by Coover’s recent passing. Memory eternal for an author who has shaped so much of my own hard-earned consciousness

[Valet de Trèfle]

Parmi les invités d'une fête étrange, sombre et amorale, dans un immeuble de Manhattan, aucun ne semble participer de bon coeur. Une vaste comédie que ce carnaval festif, dans lequel tout le monde est seul ensemble.

[Domiron]

Very very good.
Interesting following the different characters while the perspective changes mid sentence

[Glenn]

A typically dazzling Coover bagatelle, this time the relay-race of narrators is the formal hook. Gross, funny, pointed, all the good things.

[Doug]

An absurdist round robin about mortality and all things scatalogical, which I would never have sat through from any other author

[Jon]

Hilarious, degenerate, disturbing and hallucinatory as only Robert Coover can be. His rough metaphor is also a bit on the nose:

These are not my people! This crowd is mostly a hard lot, who are convinced they are the "good people," and the more wrong-headed they are, the more they believe that. In the past, I would have denounced them all as willfully ignorant, but as the old bearded philosopher warned me, "To define problems, seek solutions, is to live the tragic life." Alas, rarely able to desist, such a life would seem to be my fate. But not now, not yet ...

Published in 2023, it's heartening to see Coover still has it in him.

[Ava Gaulkin]

I felt like i was in a terrifying dream