Matinée

by Robert Coover

Genres: Short Stories

14 pages, ebook

First published July 25, 2011

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

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewing Coover's 1987 collection of interlocking short fictions, A Night at the Movies, for The New York Times, critic Edmund White stated: "Robert Coover has made literary art out of a total immersion in the movies. He isn't merely recycling old movie plots or drawing on the glamorous atmosphere of Hollywood. Rather, what he's doing is enlarging his literary technique by forcing it to assimilate cinematic conventions and to approximate filmic style."

Edmund White's observation rings true when we read this well-crafted fourteen-page Robert Coover story published in The New Yorker in 2011. Matinée, short story as infinite regress of movie within movie within movie within movie, nearly all touching on those golden romantic moments - the first gaze, the first kiss, the first heart-throbbing intimacy.

“Weary of the tedium of her days, her lonely life going nowhere, she skips work and steps inside a half-empty old movie house showing a scratched and grainy romantic film from her youth; she takes her favorite seat in the middle of the seventh row, hoping to experience once again the consoling power of sudden uncomplicated love, even if not one’s own, love that has no trajectory attached to it but is a pure and immediate enrichment of the soul and delight of the body.” Initially, reading this opening line of Matinée, we accept the woman’s reality in the same manor we accept the reality of any other character in a short story, however, as we read on, we realize this opening scene of a woman stepping inside a half-empty old movie house is probably itself the opening scene in a movie.

So the question we might ask is: What difference does it make? Since we read a short story using our mind as a kind of movie projector, creating internal pictures of characters, dialogue, action and atmosphere unfolding as we turn the pages, does it make a great deal of difference if the woman stepping inside the half-empty movie house is doing so as part of her everyday life or an actress in a movie?

Well, one thing for sure, Robert Coover’s first line captures so much of what it means to partake of American movie culture: like listening again and again to those rock n' roll songs first heard as teenagers, through a repeated viewing of old movies, our movie-going lady can continually relive her own youth. And since she possesses a romantic heart, she can deeply feel the consoling power of sudden uncomplicated love even if it is not her own.

It’s that “even if it is not her own” that seals the deal for the movie industry, an industry that spends millions on glitz and hype - billboards, trailers, movie stills, full-page ads, posters, trinkets and other paraphernalia, all to encourage the pubic to buy tickets and live vicariously through the silver screen. Additionally, as she so aptly notes in so many words, movies provide life’s tantalizing, romantic highpoints, all compressed in two hours. What magic!

Matinée features at least three dozen shifts, yes, that's right, no less than thirty-six shifts and slides back and forth between the character’s “everyday life,” so called, and drama on the screen. The first shift is to the film our enthralled female viewer is watching in the old movie house showcasing two strangers, a man and a women, separately boarding an old time train. How romantic! Movie makers are forever making movies of times past to soak our sentimental, wistful, nostalgic longing for all its worth. Predictably, in a few moments the strangers look into each other’s eyes and their hearts are visibly melting.

The lady in theater row seven reflects between tears how a man has never gazed into her eyes that way, “a moment so human, so iconic, so unspeakably beautiful-essential, really, to a well-lived life.” What?! Who says such an experience is essential to a well-lived life? Of course, Hollywood makes this tacit pronouncement, the underlying message being that your life is inferior, your life will never be as good as actors up on the screen; so, if you really, really want to be in touch with the fullness of what it means to be alive, continue to buy your tickets and let what happens in the movies serve as your ideal, your highest value.

The theme of movies as the ideal standard by which people judge life continues, as when the lady steps out into the aisle and bumps into a man who has also stepped out into the same aisle. Is it an accident or something ordained? Oh, my Hollywood Oscars, ordained – how romantic! Or is it scripted, as if part of a movie? We read: “A sourceless music rises, throbbing, as though from out of their shared gaze.” Nothing like a soundtrack to add that special something.

And when you are outside the theater you can create your own mental soundtrack, just like in the movies, as you walk down the street forever searching out your very own illusive romantic encounter. And when you step into a bar for a drink, like the man in Matinée, you can watch as “he watches the old movie that is playing silently on the TV above the bar, one he remembers well. It once had the power to excite him inordinately, and it excites him now.” With the ever present TV screen and other electronic media, its movie time all the time, exactly what Hollywood wishes.

The reel of Matinée keeps spinning and Robert Coover masterfully weaves in many more keen insights regarding the influence of movies, such as how overexposure to movies can jade us to the drama of our own lives, how repeated viewing has a powerful influence on memory, including the way one movie can bring to mind another movie and then another, how our emotions are funneled away from those around us and projected onto the stars of the silver screen, all of which brings to mind another Edmund White quote: “Mr. Coover has understood the potential of the movies to persuade and to subvert but also to go out of control and through collage to hybridize unexpected nightmares.”

As Robert Coover himself was quoted in an interview: “We see a lot of filmic imagery – in television, in films – and we learn to think in ways that correspond to filmic technique. It’s a language that one cannot ignore.” Curiously, a perceptive reader familiar with film jargon and film industry technology will pick up close parallels between the making of movies and Coover’s Matinée. To cite several: the repetition of scenes and dialogue (looping), a fictional farce having the "look and feel" of a documentary (mockumentary), comic parody where conventional situations and plot devices are intentionally exaggerated to the point of absurdity (camp), an expected, cliché scene (obligatory scene). All this to say, Matinée is chockful of the movies, composed by a master of fiction writing, one of America's finest.

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

WELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!

this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.

this is the SIXTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your 2020 reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards.

GR has deleted the pages for several of the stories i've read in previous years without warning, leaving me with a bunch of missing reviews and broken links, which makes me feel shitty. i have tried to restore the ones i could, but my to-do list is already a ball of nightmares, so that's still a work-in-progress. however, because i don't have a lot of time to waste, i'm not going to bother writing much in the way of reviews for these, in case GR decides to scrap 'em again.

i am doing my best.
merry merry.

DECEMBER 27: MATINEE - ROBERT COOVER

They lean toward each other to speak earnestly about the weather and the vexations of travel, their hearts visibly melting, and receive from a severe old lady sitting near the compartment door a particularly withering glance, but there is a telltale tear in her eye, as if she might once long ago have been similarly struck—just as there is a tear in her own eye, as she sits there in the musty old movie house. All of these people in the film are, of course, dead, which reminds her, as if she needed reminding, of the irreversible passing of time, adding therewith to her sadness, for, sooner or later, she, like they, will also be dead, but without ever having had a man gaze into her eyes that way, a moment so human, so iconic, so unspeakably beautiful—essential, really, to a well-lived life—but one never granted her or to be granted. As the dead actor and the dead actress fall into an immortal clinch, the film breaks and rattles in the projector and the lights come up while repairs are made. She knows how it all turns out, and knows that it will only deepen her melancholy, so she rises to leave, pulling her coat on, just as a man four rows in front of her rises and gathers up his own coat and hat, glancing at her fleetingly. As she steps out into the aisle and he steps out into the aisle, they will accidentally bump into each other, or maybe it won’t be an accident but something, well, something ordained.

a lovely literary turducken by robert coover about how romantic cinematic touchpoints inform real-life romance and vice versa, but when does the movie here end? are we there yet? are we there yet? are we there yet? etc.

read it for free here

THE STORIES:

DECEMBER 1: NIGHT STAND - DANIEL WOODRELL
DECEMBER 2: MR. DEATH - ALIX HARROW
DECEMBER 3: THE FRUIT OF MY WOMAN - HAN KANG
DECEMBER 4: THE TINDER BOX - KATE ELLIOTT
DECEMBER 5: BABYCAKES - NEIL GAIMAN
DECEMBER 6: HIS MIDDLE NAME WAS NOT JESUS - NOVIOLET BULAWYO
DECEMBER 7: SING A SONG OF SIXPENCE - LILLI CARRÉ
DECEMBER 8: DARK TIDE - MARK LAWRENCE
DECEMBER 9: DARKER TIDE - MARK LAWRENCE
DECEMBER 10: BREAK - MISHELL BAKER
DECEMBER 11: A RUMOR OF ANGELS - DALE BAILEY
DECEMBER 12: THE ENGLISHMAN - DOUGLAS STUART
DECEMBER 13: IT CAME FROM CRUDEN FARM - MAX BARRY
DECEMBER 14: NO MOON AND FLAT CALM - ELIZABETH BEAR
DECEMBER 15: A STUDY IN SHADOWS - BENJAMIN PERCY
DECEMBER 16: ART APPRECIATION - FIONA MCFARLANE
DECEMBER 17: THE SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS - SILVIA MORENO-GARCIA
DECEMBER 18: WE HAVEN'T GOT THERE YET - HARRY TURTLEDOVE
DECEMBER 19: THE DUNE - STEPHEN KING
DECEMBER 20: THE WORTHINGTON - EMILY CARROLL
DECEMBER 21: SUNBLEACHED - NATHAN BALLINGRUD
DECEMBER 22: BLOOD DAUGHTER - MATTHEW LYONS
DECEMBER 23: THE LINE - AMOR TOWLES
DECEMBER 24: PIGEONS - NIBEDITA SEN
DECEMBER 25: WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED, WHAT WE WILL FORGET, WHAT WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO FORGET - EUGENE LIM
DECEMBER 26: ONE/ZERO - KATHLEEN ANN GOONAN
DECEMBER 28: ACCESS - ANDY WEIR
DECEMBER 29: UNNECESSARY THINGS - TATYANA TOLSTAYA
DECEMBER 30: HOOK - DANIELLE MCLAUGHLIN
DECEMBER 31: HE'S VERY WELL READ - CATHERINE LACEY

previous years' advent calendars (what's left of 'em):

2016
2017
2018
2019
2020

come to my blog!

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Dip your toes into Coover cinematography right here. It's like Lucky Pierre, but riffing on romantico=fliks rather than pornographico=.

Brilliant. Required for all film buffs and movie=house rats.

[Sara]

When master of fiction writer done that .the films flaw like a song.not ugly here as not beauty.give ur imigition gd turn.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read online. For anyone interested the link is below.

[Kest Schwartzman · Rating 5 out of 5]

and there, there is that distance, again. No less beautiful, no less ugly, just seen through the haze of grainy old film. This one uses that dream quality with great balance and deliberation; it is perfectly formulated.