A Night At the Movies: Or, You Must Remember This

New York, NY: MacMillan: Collier Books. Near Fine. 1988. First Edition Thus; First Printing. Paperback. First Edition Thus (1988) , so stated. Near Fine in Wraps: shows just a hint of wear to extremities and a touch of the faintest foxing to the outside edges of the text block; tiny, superficial creases at the upper front corner tip and at the top of the front 'hinge'; else only the mildest rubbing to the panels; the binding is square and secure; the text is clean. Free of creases to the backstrip. Free of any underlining, hi-lighting or marginalia or marks in the text. Free of ownership names, dates, addresses, notations, inscriptions, stamps, or labels. A handsome copy, structurally sound and tightly bound, showing minor, unobtrusive imperfections only. Very close to 'As New'. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 8vo. (8.25 x 5.55 x0.5 inches) . Language: English. Weight: 7.5 ounces. Collier Fiction Series. Trade Paperback. Robert Coover (born February 4, 1932) is an American novelist, short story writer, and T. B. Stowell Professor Emeritus in Literary Arts at Brown University. His work may be best characterized as 'fabulation' or 'metafiction'. Coover's first novel was The Origin of the Brunists, in which the sole survivor of a mine disaster starts a religious cult, for which he received the The William Faulkner Foundation First Novel Award in 1966. His second book, The Universal Baseball Association, Inc. , J. Henry Waugh, Prop. , deals with the role of the creator. The eponymous Waugh, a shy, lonely accountant, creates a baseball game in which rolls of the dice determine every play, and dreams up players to which to attach those results, who of course, begin to take on a life of their own. Coover's 1969 short story collection 'Pricksongs and Descants' contains the celebrated metafictional story "The Babysitter," which was adapted into the 1995 movie of the same title, directed by Guy Ferland. Coover's best-known work is perhaps 'The Public Burning', which deals with the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in terms that have been called 'magic realism'. Half of the book is devoted to the mythic hero Uncle Sam of tall tales, dealing with the equally fantastic Phantom, who represents international Communism. The alternate chapters portray the efforts of Richard Nixon, who becomes perhaps the most interesting and sympathetic character in the story, to stage the execution of the Rosenbergs as a public event in Times Square. This book, a theme anthology, includes the story "You Must Remember This", a piece about Casablanca that features an explicit description of what Rick and Ilsa did when the camera wasn't on them. N it, we are introduced to twelve short pieces that seem to either directly reference specific films / actors / directors or are a general sendup to the genre’s main tropes. From there, the pieces spiral out to create a pastiche of violence, sex, and explosive angular changes that bring it well into the modernist scope of the writing of the late twentieth century. In many cases, this acts as an incredible juxtaposition of the source material being from the early and golden age of Hollywood with the brutalism and raw machinery of modern living. While it’s easy to see the sparkle of celluloid in all of these beloved pieces of our past, the stark nature of Coover’s presentation allows us to embrace what reality may have been like for our favorite characters in their never-ending comedic torture, in one instance. The result is twelve little experiments that can be sucked on like a lozenge and left to savor until the new direction of the next piece takes us to the wild west or Casablanca where the shades are drawn and relationships laid bare. As the collection is presented as a twelve-film feature with an intro and intermission, and it became a really unique reading experience. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 187 pages .