629. Pricksongs and Descants

Pricksongs and Descants
Robert Coover
1969
Around 260 pages

I feel like one out of every three authors during this period was writing for Oh! Calcutta, or at least, pretending they were. Each story in this collection felt like a risque cabaret performance: controversial but shallow.

Robert Coover gives us his take on traditional bedtime stories, parodying children's stories such as Hansel and Gretel and, you know, the Bible. As is the case with any compilation that doesn't come from Ms. Taylor Swift, there were some weaker entries here. I thought "The Babysitter" in particular was just male fantasy unleashed, and naturally, that's the one that has a movie adaptation.

By now, metafiction seems to be the norm, which must have really irritated all the metafiction writers. I didn't find Coover very charming. Not exactly a must read, when we have so many better postmodernist picks to choose from.

RATING: **---

Interesting Facts:

"The Babysitter" was adapted into a film in 1995, starring Alicia Silverstone. 

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