 First edition | |
| Author | Robert Coover |
|---|---|
| Publisher | E. P. Dutton |
Publication date | 1969 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 227 |
| OCLC | 438734283 |
Pricksongs & Descants is a collection of short fiction by Robert Coover first published in 1969 by E. P. Dutton. [1]
The volume includes “The Babysitter,” Coover’s most anthologized work of fiction. [2] [3]
The title refers to Medieval musical forms that are used here as a double entendre. [4] [5]
Essayist and critic Thomas E. Kennedy describes two divergent literary trends that arose among American fiction writers of the 1960s. [6] One is “objective fiction” that blends journalistic methods applied to fictional forms. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966) exemplifies this approach, as does Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night (1968). In this latter form, the author may identify him or herself explicitly as the narrator. [7] Tom Wolfe’s “real-life” fiction, such as Bonfire of the Vanities (1988) and Hunter S. Thomson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971) represent subjective reportage that conflate “fiction and reality.” [8]
In contrast to “representational” fiction a “New Fiction” emerged among writers who abandoned “conventional realism” for “blatant illusions.” [9] Traditional “introduction-climax-resolution” plots were replaced with innovative non-linear structures. Notable early practitioners of this postmodernist approach are John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse (1968), Donald Barthelme’s (Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts (1968) and Robert Coover’s Pricksongs & Descants. [10]
Critic Thomas Alden Bass, from a 1982 interview with Coover, reports: “Friends lent him a cabin up at Rainy Lake in Canada "where I wrote the stories about origins," Coover says, referring to.the pieces that later appeared in Pricksongs & Descants.” [11] [12]
“The title [Pricksongs & Descants] is a metaphor for a method that Coover has elaborated throughout his career. In manuscripts of medieval European music, the notes were physically "pricked" or marked with holes or dots. The melody (the cantus firmus could be ornamented or counterpointed with an extemporised part, known as the descant. It's common enough for musical terms to be used to describe narrative (theme, leitmotif and so on) but Coover's usage is more precise.”—Literary critic Kunzru, Hari in The Guardian , June 27, 2011. [13]
New York Times literary critic William H. Gass describes the stories as “virtuoso exercises: alert, self-conscious, instructional and show-off” and ranking Coover among the finest innovative post-war writers who “wish to instruct us in the art of narration, the myth-making imagination.” Gass regards “The Babysitter” as “ one of the most impressive pieces in the book.” [14] [15]
Novelist and critic Joyce Carol Oates in The Southern Review informs readers that Coover’s Pricksongs & Descants is simultaneously “crude and intellectual, predictable and alarming [and] not interested at all in creating old-fashioned worlds for us to believe in…he gives the impression of thoroughly enjoying his craft.” [16]
Reviewer Hari Kunzru at The Guardian declares the Pricksongs & Descants “cemented Coover’s reputation, standing today as one of the landmarks of postwar American fiction.” [17]
Thomas E. Kennedy writes: “Pricksongs & Descants is a work of pure genius…a book that on its own ought to guarantee a permanent place for Coover in American letters.” [18]
Coover at his best is a great innovative writer of short fiction, a brilliant metafiction strategist, a writer with the grasp to perceive and courage to follow a vision of astounding originality. [19]