Books Borrowed from My Ex-Husband #2
ROMANCE OF THE THIN MAN AND THE FAT LADY
Mini Modern Classic
By Robert Coover
112 pp. Penguin Classics
£3
Years ago my initial encounter with Robert Coover in a post modern anthology was unsatisfying. On first read, I didn’t love his work, finding it inaccessible with its shifting points of view and strange themes. Coover left me disconcerted, and I didn’t like it.
Growing older and a better reader, disconcertion by a powerful narrative became more enjoyable. Or maybe I became more prone to literary masochism. Fifty fifty.
I came across a Coover story this spring (Going for a Beer, The New Yorker, March 11) that was so good it made my arm hairs stand, distinctive enough to remind me that technique in fiction can and should be multifarious, and that brevity wins the day. In a thousand-odd words Coover encapsulates a life with total mastery and economical elegance. Painfully beautiful in the best possible way, its closing words, “Well. . .you know. . life” emblazoned in my brain. Editors of the “Best American Short Stories of 2011” take note, I haven’t seen a better contender.
To launch my review of the “Penguin Mini Modern Classics Box Set,” being bullish on Coover made him a natural choice. Penguin’s selections in “Romance of the Thin Man and the Fat Lady,” including the title story, The Babysitter, and A Pedestrian Accident survey Coover’s style and thrust.
The Babysitter is widely anthologized, but my least favorite of the three stories. With an unnamed female babysitter as a protagonist, the perspective shifts from paragraph to paragraph. A twisting take on sexuality, desire either for or of the babysitter suggests peril. The prose is taut and while initially transitions between voice are a distraction, Coover’s consistency in fluctuation becomes verse-like. Hard to follow but compelling, the reader wonders if the babysitter is raped and murdered, or if she murders the children and seduces their father. The payoff comes when butter, girdles, baby poop, bathtubs, and pinball unite the disparate meanderings of plot, at least enough for a television host’s lament: “‘Your children are murdered, your husband is gone, a corpse is in your bathtub, and your house is wrecked. I’m sorry. But what can I say?’” Whether or not any or all of those things happen, Coover reminds both with jaded jocularity and gentle sensitivity, often in life there are no appropriate responses.
A Pedestrian Accident features the same unreliable narration, following protagonist Paul who is hit by a truck. It delves into themes of mortality with religious allusions that saturate the work. As Paul is spread on the street, injured, impossible to tell if alive or dead, an array of characters interact over his form in varying degrees of absurdity. Mrs. Grundy (who makes a joke about knowing Paul like Sarah knew Abraham or Eve knew Cain, and when corrected “Adam” makes a joke about knowing what she knows) claims to be Paul’s lover, an inept policeman writes a copious report, a crowd of onlookers adds chorus to the background, a weary doctor calls the policeman a “God-and-cunt simpleton,” the truck driver refuses accountability before compounding the problem, a wet dog, and a beggar the injured misreads as a priest. Shadowboxing allegory behind a veil of abstraction results in the intense last paragraph of the story, the dog running off with a chunk of the injured man’s flesh as the beggar puts an unlit cigarette in his mouth while staring at Paul who can only wonder “How much longer must this go on?” in such a plaintive whisper it is awing.
The title short story, Romance of the Thin Man and the Fat Lady impacts from the outset in the same way, dead deliberate construction in the highest order of short fiction. Coover asserts these two title characters are “metaphors too apparent to be missed” and that “’We are all Thin Men. You are all Fat Ladies.’” The story follows the ill-fated romance of title characters with a calliope soundtrack and perfect pacing. When kept apart by a villainous Ringmaster reluctant to the change he fears the romance will spark, the circus murders and overthrows him in a “revolution of love.” Love becomes the “word of the day” at the circus. Love, even the self improving and truest kind doesn’t sell tickets, and that complicates things. The Thin Man himself becomes a Ringmaster and is forced to make unenviable decisions. The narration, with an oddly charming meta (not my favorite technique) tone, makes the point we’ve all seen one too many circus acts, and maybe we are a little worn. Still, life as circus remains apt, “So, what the hell, some circus music please!” reminding us again to stand and cheer, all of us Thin Men and Fat Ladies. The amorphous Ringmaster’s narration of the acts, commanding us to give them all a big hand is a perfect ending. The cynicism and hope of the piece are a feat of plate spinning admirably balanced center ring.
The three stories Penguin collected for this volume are memorable. Alienation, need, want, and loss are explored with a quietly deceptive authority. The path Coover takes is winding, but the destination is worthy of the trek. It’s as sublime as it is rough.
It makes me glad that as I’ve grown older, I’ve started to like it rough.