This is the sort of book people write drooling dribbling cock-tugging theses about—the multifariousness of its structure and tropes and voices is denser than a chocolate-and-toffee car park cake (a cake the size of an actual car park). I toggled between three and four stars because I was with then not-with then with then not-with the novel about nine times per page, lapsing from amusement into rage, from rage into arousal, from arousal into boredom, from boredom into amazement, from amazement into suicidal thoughts . . . and on and on. The US edition has a cover showing a Roman bacchanalia—this is more apposite a whetter than “dinner party from hell” (unless taken literally), or nihilistic postmodern romp, though both those elements are dominant. Basically, Ros is a slutty actress who is found dead at a dinner party which is happening in a house somewhere, and some characters respond normally (wailing and such), while others behave like psychotics, perverts, unhinged nutballs, and bad comedians, and abuse her corpse with emphasis on the crotch. Gerald spends his time wiping arses, placating his ill-placed son, and trying to screw Alison while a range of drunken voices twit around him and pull the narrative over here, over here, over here, and over here, then back here, then over here, then oh look someone’s been shot in the head oh well better have sex with this teenage whore and get stuck in her vagina, then over here, then over here into a marsh of tagless dialogue running for twenty pages or so, then into another farcical sex scene of questionable morality. I think I started out trying to praise this novel. Well, don’t read it unless you’re familiar with plotless formless hardcore PoMo antinovels that demand dissection. Otherwise, the comedic set-pieces and exhausting pace, the blurred distinction between theatre and reality, truth and exaggeration . . . all interesting nooks of interest for the avant-garde bookman.
An entire novel set in a party! Whee! Coover manages to pull off, though it did kind of test my endurance to the limits, which is probably intentional. Relentless, confusing, slapstick, disjointed (lots of conversations going on at once) and claustrophobic, in other words reading it felt like either being too drunk or the onset of a panic attack, oh and tons of guests getting murdered...It is a novel full of ideas, on art, theatre (the function of the intermission - interesting, considering how this novel doesn't have any chapter breaks), love, sex, death, the "geometry of time" - it's all in there somewhere. This was my first Coover. I'll be reading more as soon as i've recovered.
What do You think about Gerald's Party (1997)?
Coover takes a minimally interesting premise--a cocktail party right out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting as the setting for a send up of the classic Agatha Christie "closed room" mystery--and beats it to death. I guess the meta-joke is that just as the hellish party is inescapable and goes on forever, the book is inescapable and goes on forever. Fortunately, however, the book is escapable-- you have only to stop reading.Certainly Coover deserves some style points for verbal skill and unrestrained imagination. The book is finely crafted, in the sense of the interlocking stories & themes, the literary allusions & wordplay, etc, etc.But it's pointless and ugly. Why would I want to read a thirty page "joke" about a stopped toilet and skating over a vomit-covered floor? How much necrophilia is "enough" for one avante-guard novel? It might have been an interesting and perhaps disturbing story at 50 pages. But at more than 300 pages, it's just a bore.
—John Sundman
It seems Robert Coover has been partying hard one too many times."God saved Lot, you’ll remember, so Lot afterward could fuck his daughters, but he froze the wife for looking back. On the surface, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. But the radical message of that legend is that incest, sodomy, betrayal and all that are not crimes – only turning back is: rigidified memory, attachment to the past".Gerald's Party is everything - history, religion, bohemian living, art and an allegory of human society.
—Vit Babenco
For some reason I've never got around to reading as much Coover as I feel I should have. SPANKING THE MAID when I was in high school, other shorter bits and pieces . . . Finally got around the GERALD'S PARTY and I'm kicking myself for not getting into his novels sooner. This is such an utterly brilliant piece of multi-layered work words (other than the exact ones the book itself is composed of) will not do it justice. "Sublime" is as close as I can come. This isn't one of those nearly opaque literary exercise novels either. Not even close. Abundant Shakespearean/Joycean wordplay aside, this thing has so many scenes of such beautifully rendered slapstick it's capable of punching the same funny-buttons the Marx bros and W.C. Fields did at their best. I am truly a Coover convert now. Splendid novel by a splendid writer.
—Zack
