- Paperback: 544 pages
- Publisher: GROVE/ATLANTIC (April 2 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0802135277
- ISBN-13: 978-0802135278
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15.2 x 3.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 748 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #449,155 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
For quite some time after the 1977 publication of The Public Burning, it was almost impossible to find a copy. The book's own publisher seemed--no, was reluctant to admit it even existed. That's because this imaginative reconstruction of the 1953 execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted for giving atom bomb secrets to the Soviets, was the first major work of modern fiction to feature a still-living historical figure as a prominent character. The book's obscurity was the publisher's attempt to avoid legal repercussions from Richard Nixon, who over the course of the book engages in a romantic interlude with Ethel Rosenberg and graphically surrenders himself to a rapacious Uncle Sam.
Now that Nixon's dead, however, readers are free to marvel at one of the few American novels to rival Joyce's Ulysses for sustained stylistic inventiveness. Snippets of speeches and articles from Time are recast in poetic form, entire scenes are presented in dramatic verse, as events in the Rosenberg case move towards their historically destined conclusion. --Ron Hogan
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
I was with the President at his news conference that Wednesday morning when the maverick Supreme Court Justice William Douglas dropped his bombshell in the Rosenberg case. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
I was with the President at his news conference that Wednesday morning when the maverick Supreme Court Justice William Douglas dropped his bombshell in the Rosenberg case. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Unfinished,
By
This review is from: The Public Burning (Paperback)
Perhaps it's unfair of me to rate this book, since I didn't make it to the end. It was disappointing, since I've liked others of Coover's books. This one is written in a stream of consciousness style reminiscent of James Joyce/"Ulysses" (which I liked a lot). Similarly, it also is incredibly literate and erudite, lots of language play which still somehow was mostly just hard and not fun the way language should and can be. I could appreciate the humor intellectually, but it wasn't really funny. The subject matter is a cynical take on a dark subject, the Rosenberg executions. I can certainly understand why it's release was so contoversial. It might help to know more about the period but as someone who came of political age (later) during the Watergate years I know little about Nixon as VP and many of the social references were los on me.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A cruel, yet sympathetic, view of Richard Nixon,
By
This review is from: The Public Burning (Paperback)
When The Public Burning was first published in 1977, Richard Nixon was the ultimate political pariah. His public perception, shaped by Watergate and his resignation, was reinforced by Woodward and Bernstein's fictionalized The Final Days, a brutal account of Nixon's disintegrating psyche. Nixon's own memoir RN was perhaps his worst book, self-pitying, incredibly defensive, too weak-willed to be called defiant.In this context, Coover's treatment of Nixon in this novel is not as cruel as it may appear. Coover gives Nixon a literary soul, self-doubt, knowledge of his private and public sins and an odd desire to be one with the artists and rebels of the world. True, Coover's Nixon bares his bottom in public, becomes the boy-toy of Uncle Sam and is caught pleasuring himself in a most embarrassing moment ... but Coover's over-the-top cruelty to Nixon has a purpose. Nixon, the man "born in the house my father built" had to make horrific compromises to attain power, then faced the most public humiliation once attaining it. The burden of American power, personified by Uncle Sam, demands more than any humble human can bear. No wonder he finally walked away. In the wake of the Clinton impeachment, Coover's work has more resonance than ever. Americans ask the impossible of our public figures ... and then we glory in their failings. Coover brilliantly uses cruelty to reveal the sadism in the heart of our body politic.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Public Burning (Paperback)
A brilliant, savage and unrelenting look at what the US is today. Not as subtle as Gaddis, more powerful than Pynchon, a fabulous and terrifying novel which would have made Swift and Joyce proud.
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