Robert Coover777club, who along with Donald Barthelme, John Barth and others occupied the vanguard of postmodern American fiction in the 1960s and 1970s, and who went on to a long and prolific career writing and teaching, died on Saturday in Warwick, England. He was 92.
His death, in a care home, was confirmed by his daughter Sara Caldwell. Ms. Caldwell, an author and filmmaker, did not give a cause but said his health had been declining recently.
Mr. Coover’s first novel, “The Origin of the Brunists,” published in 1966 and fairly traditional in its telling, was about a religious cult built around the lone survivor of a mining accident in the Midwest.
In The New York Times Book Review, Webster Schott wrote of its author: “If he can somehow control his Hollywood giganticism and focus his vision of life, he may become heir to Dreiser or Lewis.”
ImageMr. Coover’s 1969 story collection, “Pricksongs and Descants,” included “The Babysitter,” which was adapted into a movie starring Alicia Silverstone.Credit...MinervaIf it wasn’t obvious then that Mr. Coover had no interest in inheriting the kingdom of social realism from Theodore Dreiser or Sinclair Lewis, his 1969 story collection “Pricksongs and Descants” made it abundantly clear. Those stories firmly established his career-long interest in remixing fairy tales, exploding myths and placing only the most transparent window in front of fiction’s inner machinery.
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