Myth and Carnival in Robert Coover's The Public Burning - aisna

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10 Dainottoartifice and that, in so doing, escape from hyposthasis into" myth" andavoid fostering any epistemological "discipline." These new narrativeforms have been variously defined as "metafictional," "surfictional,"and "self-conscious"; Coover, for his part, prefers to talk of "ExemplaryFictions":Ejemplares you [Cervantes] called your tales, because your intention was"poner en laplaza unamesa de nuestra republica, unamesa de trucos, dondecada uno pueda llegar a entratenerse sin daño del alma ni delcuerpo, porquelos ejercicios honestos y agreables antes aprovechan que dañan" (Coover1969, 77)If Cervantes's Novelas Ejemplares called into question the statusof fictions and of themselves as fictions, they also affirmed theautonomy of the fiction-maker's "imagination" from Truth. Knowingthat a fiction is, after all, only a fiction, is potentially subversive of anygiven notion of "realism" and "meaningfulness" that might have beenattributed to, and sustained by, previous literary artifacts. Exemplaritycan be described as a comic disruption of older forms and dogmas, atension both moral and ontological to undermine a fixed notion ofreality. Coover says:Maybe the struggle I had as a young writer against the old forms hadmade me overly aware of their restrictive nature, such that I foundmyself burdened with a vast number of metaphoric possibilities, all ofwhich were touched by this sense of dogma invading the world andturning it to stone. (Coover 1983, 69)Caught in a quite Borgesian "Pierre Menard's paradox," Coover'srewriting of Cervantes's "exemplarity" is destined to go much furtherthan Cervantes could have possibly foretold, because, for Coover, notonly the realist novel but the very notion of "reality" is an artificialconstruction: "every effort to form a view of the world involves a kindof fiction-making process" (Coover 1983, 68). Coover's disruption ofold narrative forms coincides with the disruption of a stable notion ofreality which legitimates, and is legitimated by, a "restrictive" socialstructure that sets the limits and the status of a given "reality."Significantly, The Public Burning focuses on a much wider body of"reality-making processes" than novels conventionally do—or, for that
RSA Journal 311matter, The New York Times with its journalistic mythopoiesis. Ascreator of "newly fleshed" realities, journalism has a divine role inmodern society, and provides a theology which is sustained by faith andbelief. Marc Chénetier argues that in The Public Burningla presse, que l'on suppose être le degré zéro de 1'Histoire, n' est en faitque le stade premier de l'élaboration des rêves, qu' elle communique à seslecteursl'idée première qu'il existe une transcendence à l'événement,que 1'on peut ériger l'anamnese sautillante en parcours objectif. Toutlien établi par l'oeil entre deux colonnes du journal, voisines ou non,postule Dieu. (Chénetier 1979, 232)It postulates, in other words, a transcendental theology, the biblicalapocalypse that reunites chaos and confusion into a comprehensive andcommon telos; it presupposes, also, the incipit of the gospel according toJohn—"In the beginning was the Word," a divine epiphany of thelogos:nothing living ever appears here at all, only presumptions, newly fleshedout from day to day, keeping intact that vast, intricate, yet statictableau—The New York Times's finest creation—within which a reasonableand orderly picture of reality can unfold. No matter how crazy it is.(PB 192)A heuristic of reality coincides for Coover with a heuristic ofpower: if reality is the result of a fictional construct—"No matter howcrazy it is"—power is the ability, on the part of a political establishment,to stop the proliferation of reality-construction into a "statictableau." In this sense, one of the most overwhelming manifestationsof power is the construction of historical "truths" as dogmaticexplanations and legitimations of a political status quo. Written duringthe period in which Coover was still working on The Public Burning, thenovella Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears?suggests thatOnly for ... the dogmatist... is there one "history" only. The rest of uslive with the suspicion that there are as many histories as there arepeople and maybe a few more ... what arrangements can we not imagine?(Coover 1987, 9)
Page 1 and 2: ROBERTO MARIA DAINOTTOMyth and Carn
Page 3 and 4: RSA Journal 37fire purifies everyth
Page 5: RSA Journal 39order, hypostatized a
Page 9 and 10: RSA Journal 313Scenery, perspective
Page 11 and 12: RSA Journal 315"policing power [and
Page 13 and 14: RSA Journal 317Superhero Uncle Sam
Page 15 and 16: RSA Journal 319Ages" (PB 58). In a
Page 17 and 18: RSA Journal 321so she burns—and b

Myth and Carnival in Robert Coover's The Public Burning - aisna

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